Why affluence breeds intolerance

Extractos de um artigo de Richard Tomkins publicado no Financial Times em 14.11.2005.

Someone signing an online petition calling for “child-free” sections in North Carolina restaurants, added the comment: “Whenever a hostess asks me ‘Smoking or non-smoking?’ I respond ‘No kids!’” So there you have it: children are the new cigarettes.

The really odd thing is that in all the big ways we have become much more tolerant of others. Women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals are no longer oppressed or treated as second class citizens. Yet it is almost as though there were a fixed quantity of intolerance and, having been deprived of its old outlets, it has to find new ones. Racial segregation is banned, so you move on to smokers. Smoking is banned, so you move on to children, or mobile phone users, or people who drive sports utility vehicles.

More realistically, though, intolerance could be just an adjunct of greater spending power. As people become better off, the danger is that they can grow self-important. One consequence is that they become less tolerant of other people’s behaviour; yet paradoxically, they expect other people to be more tolerant of theirs. Perhaps rising prosperity should come with lessons in grace.

Fantástico, Melga !