Austėja Piliutytė

Andrew Sayer „Tolerance is a dirty word“

Today I watched a clip of a young man, Andrew Sayer talking about tolerance, why this word is not
enough in our society and many more important things.

Even though there is very little tolerance in our daily society, it is not even enough. If you tolerate
someone, you tolerate them being alive, but nothing more. We should all accept each other, because
that is something us, human beings, can do. Andrew started the Ted talk with some historical facts
regarding the subject of tolerance. Many inequalities such as race, gender, financial situation, sexuality
were mentioned as topics of why people are not being accepted by the society. While the speaker called
himself a definition of privilege, he chose to speak about all these extremely important things. From his
point of view, everything has to start in the education system, some states in the US have to take a step
forward and change some things, other will then follow their lead. The education system should unite
different people from various countries, with different interests and show that all of the people deserve
to be accepted. Later on, Andrew said that even accepting people isn’t enough- we should celebrate
them. The example of the World War I was mentioned, how people in Denmark celebrated jews and so
saved thousands of them. He summed up the talk with the overall idea that the world needs change in
order to make sure everyone feels tolerated, accepted and celebrated.

I fully agree with Andrew. There is so much hatred and disrespect in today’s world and it’s so important
that we put effort in and somehow make a change. Everyone deserves to be tolerated, accepted and
celebrated. I, as a privileged person, stand with the mindset that no difference, that you have no choice
in, makes you better or worse than other human being. Tolerance is necessary, although is not enough.