Tolerance

Subject: Tolerance 

If their had to be a divine commandment which would gain provenance over all else,  I would rate tolerance the most important. Most commandments are based on the principle 'Thou shall not' and it presupposes that this is true under all circumstances. They have that authoritarian ring to them which defies bucking the trend set out as 'the word of God'  but tolerance has that indefinite aspect to it which allows some wriggle room. When a man working on a lathe talks about tolerance he speaks of an acceptance of the difference from the absolute, a tolerable gap from that he sees on the specification  and the finished product in his hands where the difference is 'tolerable'. 
Tolerance towards our fellow human beings is the linchpin pin by which we navigate our way through the aspects of human divergence, of which there are many, and the tolerance, or the divergence we allow from our own opinions allows us peace of mind.
The world especially in the west has embarked, over the last few decades in a crusade to recognise that we are not all the same and made in the eyes of the heavenly 'Turner' (the name given to the man or woman who operated the lathe) and that the production line which manufacture us is prone to mistakes. 
The use of the word mistake provokes howls of anguish, quite rightly if we accept that the norm is a fluid thing and that unless the human being isn't severely impaired and a threat to us all, our tolerance  for difference and our acceptance that because a thing is different,  it is not wrong but rather a strength.
Of course tolerance has to be a two way street and the differences must not become threatening otherwise we reject them. The question of when a difference becomes threatening and how difference must always be under review, instinctively involves this psychological aspect we all have, (to varying degrees), for tolerance and as with so many things, unbridled tolerance is not acceptable and quite rightly alarms people. 
For some would profess tolerance of everything, there are no limits, even if their tolerance would lead them into danger, they feel ideologically bound to be tolerant, whilst others are intolerant of things which they don't recognise in themselves and in this case they can become a danger to us.
There are so many variables emerging from the human gene pool that it seems every year we find another category of person clamouring at the door of recognition. The old fashioned norms are blown asunder as the human genome throws up a different mix of chromosomes to develop a newly identifiable subset which cry out for recognition. 
The argument that nothing is normal other than a persons right to say I'm different is becoming more accepted and is a far cry from the stereotyped assumptions which made up public opinion a generation or two ago but are there no limits to the variables. 
Tolerance then is our capacity to accept the variables which we see around us and try to learn about the variation and find ways to fit them into our own prescriptive of what is normal but if the new variable pushes us far away from our comfort zone must we tolerate for toleration sake everything thrown at us.