Supporting Tolerance and Co-existence with People Who Hold Different Values

6. Civic Knowledge and Skills

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 27, 2026

Democracy is not a way of deciding which group gets to dominate all the others. It is a way of making it possible for people with different beliefs, identities, interests, and moral commitments to live together under shared rules. This does not mean that people must give up deeply held values or pretend that all views are equally wise or just. It does mean that they must accept the right of others — who have very different beliefs, identities, interests, and values to participate as full members of the political community. As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it, all people are entitled to equal dignity and rights. In democratic societies, that principle has to apply even when citizens strongly disagree with one another.

Tolerance is sometimes misunderstood as indifference, weakness, or moral surrender. It is none of these things. UNESCO’s Declaration of Principles on Tolerance describes tolerance as respect, acceptance, and appreciation for the rich diversity of human cultures and ways of being human. That is a demanding civic virtue. It asks people to distinguish between opposing an idea and denying the legitimacy of the person who holds it. A democratic citizen may argue passionately against a policy, religion, ideology, or way of life. What democracy cannot survive is the claim that those who disagree have no rightful place in the community.

Supporting co-existence therefore requires both rights and habits. Rights protect minorities, dissenters, and unpopular groups from being silenced or coerced by those who temporarily hold power. Habits make those protections real in daily life. People need to learn how to listen across moral differences, explain their own convictions without contempt, and recognize that their opponents may also be acting from sincere concerns. The Pluralism Project emphasizes that pluralism is not the same as mere diversity; it requires active engagement across differences. Co-existence is strengthened when schools, religious communities, civic groups, workplaces, and political leaders model that kind of engagement.

At the same time, tolerance has limits. A democracy does not have to tolerate violence, intimidation, dehumanization, or organized efforts to strip others of their basic rights. The challenge is to draw this line without turning every disagreement into a claim that the other side is beyond the pale. The rule of law helps by applying the same standards to all groups, whether they are popular or unpopular, powerful or weak. Fair rules make it possible to oppose genuinely dangerous behavior, while still protecting freedom of conscience, speech, association, and political participation.

In deeply divided societies, tolerance and co-existence are not luxuries. They are conflict-resolution necessities. When people believe that losing an election means being humiliated, excluded, or forced to live under someone else’s moral code, politics becomes frightening and zero-sum. When people believe that their basic rights will be protected even when they lose, they are more likely to stay within democratic processes. Supporting tolerance and co-existence therefore helps turn destructive conflict into constructive conflict. It makes disagreement safer, lowers the stakes of political competition, and gives people room to keep working together on the shared problems that no group alone can solve.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.