What is Tolerance? (1)

The precept of Tolerance as moral force in the understanding of [American] freedom is a pro-active process. It transforms peaceably pre-modern values and beliefs held in certain societal segments to modern Western values, norms and customs.
As a dynamic notion in the conception of [American] freedom, Tolerance engenders debate about ever-present differences in cultural norms and values.
As a state of mind, Tolerance is about reciprocity, mutual understanding, respect and full acceptance.
Cultural values and practices imposed on individuals by groups based on exclusionary or confining aspects of religious, ethnic and racial behavior are subordinate to individual rights given and protected by the state and may even be unlawful. For example, it is religious belief, not religious conduct, which is protected by the First Amendment.
In an intolerant society liberty is meaningless. Only through broad awareness and conscious vigilance of [in]tolerance can liberty be sustained.
Tolerance is the realization that postmodern humanity is determined by crucial themes of normative differences (tolerances) as standard deviation of the mean - freedom.
Tolerance is a universal value and was adopted by the United Nations as a human right under its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
(Joep de Koning)

     Description of Tolerance Monument as the Centerpiece of the Tolerance Park:

In the Western Hemisphere, religious and ethnic pluralism through Tolerance as a legal-political condition were placed first on Governors Island in New York Harbor in 1624.

As iconic National Symbol of America's ultimate virtue of Tolerance and social cohesion, a proposed 151 feet high Tolerance Monument will be anchored to a 50-acre Tolerance Park on 30% of Governors Island. They will restore the island to its historical integrity and imbue it with its original message and historic symbolism.

This living museum-park-to-tolerance will emanate lasting loyalty to America's earliest value―the elemental precept of Tolerance as a subset of American Freedom and as a primary pillar of American culture and democracy.

The historical meaning of Governors Island lies in its existence as unrecognized Conceptual Art since 1624 when the conception of religious tolerance as the basis for ethnic diversity was delivered onto it.

Its transformation to Visual Art and a National Symbol is to be accomplished by way of the envisaged living museum-park with the Tolerance Monument as centerpiece. It will be the Western Hemisphere and the nation's first park that addresses dynamic tolerance issues as they define American Freedom thus defending personal freedom (= Liberty) visually and intellectually.

In the way that New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is housed in a mixed-use skyscraper wherein about 20% is dedicated to exhibition space and 80% to residential use, the Tolerance Park will similarly be dedicated to exhibition space devoted to interactive educational exhibits about religious, ethnic and racial tolerance. The remaining structures of the living museum village will serve as America's first mixed-use urban artist colony that focuses on arts and crafts with emphasis on those from before the 19th-century.

The envisaged Tolerance Monument of global meaning, thematic substance and 21st-century visual greatness will be portrayed by appropriating an image from the American artist Barnett Newman. His sculpture Broken-Obelisk (a copy of which is in MoMA) was dedicated by him to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination.

By using contemporary technology, materials and engineering, the image can be extrapolated to a height of 151 feet (46 meters). This height equates that of the Statue of Liberty's without pedestal (that is, half the total Liberty Monument's height because Broken-Obelisk stands on the ground) because Tolerance and Liberty are equal partners in American Freedom.

This new iconic emblem will be an implicit tribute and testimonial to racial tolerance recognizing the fact that, for the African-American segment of the population, liberty was a concept from which they were largely excluded legally and culturally.

The image of the Barnett Newman sculpture - implicitly honoring Martin Luther King - thus transformed into the Tolerance Monument, will comprise a Tolerance Hall to include a museum of human servitude with special emphasis on the Atlantic arena in the 15th through 17th centuries.

The contemporary relevance of such a museum may best be underscored by the fact that, today, there are more chattel slaves in the world than ever before: between 12 to 27 million. This is in spite of the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 4, that "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

It will highlight uplifting exhibits and narratives of Herculean courage as inspirational demonstrations of humanity's capacity for astonishing compassion that emerges from the depths of depravity and indifference. The color of the pyramid section will be black to reflect its theme: "Black has an innersound of nothingness bereft of possibilities, a dead nothingness as if the sun had become extinct" so wrote Kadinsky.

Because black's cognate is blue, the upside-down obelisk section will be translucent to radiate blue light as a blue-sky tribute to mankind's power to rise and create ex nihilo. It will be situated on the same spot within the Tolerance Park as where Fort Amsterdam as Capitol was positioned within New Amsterdam, now New York City.

Just as when Governors Island became the region's first crossroad of three cultures in 1613 when Jan Rodrigues from Santo Domingo and of African ancestry summered there, the Tolerance Park, when it opens in September 2009, will become a meeting point for the cultures of the world to debate on these issues of profound importance to future generations.

The Tolerance Park will be of architectural uniqueness and cohesiveness and therefore reflective of harmony-in-difference - the ideal condition of the virtue of tolerance. It will be a place where 350 years of contrasts will visually dissolve harmoniously into a new and unique village, just as divergences and boundaries melt away through the ethical force of tolerance into common humanity.

Consequently, the Tolerance Park  will link visually the 1624 historic planting of [religious] tolerance (that is, the "father" of American liberty and the basis of successful pluralism) on Governors Island with broad 21st-century awareness of that dynamic ethical force of tolerance as being indispensable to religious, ethnic and racial liberty in contemporary American society.

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                Transformation of Governors Island through the Tolerance Park:

The French gift of the Statue of Liberty (inaugurated in 1886) transformed Bedloe Island to Liberty Island in 1956 to become an omnipresent, fundamental American symbol.

Similarly, our proposed 50-acre canvas for the creation of a masterpiece of thematic and visual excellence―the Tolerance Park wherein situated the Tolerance Monument as centerpiece―will transform Governors Island, over time, to Tolerance Island.

The envisaged canvas for profound creativity will explicitly acknowledge constructive pluralism-through-tolerance as an original, historic, indispensable dynamic notion in American freedom since 1624―the year in which it took root on the very place where it was planted first on Governors Island in the Western Hemisphere.

The 50 acres for the work of art―legislatively set aside for that purpose―will generate the third iconic island symbol as a quintessential, fundamental American symbol in New York harbor.

Governors Island, the nation’s oldest natural, historic, primary symbol since 1624, precedes the later created island symbols (“Liberty” by way of the Statue of Liberty and “Welcome” by way of the American Immigration Museum) in historical priority and national meaning.

These three symbols happen to be ideal complements and are fully interdependent with respect to a more insightful understanding of what constitutes American freedom.

Each island embodies a unique facet of its own history that is inherent to the way we experience personal freedom.

Geographically perfectly aligned in a triangle, the island triad thus composes a new ubiquitous American icon: The National Heritage Triangle.

It will provide our children with an opportunity to understand the twin notions of tolerance and liberty of American freedom and imbue them with a deeper appreciation of the meaning of freedom in a pluralist society through broad awareness and conscious vigilance.

The envisaged park will therefore protect the nation’s ideal and tradition of tolerance and uphold America’s ultimate, active virtue to the world while preserving the national significance of Governors Island's historic symbolism as an enduring beacon to humanity.

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What is Tolerance? (2)

The conception of Tolerance was introduced in the Western Hemisphere as a legal-political and cultural tradition in 1624. In that year, Tolerance was placed on Governors Island in New York Harbor with the landing of the first settlers to the New York Tri-State region. It was the foundation of New York’s unique characteristic of cultural diversity and pluralism.

This Tolerance had its roots in the independence of the Dutch Republic from Spain in 1581. It was re-introduced as a legal-political and individual right in 1789 and codified in 1791 after the formation of the republic of thirteen United States in 1776.

As an ethical force, Tolerance lies thus at the core of American culture and is America’s ultimate virtue. As a prerequisite to sustainable liberty, the limits of tolerance also set the standards of liberty and societal freedom itself.

With regard to religion, ethnicity and race, the twin credos of Tolerance and Liberty comprise Western/American freedom. Hence, the vibrant notion of Tolerance is a subset of American freedom as well as a crucial pillar of democracy. Tolerance is the lifeblood of liberty as we know it.

As an active dynamic, Tolerance entails reciprocity and reciprocal respect. Always bilaterally demanding, it forges Western/American freedom by relentlessly transforming plurality into constructive pluralism as a never-finished product of Western culture.

In the face of intolerance, Tolerance is neither uncritical acceptance, appeasement or submission, nor laxity, sloth or indifference.

Left unnurtured and unprotected, simple liberty invites and facilitates the "friends" of intolerance and extremism—complacency, carelessness, apathy, passivity and insipidness—opening the door to insidious assaults on civil liberties.

Tolerance builds liberty. Intolerance kills liberty. It impairs democracy and may even destroy it.

Governors Island, when set aside for this timeless message by the New York State Legislature, will instill confidence in the dependable and binding power of tolerance and conciliation as indispensable to the concept of Western/American freedom.

(Joep de Koning)