Mark W.rites

Articles and essays on design, technology, and my POV of the world. For shorter bursts find me on Mastodon.

Close up of a bunch of purple grapes in someone’s outstretched hands. The person in the background is blurred to highlight the grapes and bring them into focus.

I am a white man who has absolutely no tolerance for homosexuals, women, or people of color. Why should I? Tolerance is for bigots, racists, and misogynists living in the closet. Tolerance is lazy. Tolerance says “your life only matters if I don’t have to see you.” Tolerance is playing house, knowing there are no real bills.

tolerance | ‘täl(ə)rəns
noun
1 the ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.

We celebrate tolerance as a victory for egalitarianism, but that’s bullshit. We can do better. Much better. We can have empathy. And then we can take action.

If we really want to change the world for the better, we need to stop accepting tolerance as a solution to bigotry, racism, and misogyny. We’re all born egalitarians. It’s our inherent nature to love without judgment. So I’m calling for an overthrow of tolerance, and a new era of action with empathy.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Let’s move beyond compassion into a true state of love. Love for self, love for others, love for planet, love for universe, love for multiverse. We can begin with ourselves, then give birth to edification by example.

Our love has simply been tarnished. We just need to clean it up. Tolerance accepts the scuffs. Empathy buffs them out.

We’re all like grapes on the vine of the Universe—so let’s share the water, share the sun, and make sweet together.

Like this? Find out when I publish new work.

Illustration of me with a content facial expression. I am wearing a wine colored beanie, teal glasses, and my long full beard is brown with gray edges. There is a dreary forest in the background.
I’m Mark Wyner, an activist, dad, husband, Designer, writer, public speaker, and Mastodon moderator. If you want me to write for you or speak at your event please say hello.

Young Black girl with braided hair, wearing a soccer kit and sitting cross legged in a Pugg soccer goal with her hands folded in a meditation pose while grinning widely.

I have been wanting to write this article for many days, but haven’t been able to properly formulate my thoughts. It’s emotionally and psychologically challenging as a fellow human being, but it’s concerning to me on a personal level as well. You see, I’m a white man with five children — and three of them are black.

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Four story building of old architecture, shaped in a square with an open courtyard, with Paris on the horizon behind it.

Paper for the W3C HTML Mail Workshop, 24 May 2007, Paris, France. Originally published on the W3C website for the workshop.

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Illustration of a window with colorful lines that symbolize a code editor.

Originally published on the A List Apart website.

Despite prevailing wisdom to the contrary, you can safely deploy HTML emails styled with good old-fashioned CSS. Yes, I really just said that. Not all attributes will be invited to the party, but many of them work flawlessly with this method.

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