"Just do your thing and I'll do mine" is fine if you are the only two people and can withdraw to opposite sides of the country, but when large numbers of people get together, we have to have rules that make sure that you doing your thing doesn't harm me. There may, indeed, be many who abuse human kindness with intolerance, but most of us on this earth want to live in harmony, which means that we have to compromise what we would ideally want, in order to have societal peace. I am sorry to be blunt, but you are spouting a platitude that my generation began in the 60s. And even my generation soon learned that the world was not necessarily a better place to live by letting everyone do their own thing. So many of my generation died at the hands of drug dealers who were just wanting to do their own thing, or damned their children to psychiatric pain by allowing them to be born as addicts. I agree that people can, in many cases, be much more tolerant than they act, but I do not think that I am being intolerant by saying that if I must give up some of my preferences for the sake of societal peace, so my neighbour should also make allowances for my comfort as well, by compromising some of his "things" that he does. And, if he will not, that he should not be sanctioned by society as a whole.

Intolerance is based on ignorance (as in a lack of knowledge) and imagination.

Why the bl**dy h*ll don't you mind your own bl**dy business, I've never been intolerant in my life.

Insecure people with a low self-esteem need to believe,since they think some others are better than them that,conversely there are others that THEY are better than. Then they can judge them. It stems from being ignorant of the FACT that we are all one spirit dispersed across the globe to share equally, not to fight over like a territorial pack of wild dogs!

because it is in our nature to do so

i believe that it is the result of people not having enough contact with others, those who treat people intolerably tend to treat people who are different from them selfs and those with whom they themselfs have had little contact with.

once you've gotten to a certain point inside, intolerance of others isnt even possible, if anything pity. unfortantely not many people get there it seems.