Are we tolerant of others, do we live and let live. In this enlightened age of understanding we all are more tolerant of other and visa versa. We know that if we give other the respect that we would like then they will do the same to us. That is what it is to live in a multicultural and divers society. 

Or is it, we hear every day of more and more instances of hate crimes. Protests over race, sexuality and religion. Some of the very basic things that make us what we are. How can this be that after all the years of understanding that we have we still have this situation in the world that we live in. 

In a world that seems to be getting smaller, faster and ever more alike it is hard to be tolerant of others. Classically it was often the other way round but now things are different.

Once you was born and raised in the area that you came from. You did not travel that far from where you was born and had local roots. In this environment you had a sense of place and purpose of belonging. It was then any one who came in from another place that would be looked at with a suspicious eye.

Now things are very different. We have a mobile and moving population that will be born in one place work in another. Where we are born is very often not the same town that we live in later in life. The community that was once is no longer the same thing and we are separated from its security that it brings. Also we have constant media images in our lives not telling us things about all and sundry.

So with this lack of some thing to hang on to, to give us an identity. We look for other things that we can associate with and we look to make those associations stronger. It is a need that we have; that we need that makes us human. And that is the need to belong to a group. Evan the most loneliest of loners will, normally, have some one that they wish to share things with in some way.

So it is that need that we have to belong and be associated with a group that makes us less tolerant of other in another group. Evan after years of trying to educate and promote understanding.

So what can we do to stop this? Well as it seems to be a thing that we need then it would appear that we can do nothing. Legislation can help in improving things. Also it does not help as it can seem to increase the divide in understanding and promote negativity. That only leads us to educating and trying to promote understanding. Not that this is always welcome either. It is ever growing and more complicated the deeper you go the more problems you encounter, the more solutions you get.

Maybe we should do as the proverb says and walk a mile in another mans shoes before you pass judgment. That way we might think before we judge and see that we are all not so very different after all.