When is tolerance not enough?

At what points and under what circumstances must two groups necessarily conflict, regardless of any desire they may have to cooperate with each other? Also, to what lengths must that conflict go?

I suppose resource limits in a particular area are the best reason for this, even for two different groups that would otherwise be absolutely happy to live peacefully.

'Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.' -G. K. Chesterton

Do you want real-life examples or purely hypothetical ones, OP?

AFAIK, if there is mutual tolerance, there will be no conflict. If there is conflict, the tolerance either isn't mutual or isn't encompassing all the constituents of one or both groups, in which case unless the groups police themselves, there will be blood.

Yes but G.K Chesterton was a tiny bit of an arse.

When survival is at stake. e.g. The Event. the only way for the Human Aliens on Earth to save the billions of members of their race that are back on their dying homeworld is to portal them to Earth and kill off a large portion of humanity in order to make room.

What.

I think he's saying that conflict can emerge from situations when there is still in theory tolerance, eg a lack of resources. Even if he isn't I think that's true.

(edit) Sorry the rest of this post wasn't on-topic.

edited 16th Apr '11 12:01:26 PM by C0mraid

I was answering the question "At what points and under what circumstances must two groups necessarily conflict, regardless of any desire they may have to cooperate with each other?" When the only possible compromise is for both groups to condemn a significant portion of their population to certain death.