Why Are We So Intolerant of Our Own Intolerances?
Food Intolerances: When the Body Says No.
In recent years, food intolerances have become main topics in medical consultations, personalized diets, and everyday conversations. These are not allergies, which involve severe immune reactions, but more subtle yet persistent bodily responses where certain substances simply aren’t tolerated. Today, dozens of common intolerances have been identified, and the list keeps expanding: lactose intolerance, gluten, fructose, histamine, sulfites, sorbitol, casein, caffeine, food additives like monosodium glutamate, alcohol, yeast, nitrates and nitrites, wine tannins, egg proteins, nuts, nightshades such as tomato, pepper, or eggplant, oily fish, certain types of plant fibers, and even red meat proteins in sensitive individuals.
In many cases, the body responds with inflammation, general discomfort, bloating, migraines, chronic fatigue, intestinal issues, skin flare-ups, mood swings, or a drop in vital energy. The usual recommendation in this context is clear: avoid the problematic food, regulate exposure, listen to symptoms, and ultimately seek a more stable, predictable, and healthier life.
Emotional Intolerances: When the Mind Says No.
A more stable, predictable, and healthier life: this seems to be the motto guiding our relationship with the body. However, if we were to apply the same rules to the sphere of the mind and soul, we would soon discover we have developed our own intolerances there as well—less visible but equally decisive.
We can’t tolerate waiting, that uncertain suspension where nothing seems to move forward and time becomes an unbearable weight. We flee from boredom, that emotional plain where nothing stimulates us and where we confront—alone—the rawness of our own existence stripped of embellishments. We avoid conflict, not only with others but with ourselves, as if the clash of ideas were harm and not a driver.
We are intolerant to doubt, that crack opening in our certainties demanding we live without knowing, without firm ground below our feet. Contradiction is insufferable: seeing how our ideas, desires, or feelings collide, revealing we are not simple beings, nor logical, nor fully consistent.
We reject ambiguity, the inevitable condition where something can be true and false at the same time, desirable and feared, beautiful and sinister. We fear frustration, the failure of desire reminding us not everything can be satisfied, limits exist, and sometimes the world won’t bend to our whims.
We desert in the face of nostalgia, that open wound toward what was and won’t return, because looking back feels like weakness. Melancholy disturbs us, when sadness settles in for no apparent reason, reminding us not everything in life is manageable or explicable. And we try to anesthetize any loneliness, though it is essential for reflection and growth, seeking refuge in distractions, social media, consumption, and noise.
Each of these experiences, essential for inner life, is treated as an anomaly to be suppressed. Just as we cut out gluten or lactose to avoid disrupting physical balance, we eliminate conflict, doubt, waiting, and loneliness to avoid disturbing an emotional homeostasis that, paradoxically, leaves us increasingly fragile.
Emotional Homeostasis: The Thermal Death of Feelings
In his book The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity (1973), ethologist Konrad Lorenz warned about an insidious process affecting not just cultural dynamics but the very heart of human emotional life: the thermal death of feelings.
Inspired by the physical concept of the universe’s “thermal death”—the point where all energy dissipates and there’s no temperature difference between bodies—Lorenz applies this idea metaphorically to our emotional life. A society that systematically eliminates displeasure, anesthetizing all emotional friction, inevitably tends toward emotional homeostasis: a state with no great passions or immense suffering, but also without real enthusiasm, ecstasy, or genuine creativity.
Emotional homeostasis implies a search for stable, constant balance free from disturbance. Pursued as an end in itself, this equilibrium not only dampens destructive conflicts: it also numbs the vital tensions that support the intensity of love, the depth of sadness, the capacity for awe, and the drive toward personal change.
According to Lorenz, this affective death is not spontaneous. It results from various processes typical of modern society: excessive material comfort, which cushions everyday challenges and numbs vital initiative; emotional overprotection, which infantilizes individuals and hampers personal maturity; digital and sensory overstimulation, flooding perception with instant gratifications—likes, exhibitionism, rapid image consumption—distancing us from slower, deeper, more resilient experiences outside the reward circuit; and, finally, the increasing intolerance of displeasure, no longer seen as a natural fact of existence but as a threat to be suppressed at any cost.
It’s crucial here to grasp Lorenz’s distinction between pleasure and displeasure. Modern culture would apparently present itself as a culture of pleasure: a hedonistic civilization where everything is geared toward unbridled enjoyment. Yet this reading is superficial. In reality, Lorenz maintains, we are not heading for the maximization of pleasure, but the minimization of displeasure. We do not seek more pleasure per se but less pain, less conflict, less friction, less uncertainty.
The result is a disturbing paradox: by avoiding all forms of suffering, we also sacrifice our capacity to feel fully. We become immune not only to pain, but also to exaltation. A humanity that anesthetizes itself against suffering inadvertently numbs itself against life itself.
In this way, modernity produces individuals who, far from being expansive hedonists, are managers of their own emotional comfort, administrators of a neutral and predictable wellbeing. Emotional homeostasis thus becomes a trap: a promise of happiness that essentially denies the very conditions necessary for authentic joy.