Peterkin

Unequivocally three sexes there: hermaphrodite, male, female.

You explained what it means to be human? Where? But as it's already well established that I'm obtuse, could you summarize it for me in simple words?

Wanna share?

Do you? I see the phrase bandied about, but have yet to hear a succinct definition.

Do we even know what "sexes" are supposed to be, outside of our weird ideas about reproduction? Humans want things; humans formulate agendas to get those things; humans either successfully force everything else to fit that agenda, or ignore/deny inconvenient nonconformity on nature's part.

When there is a sudden influx of one nationality - e.g. Irish during the famine; Hungarians after the failed revolution - new immigrants tend to concentrate in one or two main urban locations. One reason for this is their lack of preparedness (having run away in the middle of the night) for a foreign culture: they need both the sponsorship and the guidance of compatriots who are already established. Most of these new immigrants disperse gradually, as they learn the rules, find employment and accommodation. The first generation of children disperses almost completely - except those those who join a family business in that neighbourhood. The parents usually work very hard to educate their children (You can tell when waves of immigrants arrived by reading the names and dates on high school honour rolls.) who then assimilate and only come back to visit the old folks. Because of these family businesses, the adult immigrants keep coming back to hear their own language, buy familiar food, etc. This neighbourhood, too, becomes the obvious destination for any fresh immigrants from the same place. They do take up streets and, if they're successful, develop a special ethnic flavour and attract custom by the majority and other populations. These "Little Italy"s and "Chinatown"s become a feature of cosmopolitan cities. Only if there is some other overt conflict. The ethnic neighbourhoods become targets for hostile factions in the mainstream when there is a pandemic, for example, that the president insists on calling by a nationality, or when some Hollywood mogul decides to make a few $billion on gangster movies featuring people from a particular island, or when Black children dare to attend a decent school previously reserved for white ones. These ethnic neighbourhoods are also the cultural centers for a group of people who share the same taste in music, theater and method of worship: it's where the churches are originally established. They are hubs of social life, teaching the young about their heritage, help centers for the needy. They also make both easy targets and recruitment venues for activists, terrorists, vigilantes, gangs, neighbourhood watch... It's not the number of one kind of people living near one another that determines social attitudes around them - it's world and national and economic events that pit one neighbourhood against another. (People fight over territory, resources and power.) Yes, but have they stopped the financial practices and changed the regulations to prevent the laundering and concealment of blood moneys? How many? More to the point, what income level? Would it be unfair to ask about migrant workers? How is that perceived differentness? Could you tell them apart if they're naked? In fact, could any individual Manchester fan be able to pick any individual Liverpool fan out of a police lineup? That's why gangs have tattoos and fans have scarves and jerseys in their colours - like carrying a flag. Of course they're fighting over territory, resources and power. Instincts are biological. Aggression is biologiocal. The choice of designated rivals, opponents, adversaties and enemies is three levels up from biology: it's a characteristic of complex social organization. And yes, that seems a bit ironic. The more complex, numerous and diverse our societies become, the more we revert to the formation of sub-cultures; a kind of throwback to tribal organization. Perhaps that's the level of complexity with which we are psychologically most comfortable. However, the average American city may have a dozen ethnic blocs and a hundred factions centered on occupation, income, religion, sports, music, political affiliation and various other interests or preoccupations, and most of them coexist peacefully most of the time. When conflicts arise between any two, look for an underlying motive in territory, resources and power distribution.

Yes. May we conclude that these attitudes are not genetically determined, biological, instinctive or "hard-wired"?

You know they were all the same race, right? What they fought over was resources and territory. That's what humans, and other animals fight over - not differences in skin colour. They do fight over religion, but that has only been going on since the advent of exclusive organized religions belonging to civilized nation-states. (The wars were still over resources and territory, just using different symbols to rally the troops.) It isn't. There is a natural, instinctive tendency to trust whom we know and be loyal to blood kin, but that erects no barriers to trade, treaties and and alliances; raises no barriers to someone of a different tribe marrying in (in fact, that custom is very deliberately encouraged, in order to improve the gene-pool, cement friendly relations with allies and consolidate land and water use agreements). That's an extra-long step from tribalism to hostility. Yes, if the number of incomers is low, they have both motivation and time to learn the language and culture and stand a good chance of assimilation. In small, monolithic societies, kinship and shared customs are of paramount importance. It the number of incomers is such that it forms a separate sub-society, that threatens the identity, integrity, and therefore the viability of the whole. Too fast an influx of population also strains the resources, territorial boundaries and status relationships of a small community. In large, heterogeneous modern societies, diversity is not an existential issue, but the social dynamics are far more faceted and complicated. It's never just a matter of "blaming a group for everything that goes wrong" - it's also a matter of history, agendas, lifestyles, personal conflicts, cultural antipathies, value systems - so many more possible things to go wrong, for which the community is unprepared. All of these are social issues - not biological or evolutionary ones. Where does History show anything about instinct, or indicate which ones are base and which noble? History seems to me a record of collective actions, based on political decisions. Where you have an antipathy between two strangers of different nationalities, look for its roots in the history of their nations, not their genotypes.

Including one qualified psychologist, I know. I still don't see it as equal to the white supremacist agenda. Yes - it would - in the circumstances you prescribe. Once everything you recommend has been implement, I'll revise my opinion according to the results.

Gun-violence, police raids and shootings, massive voter suppression, racial discrimination at all levels of society, increasing homelessness and child poverty, disinformation and grotesquely unfair application of existing bad laws is perhaps balanced by too much good manners? O-kay....

Of course. You used it as an example and I accepted it as an example, but didn't think this was the appropriate venue to probe the details.

I sincerely hope you're right. The infrastructure situation doesn't belong here, except perhaps as an illustrative example of what can be accomplished in the present political climate.

What happens next? My guess is, nothing better. The present federal government is ... let's be generous and say, not quite strong enough to address either the gun issues or the racial rifts, while the conservative state governments have grown disproportionately powerful. This is the least rational period of my lifetime - not only in the US, but globally - and quite possibly the least rational in modern history. You'd have to look back to the Reformation for so much volatile unreason. I very much fear that what comes next is a far-right victory, one last feeding frenzy, followed by economic collapse - all of it accompanied by many senseless killings, everywhere. Then war, plague, famine - you know the drill. I have been wrong before. I hope I'm wrong now.

That has never been "my choice". My sympathy doesn't enter in. I try to see a coloured picture, that's all.

And that works? I have yet to see it work in US legislation.

Not as, of course not. Hollywood inflates everything and renders stories graphic; it plays an enormously significant part in popular culture, from the 1930's onward. The archetype, as well as well as the names, already existed in literary form, ready for Hollywood to harvest. Just as your present-day Trumpite nutbars carry the Rambo poster. We also get our cinematic imagery from Hollywood. But we don't - except at the extreme fringes - identify with it. Americans do: it's their culture. (Not all Americans with the same archetype, obviously. There are several other kinds of more or less emulatable hero, and many Americans who don't play-act. But this meme is very popular with a certain type of youth.) So what? Neither your lack of sympathy, nor the alt-right's admiration, make a difference to what motivated him. Nor does whatever we, outsiders, think have any part in how the rest of the story will play out.

They didn't. During the world wars, they feared and hated the Germans as an enemy - war propaganda had a hand in the hate part. Between the wars, they did business with Germans, to the extent past-WWI reparations permitted. When they learned the extent of the Holocaust (which they had been reluctant to believe), they were horrified, naturally enough. But it didn't stop them helping post-war Germany rebuild. There was never looking-down on German culture and scientific achievement - which is why so much American technological progress involved ex-nazi experts, as well as refugees and dissidents from before the war. That had nothing to do with a war. Racism is a fact of world history. They do. Many books have been written; many lectures delivered - it's not a secret. After taking it away? How does that make your history any nicer? I have no idea. Canadian prime ministers have apologized to the First Nations. Reparations are and territorial adjustments are on-going. Nothing new or unique about that, either. The more power a nations has wielded, the more wrongs it's done to more people. Little, poorly armed countries can remain neutral (and take material advantage of their neutrality) if their geographic location permits, or they can be victims, or they can be protectorates. If their population is monochromatic and monoethnic, it's easy to maintain racial harmony is easy to feel superior to ethnically diverse countries and their internal struggles.

Exactly that. Legends do not die; they are enhanced, ennobled and enlarged, once they're no longer around to embarrass their admirers. Do your legendary outlaws have a cult following? Songs, I know about. But do kids dress like them, strut about talking tough and shoot tin cans, pretending they're cops - or sheriff's deputies, or Mexican army, or whatever the fantasy is around each particular action hero? That's what a lot of these armed vigilante types are doing: living their own movie. That's what little Kyle Rittenhouse was doing: being a star. That single photo tells his whole script.

Neither situation is a creation of the other; they are parts of the same fringe culture - a fringe that has been growing wider and denser over the last few decades. The gun laws that so many administrations have tried to change cannot be changed because of that culture; the threats of violence, attempted violence and actual violence (against public figures, medical personnel, media personalities, whistle-blowers, reformers, climate activists, people in the news for any reason) are facilitated by social media and enabled by easy access to deadly projectile weapons, that anyone can use from a safe distance. The situations don't create each other, but they do feed on each other.

Very, very far from it! That cult goes back to Davy Crockett and Dan'l Boone and has never entirely been out of the national consciousness. Moreover, there seem to have been almost as many such folk heroes on the wrong side of the law as on the right . That's why the pudgy kid with the big gun is so popular with certain elements - and to another segment of society looks like the archetypal school shooter Regardless that the criminals were, in fact, quite un-Robin Hood-like and some of the lawmen were not much better then their adversaries and mass shooters actually come in all shapes, shades and ages. Pop cults are not deeply concerned with facts or reality; they're more about image.

Half of the second amendment. The first half of the second amendment is not applied, and neither is the constitutional responsibility of Congress to regulate militias, while the states totally abdicate theirs. Laws are drafted according various partial, partisan and selective readings of the Constitution, and the Supeme Court interprets them the same way. And the culture has always, from Frontier days, favoured the lone gunman. It's an American icon to which young boys aspire.

Retreat was the proximate subject. How far you would have to retreat with that gun to stop posing a threat or visibly end a confrontation. Intimidation was his overt purpose in bringing the weapon. Mass shooting might have been his underlying, unstated purpose. He said he meant to climb onto the roof a car showroom, which would have made a dandy position for a mass shooter - and he did actually shoot people. Which part of that is not relevant to how he was perceived at the time by the protestors who felt menaced?

Are you sure? I'd be shaking in boots! People milling about never protected one another from a mass shooting. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/22/fact-check-post-missing-context-ar-15-rifles-and-mass-shootings/7039204002/

How far is retreat even applicable, when carrying a weapon with a 600 yard range?

And their families. That's an aspect I forgot about. The defendant may be in custody, relatively safe, but any family members who come out to support them may be vulnerble to hostile action. These days, you can't rely on any degree of civil conduct.