The history of anti-Semitism in Germany, which obviously peaked in the Nazi era, and which included what would now be classed as hate speech, undoubtedly played a part in the events which lead to the Second World War. — S

Yet anti-semitism has been quite universal in Europe.

Russia has had it's pogroms and various countries have gone after the Jews in some way or another in history. Even in the Soviet Union to it's end being Jewish was considered as a separate 'nationality'. The cause for anti-Semitism to have such an awful result in Germany is due to, first and foremost, the hideous ideology of national socialism. And the rise of such minor extremist movement and Hitler is of course directly related to the defeat in WW1.

No argument here. Eliminating hate speech reduces the risks of war and bloodshed. — creativesoul

It's the matter how you eliminate it. Sometimes being confrontational isn't the best way as likely the agitators look for that confrontation and need it. They need that tribalism.

The best thing might not be always direct confrontation of simply jailing the person for hate speech when a country is peaceful and isn't falling the cliff. Far better is to give a better reasonable answer that shows just how crazy in the end the person is. That typically doesn't happen just by attacking those people who might listen the person. The best way to do this is with good political leadership: to give those who could fall to the hate-speech rhetoric better things to believe in or to be critical about.

Think of it with the totally different example of people arguing that the World is flat. Should they be fined for spreading humbug? No. Should they be publicly ridiculed? Likely not either, because some people would feel bad for them. I would argue that the best way would be just to educate people in school and make children see with their own eyes that the planet is indeed round. And that's it. No need to be afraid of the people that believe the World is flat. They aren't a sign that our society is falling for stupidity and giving up on science. Some people just love whacky conspiracies. Fine, the society or the belief in science won't collapse because of them.

Hate speech cultivates the conditions of/for war. — creativesoul

Just as well equipped, effective armed forces give the ability for politicians to go to war in distant places.

Yet to think that well equipped effective armed forces should then be banned is the wrong way to think about it. Africa has had poorly equipped small armed forces for a long time and that hasn't prevented genocidal wars of happening.

Switzerland or Sweden have had an army for quite some time and both countries have been in peace for a very long time. None of their neighbors are belligerent towards them. Yet to simply do away with armed forces wouldn't be a smart thing to do.

Reasons for conflicts are different from things that can make wars more deadly.

There are wars which were caused by hate speech. — creativesoul

Give an example.

Because what typically would be "hate speech" in this way would be just propaganda for the war, a tool used to sell the war.

Just an observation that conflicts don't emerge from the existence of hate speech.

Just like conflicts don't emerge from countries having armed forces.

If hate speech is accepted using freedom of speech, then you've licensed the groundwork(the means) for war and bloodshed. — creativesoul

Yet wars don't rise from the existence of hate speech. Hate speech or it's variants can be used in propaganda, yet the idea that hate speech being a reason for wars is silly.

Just look how many places the US has bombed without any hate speech against the people of those countries.

However, when we make the claim that something exists, it seems evident that we ought to be able to point to that entity, to define it. — Paralogism

Not really,

We might start with saying that a) Beijing is in China, b) Mumbai is in India and c) if there is a route from Beijing to Mumbai where there isn't third country or a sea between the two, there has to be a border between the two countries. That two countries don't agree where exactly this border goes is actually not uncommon in history, yet that doesn't at all refute the existence of the border. We simply will define an area to be disputed, hence there is no paradox. India isn't arguing that Beijing belongs to India and China doesn't hold that Mumbai is in China, hence there has to be a border.

Do notice that my counterargument can be found in mathematical logic too and these kind of problems have left mathematicians scratching their head also.

Yet, we've never heard of scientists stating that they discovered a life-form has come into existence in the past 100 years. — TheMadFool

Are really saying this in our time of genetics and cross-breed hybrids? Or imply that humans haven't bred animals and plants? Or impacted the globe by transporting animals and plants to places they weren't found before?

We as humans have made many technological break throughs over the past decades, but having us rely on such technology is simply dulling the human brain essentially making us idiotic people who think nothing of world issues or even issues in our own government. Is this wrong? — Lucielle Randall

Yes, it is wrong.

Especially the blaming the stupidity of people, or people getting stupid, as the reason for this.

People adapt to the environment and the society they live in. If that society with it's services, machines and science gives us the chance to have more leisure time, to live far longer than our forefathers and makes in general life more 'easy' compared to earlier, it surely doesn't make us more stupid. We just adapt to all those machines and opportunities and live with them. This idea (of technology dulling us down) is similar to thinking that later generations are more 'soft' than those before them because those before faced more peril and hardship in their times: something one might say and indeed has been said since Antiquity, but something that really doesn't hold to scrutiny.

We don't have learned traits that generations before of us had, but then on the other hand they didn't live in our times. Just take for example the people from the 'Age of Enlightement', the 18th Century: you really think the ordinary people from that time would be more intelligent than us? Really?

Below is a historical chart of the literacy rate in the UK, the lousy statistics we have from history about it:



It is safe to argue that people that are illiterate will have difficulties in understanding government or especially world issues as they simply aren't educated enough to know about the subjects. As subsistence farmers historical generations might be more used to farming than us, but we aren't like that simply because our environment isn't similar. Yet when the majority of people were illiterate, and went with burning witches and so on, one cannot say they were far more intelligent than us. Aggregate mental abilities of a population change very slowly, yet in the long run there has been change.

If you had in the 18th Century well known philosophers and intellectuals whose writings are still important, well, there are far more people now that can have a smart discussions on par with those intellectuals of that time.

my fervent hope is that it falls through, that Brexit is cancelled. — Wayfarer

Yes, there is the theoretical possibility of Brexit simply being cancelled. I would enjoy this outcome: all the fuss and holloring, all the political theatre and emotionality and ...nothing! :sweat: :grin:

All this time wasted away about nothing.

Actually Nigel Farage with his new UKIP 2.0 party would love that!

I thought May was the worst PM in living memory... — Michael

As an outsider, I think what is worse is the condition of the whole conservative party.

Talk about a train wreck planned and executed by the railroad engineers driving the train.

As you can see the distinction, inner vs outer beauty, highlights the mind-body dualism. — TheMadFool

I'm not so sure the hard core physicalist sees any mind-body dualism at all in this case.

He (typically he) just sees brains at work, genes, chemistry and so on creating an outcome that then is molded in interaction with other people so that we sometimes divide beauty to 'inner' and 'outer'. Typically to be cordial to the not so beautiful people.

Basically the typical physicalist just sees red when you mention the term 'mind-body dualism' and starting from there is on the defence and just thinks how to refute your claim...whatever it would be.

the Chinese citizenry are far more loyal, trusting, and accepting of the State than are HKers. — StreetlightX

Definately, but that's not the point.

A totalitarian one party cannot be sure of just how loyal and trusting the people are. It inherently cannot know just how much the people truly love it because it is a totalitarian entity, it doesn't accept opposition and there isn't a way to voice out critique any other way than people going to the barricades.

The Chinese Communists can surely pat themselves on their backs of the historical economic growth that China has enjoyed. They can now that there is genuine support for them, but they cannot be sure just how far that goes.

Not only “pinko-liberals”, but snobs and champagne socialists as well. It’s no strange wonder that the unmitigated consternation of antiTrumpism is magnified by the voices of celebrities, corporate public relations and coastal elites. All they have to do is turn on the television to have their biases confirmed. — NOS4A2

How you depict the Anti-Trump crowd is quite similar how the Anti-Bernie / Anti-AOC etc. camp could be described..just coming from another perspective.

This is the way tribalism spreads.

You see, at first you don't like some politician because of his or her agenda and views. At the second stage you feel disgust not only about the politician, but also at those who support publicly him or her in the media and the party the politician is a member of. And finally on the third stage of tribalism it is the voters who vote for the politician are the one's you start hating. And at that stage a republic starts to come apart because you aren't just angry at politicians, celebrities or the talking heads on TV, you are angry at your fellow citizens, your neighbors and even family members.

This rabbit hole you can go down to worse places: after this it's the vilification of the other, then the portrayal of the other being an enemy and the dehumanization of your fellow citizens.

The Hong Kong protests show quite clearly how Communist China will fail.

First and foremost, the Chinese leadership and the Chinese Communist Party is literally afraid of one thing: their own people.

And once the elite is truly fearful of it's own people, the society is basically incapable of truly developing. That failure will be quite detrimental in the long run. Communist China has a long history of this. Not just Tiananmen Square in 1989, but also earlier.

When the popular first Premier of the People's Republic of China and foreign minister Zhou En Lai died, Chinese people flocked to mourn En Lai. This didn't go well with Mao as the people seemed to be far too eager to mourn Zhou En Lai. Dictators have a natural obsession against any other person gaining popularity, even in death. Hence when actually quite spontaneously two million Chinese gathered in Tiananmen Square to remember Zhou En Lai, it was all too much for the officials and they stopped and 'crushed' the gathering now called the the Tiananmen Incident. For the outsider this sounds totally absurd: that officials attack people mourning the death of a party leader, but in the absurd Maoist China it made total sense. And going against protesters in Hong Kong is in line with history.

Trying to crush demonstrations in Hong Kong makes total sense for China now: enough time has gone since the United Kingdom handed over it's former colony to show the truthful face of the fascist regime. They are in a situation now that they don't need so much the West anymore as they did earlier.

Seriously speaking, Trump is one of the worst possible deal makers ever, but the perfect example how it doesn't matter at all as some Americans put on a pedestal and worship any person that has the balls to outright lie with ease about his awesome abilities and success. It simply doesn't matter that the person is full of bullshit. If the person is against what these people don't like, anything goes. The lies are totally OK when they anger the people who you hate.

Besides, the mantra of yelling out loud how astoundingly rich and successful one is has this mesmerizing effect on one part of the American crowd that takes these people with a narcissistic personality disorder as quasi-religious saints, victors of the American dream, and disregard totally the lies, because they simply are awed by the "balls" that these person have in their self-promotion. Anyone voicing the obvious facts that these people are liars and charlatans are simply seen as jealous 'un-American' pinko-liberals, who don't believe in the American dream.

So, what do the Brits here think about Boris extending the Parliamentary leave?

Bit of a Trump move, I'd say.

To tell you the truth, I somehow suspect that I do not _really_ understand the objection voiced by Wittgenstein in 3.333. — alcontali

Your honest modesty here has a grain of wisdom in it.

Wittgenstein's whole book is written in a style that seeks to be simple and short as possible, but really isn't at all. When you lack the simple examples of "what you are talking about", it really leaves huge areas for interpretation.

And obviously this issue wasn't so clear to Wittgenstein or to others. Once Wittgenstein met Alan Turing, who tried explain his findings. The two giants of intellect didn't understand each others points and the counter wasn't fruitful.

I think I have to disagree with that. Meaning the part where you say "the majority of those with power earned it by some method of exploitation".

There has been for quite some time an obsession with power and looking at everything through the lens of power, domination and exploitation. This narrative sells so well. Especially to young students.

Things like the practicality and usefulness of organization when it comes to huge societies isn't something that is at all tolerated by this "Power-play" crowd, who see "Master-slave" situations everywhere. Typically these people believe in their view of the World so much that they would be the worst kind of leaders you can find.

is indeed somehow circular, but that is the essence of recursion. It works absolutely fine. — alcontali

Recursion isn't the thing here and creates confusion, because we indeed use models with 'self reference' all the time. Still, with recursion we have a starting point, a base case, from which function then goes on. Yet this is a different issue from a far more simple issue that I think Wittgenstein is talking about. A function, a 1-to-1 mapping, is where each input has a single output and you have the function as a 'black box' in between to get from input to output. The function itself cannot be input as then it does open up the for paradoxes and the circularity that Wittgenstein opposes. Hopefully people understand here the difference between a recursive function that starts and evolves. And once you have that black swan there...



The standard argument against to this is typically that we can have working self-referring models, dynamic models or similar things, yet that is not the point: self reference opens the door to negative self reference. And with negative self reference you get all the troubles.

Like try to write an answer in this Forum that you don't write in this Forum. Such answers exist of course, answers one doesn't write, but naturally due to the negative self reference you cannot write such answers to this Forum. Yet self reference itself isn't the problem, as you surely can refer to what you have written earlier.

To model the economy as a machine is actually very bad and in the end harmful.

First of all, machine works the same way from when you put in on and shut it down. It follows a very precise and descripted procedure: the "cogs" of a machine are real cogs and fulfill their task until they wore out from use. To model an economy this is simply bad, especially if the limitations of the model isn't understood. Just few things that come to mind:

1. The Machine model oversimplifies a hugely complex system. The basic fact is that we seldom comprehend how complex an economy is and make totally unrealistic and wrong assumptions on how it works. We simply even don't agree on how it works, which would be totally ludicrous if we would have a machine in front of us. We also use definitions and describe economic phenomenon that we aren't at all in agreement what they actually are and how they happen. Just look discussions at this site about on "money" and for example "inflation".


2. The ever changing nature of the economy is lost. The machine model (or metaphor) shows a very static economy, where things don't change. Machines don't do this: a Wankel motor doesn't evolve into a 4-stroke engine if use it long enough.

3. The Machine model makes us think we can tinker with the economy like a machine. The idea that central planners called 'economists' are just as engineers and can fine tune their "machine" to give better performance is an absurd idea, but easily is accepted with the idea of the economy being the 'machine' of the society. Economics used as a tool of central planning has been shown again and again have disastrous results.

The reason why a function cannot be its own argument is that the sign for a function already contains the prototype of its argument, and it cannot contain itself.

I think this statement makes total sense. You will get circularity otherwise.

So if Denmark proposed buying Florida and demanded that that be discussed in the next meeting with the President, the appropriate response of the US would be what? "Sure, let's chat about it and see what happens"? Or if Trump had tweeted "That's absurd", you'd be criticising him? — Baden

Well, Denmark replied officially by it's representatives quite badly. You see, they acted as if this President wouldn't be tweeting brainfarts or simply joking around. As if this would be something genuinely coming from the United States with the support of it's Congress.

Actually trading Greenland for Florida would have been a great counter response! Anyone thinking that Denmark would be serious would be a total idiot, and obviously Trump could get the idea. Denmark could have easily used this bizarre incident to be in the limelight and to show that Denmark has humor.

Trump wants to horse around and the best response is to horse around back. The guy is just a celebrity bored with the official things the POTUS has to do.

And anyway, if he (Trump) now is serious and angry after the Danes said so badly to him, why not really consider clandestine support of the Greenland Independence Front I referred earlier? :razz:

Actually yes.

But the advice I gave on the previous page would really be contemplated in this White House for sure. If it only was first read in Fox News. And the best thing: it would really, really, REALLY upset those woke democrats! And all the people that hate Trump supporters, like the EU. Except the friends of Trump, who would understand that the US needs to protect the people of Greenland and any independent country can voluntary join the US. What else would the Trump campaign want?

So, is anyone here an American and interested in a job in the Trump administration as the 'special advisor for Greenland'?

G R E E N L A N D ! ! !

I would suggest to President Trump and fellow Americans the following:

First, have totally unknown armed people (calling themselves the Greenland Independence Front) seize every strategic point in Greenland and demand a referendum for the Indepence of Greenland. The armed personnel would be totally unknown: because they wouldn't have any insignia on them, so how can anybody know them? After this a referendum Greenland would quickly declare itself independent and as likely the evil colonialist Danes wouldn't like this, Independent Greenland would ask to join the United States. Then President Trump could admit them into the US of A. and protect the innocent people of Greenland from the ugly colonialist power of Denmark. To make everything nice for the people of Greenland, perhaps the US ought to give every citizen of Greenland two million dollars (that's just a puny 114 billion $) and free tickets to Disneyland Galaxy's End (I hear it hasn't been such a success) as a gesture of welcome.

Oh how historic it would be! And everybody would be OK with it!

What is your view ? — Amity

Just like with other giants of philosophy, we tend to forget their main points and likely judge them by today's standards.

Perhaps it's fitting here to say that Hegel himself said: every philosophy... belongs to its own time and is caught in that time's restriction.

I'm pessimistic and I'm sticking to it. — Bitter Crank

That may be so trendy and smart especially in a Philosophy forum, but is really the closest to the reality what the future will give us?

And btw. it's not only fracking, but also horizontal drilling has been a game changing technology. Yet this example isn't only about how technological advances make the luring and extremely popular calls for utter collapse of our society simply totally wrong predictions. It is an example of a happened crisis and what the 'collapse' really is like. Because Peak (conventional) Oil happened years ago. And Peak aggregate Oil can happen any year now. Might have happened alread.

So is a World of "Mad Max" chaos happening in the near future?

No.

We have already witnessed what this crisis and seen what it gave us: food riots and political instability in poor countries, a slowdown in the global economy. AND THEN one of the most hated phenomenons of today called market mechanism kicked in and demand dropped, stocks of reserves began to fill up and finally the price fell back from the three digit dollar prices.

Price of oil (brent crude?), several crises later:


In fact, nothing would be now a more welcomed boost for alternative energy resources to pick up even more ground than sudden increase in oil prices. And even without high oil prices renewable energy has made huge strides especially this decade.

It may popular to call for utter doom, an imminent collapse if urgently things aren't done. That's the politically correct discourse. Not perhaps the most realistic alternative that things might "suck" for a while, but life will go on and likely things be better than now. Yeah, human kind isn't right now making it's most important choices...

It is over for some people, and it will be over for more. I don't expect that our disaster will play out in one final cataclysm in Act V, scene 10 affecting everybody between South Africa and Finland, or between Tiera del Fuego and Nome (unless we get hit by a big meteorite). — Bitter Crank

And just for who? Just what are you talking about? Yes, the subsistence farmer will likely fade into history (good riddance!), except for the 'lifestyle' farmer that is so fascinated to grow plants (rather going to the supermarket). Otherwise, agricultural production is improving:



And notice this stat from China, the area of farmed land has basically stayed the same for many decades, but the production and yields have multiplied:

Wouldn't that tell us something?

By the time it reaches equilibrium, deaths=births, we will have further overshot the earth's carrying capacity. — Bitter Crank

Why do you think that this will be so? What is the argument? Similar to what was said in the 1970's that our civilization will collapse in the turn of the milennium and we will be out of resources because of our 'overshot'?

The whole idea of Earth's 'carrying capacity' being 'overshot' is extremely dubious... or simply extremely politically correct thing to say to 'wake up' people to 'do something' about our current problems we are facing.


Remember Hubbert's Peak Oil argument? Here is his forecast and the actual US production:


So let's just remember that globally "Peak Conventional Oil" happened eight years ago.

What has forestalled the dooms predicted by Malthus or Ehrlich are improvements in agriculture and sanitation -- nothing terribly complex. Both of those have limits: Once improvements that depend on large energy inputs have been fully implemented, more energy inputs won't result in continual increase. — Bitter Crank

Apart Malthus' argument being very simplistic, it naturally didn't take into consideration a lot of changes that have happened in the World. And you simply assume (out of somewhere?) that a limit has been reached ...now. Well, there a lot of possibility for improvement as in many places land, energy and resources aren't used as well as in Netherlands. If agriculture would be the same as in other countries as in Netherlands, then your argument would have some credence.

The argument that science & technology have improved our agriculture etc. yet now it is over is rather dubious too.

As to faith. What good is faith, and are you aware that our definition today bears almost no resemblance to what the word faith originally meant?

I do not mind the old definition but wrote this for todays definition.

Faith closes the mind. It is pure idol worship. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Believing in something is actually an choice. You don't have to believe that this planet exists, it's simply a fact. If you disagree with the existence of planet Earth, likely you have serious mental problems. Religions are about making yourself those choices, usually moral choices, and guiding their followers on how to be a good person. Accepting that the planet Earth exists isn't a moral choice.

Really ?
How can this be so - isn't Hegel the epitome of a philosopher's philosopher ?
It is an astonishing and controversial claim made by Magee — Amity

Astonishing and controversial claims is what our idiotic net driven public discourse craves for and will be the ones that are picked up (if written by unknown professor of management from some unknown university, who otherwise wouldn't be heard). Or it might be picked out of context.

Hence the claim isn't astonishing, but simply outright stupid and boring. Another point of view would be if the present we don't see anything important in Hegel's works or something equivalent.

Is god a coward? Why does god fear to show himself?

Our gods do not speak to us. Ever wonder why not? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

If he did, nobody wouldn't have to have any faith as the issue simply wouldn't be about faith and religion anymore.

And anyway, what the hell would he say to us?

And there's definitely a privilege to being part of the dominant sub-culture within a nation and that's still being male, white, straight, no tattoos etc. — Benkei

Being rich and especially being educated makes people privileged compared to others in our present society. Of course, it ought not to be any surprise that societies that try to be meritocracies, the outcome can be (and usually still is) deeply divided between those who are privileged (rich, educated, that are professionals) and those who are not. Would you have your job without higher education? I wouldn't if had not finished the gymnasium. And obviously wouldn't have two academic jobs without a Masters degree.

Yet one should notice that there is a huge difference between being in Netherlands or Finland compared to the US here and it's the issue of race, of being 'white'. In the US 73% are considered white. If we would divide the population in similar terms, about 84-85% of Netherlands and 98-99% of Finland would be 'white'. That's because the largest ethnic minority in both European nations are other Europeans, which are considered in the US 'white'. Add to that the problematic history.

Yet I would argue that the racial debate in the media is copied likely in the Netherlands as it is done here in Finland from the US. This happens because the media is quite global. It becomes then a bit strange especially here in a country where 98% - 99% are white and the state has no colonial history whatsoever to hear arguments that are straight from the US discourse.

Is it facism or communism? — Evil

As Deng Xiaoping said: "No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat."

I guess when a Communist accepts the capitalist system as a workhorse, you do end up with fascism.

Yet it is something else too: the fear of Democracy. That China could go the way of the Soviet Union, that democracy would lead not only the destruction of the power of the Communist Party, but also the disintegration of present day China. Tibet would go, Dzungaria from Xingjang would go. And what other place after that? That is the thinking of the Communist Party. The course was already decided in 1989 in Tiananmen Square and after.

And since you have after that the largest economic boom the World has seen, the Communist Party can indeed congratulate itself.

It hasn't come as a surprise.

As the Communist leadership grew more confident of it's own position, it is absolutely no wonder that it would show it's true totalitarian face. With Hong Kong it just has been decades in the making. Soon it's going to be a quarter of a Century that has gone from the time when the British handed Hong Kong to China. And today for China the West isn't as crucial as it was still in the 1990's for the re-engineering and economic transformation. China has gone a long way in the last 20 years, hence the Chinese Communists can show their true face.

After all, now with computers an Orwellian surveillance state is totally possible to create.

Why are so many people so quick to jump to a conspiracy theory? More than likely, Epstein simply committed suicide (and BTW, it's been reported that the suicide watch had stopped). What did the guy have to live for? It kinda seems the rational thing to do. — Relativist

I think Maw has said going full conspiracy theory.

It's still a hideously ugly scandal if Epstein committed suicide. Trump knows what to do: in a huge scandal, go and poke yourself the hornets nest even if it has fallen and the hornets are coming out angrily. Then you can say that every allegation or upcoming video is part of the democratic smear campaign. And they will come and believe you.

Race like gender or even nationality is a strong dividing factor how we categorize intentionally or unintentionally people. And since we do have and use these categorizations, it does have an effect.

. I am an individualist, I want people to be judged for their individual characteristics and NOT group identities, which I reject for the most part. — Judaka

This ought to be obvious, but seldom is. Actually, that addition of "I reject for the most part" is crucial. Because to say differences between groups people don't exist at all, or are only the invention of the mind of some people, isn't right either.

The Great Error in the concept of race is that some races are better than others, rather than there are some differences among the races. — Bitter Crank

And then there are differences inside one race. I think the taboo-stigma of the topic makes it quite difficult. Or the hypocrisy involved in it.

Fact is, race in this context was invented by Europeans, white people, as a way to put other people in their place, to dehumanize them so they could be exploited. — T Clark

Are you sure this was invented by Europeans? By this I mean the dehumanization of other people. I would consider racism an universal phenomenon and easily you can have the phenomenon appearing in older cultures. As far as I remember ancient history, people were extremely xenophobic. And being afraid of the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Persians or the Romans would be a sound thing if you would be living next to them, actually.

To claim it doesn't exist would be funny except for the fact that it's not funny at all. — T Clark

What I think is that we are starting lose the ability to talk about the issue openly.

About America becoming majority brown... Maybe not. A lot of the Mexicans count themselves as white. Two reasons, probably. A), they read the newspaper and it doesn't take long to figure out who has an advantage--POC or WP, and B), quite a few Mexicans (and other South Americans) either are white (they are relatively recent emigrants from Europe) or they have many European ancestors. You know, like the many children and grand children of all the Nazis who settled down in South America. Eichmann, Mengele, Hitler, et al. — Bitter Crank

Ah yes, why don't I also start giving as the example of white people that colonized America, the Nazis. Very fitting to the times to link "white" with "nazis". Very woke from you, Bitter C. No need to mention that the countries were European colonies that similarly were populated by European immigration just like some former British colonies up north. And that the basic social problem is between these the native Indian population and those with European heritage.

One clear example of the still alive Anglo-American racist tendencies is the categorization of the "Latino" and the reference to the "Non-Hispanic White" which naturally creates a class of "Hispanic Whites" which is simply not mentioned. (Of course the whole insistence of race and the use of racial categorizations in the first place is a more clearer example.)

Somehow it is totally out of question that the most logical divide (if division of this kind can be logical at all) of people in the Americas would be a) Native Americans, b) European Settlers and c) Settlers from other continents, which include the slaves from Africa. Nope, totally impossible for people in the US. You see, the offspring of Italian/German/Finnish emigrants who came to the British colonies (or former colonies) are considered "white", but the offspring of Italian/German/Finnish emigrants to the ex-Spanish/Portuguese colonies are "latinos". Doesn't matter if they have not mixed at all with other groups.

And when the ludicrous logic is indeed noticed, like that actually many Argentinians are of European descent, the term "Latino" isn't used anymore, immediately a newer classification (yes, racists just love classifications!) has to be created with the "Non-Hispanic White". So now we have again a divide were one group of Americans with pure Italian/German/Finnish heritage are separated from another group of Americans with pure Italian/German/Finnish by the language they speak in the new World. Typically a division by the language spoken would be an ethnicity issue, not a racial issue, but as I said, racism is alive and strong in one country.

But this actually is totally in line with the illogical way racists define things. So called "White" people who are racist are naturally racist to others that at first would be thought to be "white". Racists in Europe do not at all use a term like "Caucasian" and only later have started to mimick the American racist rhetoric, which has this hilarious idea of universal "whiteness". Just start from thinking how many groups of now considered "white" people in the US were untermenschen in the eyes of the Third Reich. But of course, something built of xenophobia, fear and hatred of the other and the hubris of oneself doesn't have to be logical.

Humans adapt easily to any kind of situation.

Feelings are typically the most strongest when you don't have any kind of experience of them before and they are totally new. Hence first love is typically something that people do remember. The adaption to any new situation simply makes us a bit 'numb'. So you can adapt to utter misery, imprisonment, bad health or being rich and in a powerful position or living happily with a partner who is far beyond your earlier fantasies, etc. At first these things can be very emotional, positively or negatively.

True, "black" is not always a certain adjective. A woman who came from 100% Northern European stock got away with calling herself black, and even became head of her local NAACP. — Bitter Crank

What is 100% Northern European? A blue eyed blonde haired Sami person, who talks about being other than a white? There's a real Northern.

The whole bullshit starts with questionnaires having that line of race/ethnicity. Here we don't have them. There is a line typically if your mother tongue is Finnish or Swedish, which would in some way give away your ethnicity. Which itself is even a bigger stupidity when taking to the extreme.

So... screw race. — Bitter Crank

It ought to be so, but nope. Intersectionality just pushes these silly things to a new level. Actually to deny the existence of race seems to be offensive nowdays. So I assume my thinking is very incorrect here.

My wife is Mexican. I always tease her, especially in summer, that my skin is darker than hers.

Focusing on race is the problem to begin with, and will always arrive at racist conclusions. — NOS4A2

This is what I feel also, but I've given up on the whole debate around it being logical. And likely know that someone will attack my view.