Sciencegeek:

Not intending to disrespect your profession nor training, but from your statements, what you may be experiencing, related to Pete, is a perceptual set (top down processing) related to your job training and experience?

Good grief, do you think I am some kind of an insensitive twit? And in the end, what do we actually have but our experience to base our judgements upon? Training is merely a way of sharing insights gained from the experience of others.

So my response to your comment is this... I do not live in some isolated bubble...

in my 63 years on this planet I have known a great number of individuals from many different cultures and time spans including my own grandparents who were born in the 1880's. I have personal experience with prejudice, segregation, homophobia, stereotyping, poverty, the homeless street people, people with bipolar disorder, passive aggressive people and sexual predators. I have personally known murder victims and their killers. I have had to stand back and watch family members slowly kill themselves with alcohol. From all of my experiences, I have tried to learn from them and better understand what happened and why. The only real thing we can leave behind in this world is to have made it a little better for having been here... and if you don't understand why something happens, how can you hope to prevent it from happening again. Or at least how to deal with it.

I do not judge people by the color of their skin, their social or ethnic background or even their religion. I base my determinations on their actions... and posting to this thread is an action, the content of that action serves as the basis for my "judgement".

I did not make my statements rashly and gave my reasoning for them. You are free to make your own conclusions.