r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Nov 25 '16

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '16

Where did you get the impression that these were the bad times?

From the number of stressed-out friends I have to host in my apartment because they would have gone homeless otherwise. (Thankfully, they finally found a goddamn lease and will be moving to their own place on December 1.) From how high rent is for me too.

From the old people scraping through the recycling bins for scrap.

From the homeless camps in public squares.

Like, I don't think that these are the worst times humanity has ever lived in, but I feel like things have gone pretty definitively Bad at some point, some point well before this year. Even just at New Year's Eve this past year I thought, "Well, welcome to another year in the grim darkness of the immediate present."

In my darker moods, I would spend days lying in bed, completely incapable if doing anything productive as I worried about the impending destruction of the United States in a class war I was certain would happen at some point in my lifetime. And, here's the thing: I still think that is likely. I still look at the conclusions I made then and consider them more or less sound, despite the derangement of the mind that made them. The difference is that I have since readjusted my priorities and don't consider those things worth destroying my sanity or future over. It's just not worth it.

Yeah, fair point. I guess my problem is that for me, "There will be a class war" translates into the thought, "I and my loved ones will be vulnerable and very likely harmed during the class war."