Hah. I have a friend like this and we find it hilarious. Literally every time a cryptocurrency or a meme stock blows up, he's shot himself in the face. Not for

Hah. I have a friend like this and we find it hilarious. Literally every time a cryptocurrency or a meme stock blows up, he's shot himself in the face. Not for nothing, he's also prone to talking about taking radical measures to protect his kids from climate change, and doesn't feel it's worth living if the climate warms up by 3ºC. He's one of my oldest and best friends, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about where this all comes from. His grandfather was an SS officer (and I'm a Jew- my grandparents, of course, were also Jews)... his father, a wonderful human being, and a serious anti-racist Austrian. Yet this form of obsession continues. Timothy Snyder makes some great remarks in "The Black Earth"- "There need not be any compelling reason for concern about life and death, as the Nazi example shows, only a momentary conviction that dramatic action is needed to preserve a way of life. [...] Perhaps the experience of unprecedented storms or relentless droughts will jar expectations about the security of basic resources and make Hitlerian politics more resonant. As Hitler demonstrated [...] humans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present." No one is immune from this kind of thought process, but all of us should be immunized by our socialization with one another. And rational investment (as opposed to irrational risk-taking) is a security token for society. The opposite is a bet against a rational future.