>>Look, it's all a competition. To have money. To have happiness. So much so that people get upset at the idea they might be unhappy. "No Way! Not me! I'm way happy!"
>>
>>This is because for someone reason its wrong to be sad, by today's ultra-competitive social norms.
>
>It's not about being 100% happy all the time. It's about having reasonable hope that one can achieve an improvement over whatever their state of affairs may currently be, if only they invest enough effort. For most of the people, that means a chance of having a job. Financial "industry" (funny to call them that, as if they are producing anything) took that away by forcing production out of 1st and 2nd world countries. It may be more profitable to the owners of those businesses, mostly because this is a way to evade taxes in both countries (and they somehow don't ever get called on the carbon footprint of the tankers that haul all that junk), but it's unprofitable to pretty much everybody else. So new small businesses can't just sprout as they used to do whenever markets changed; they need loans from the banks (ha!) to get started, and then they are not free to make decisions as they see fit - the bank makes them. So the banksters et al screw even what market would have remedied by itself.
>
>>This is VERY unhealthy. People competiting to be happy, going as far as asserting they are happy just so they aren't judged poorly by society even when they are not means they don't process sadness, and ultimately have no frame of reference for what happiness is.
>>
>>This leads to clinical depression. The number of people on anti-depressants out there is no fluke.
>
>No fluke at all - there's a big marketing money invested into convincing people they are depressed, all the way down to high school nurses who are peddling these antidepressants like street dealers, only overpriced (have a case in family history, managed to evade it by applying common sense and loud voice).
>
>Most that competition is a mirage created by various marketing campaigns... and fear of unemployment, see previous part.
>
>>The Super Bowl was on Sunday. As part of my semi-regular tradition, I fasted.
>
>So you have a tradition bound to a totally commercial event, to which you are paying attention (if not real money... but actually you do that too, if anything [made by any company owned by any conglomerate that owns a company whose products] you buy was advertised there).


I actually didn't catch any of the game, or the commercials.

I like you, Dragan, always been a good guy.

As its been mentioned, a lot of people are sensitive to these topics, and I sort of bash away at them without much concern for that sensitivity.

So I'm not trying to make anyone mad.

Maybe I can find a more lighthearted way to convey my feelings.