[Serious] Gay men who lived through the HIV Epidemic of the 1980s, what was it like?

:) I'm glad you identified the problem with your argument, the part that's frustrating you so much. Here's the thing that might surprise you: human beings are not a rational species. Not as a species, not as individuals. Occasionally we act rationally despite ourselves. But we all, somewhere in our lives, believe things irrationally and act accordingly. In fact, the irrational things are the things we usually are most fervent about. Mind you, I'm talking about things that operate below the conscious level. The things that drive us without our realizing it. Those hidden motivations that we spend lots of time constructing logical rationalizations for. These motivations are largely irrational, because they derive from a part of our brain that is not equipped to deal with the world on complex terms. So fear drives some of us to roller-coasters in order to prove to ourselves that we're not afraid. It drives others to make the intangible, tangible, because man's worst, most foundation-shaking fear is of the unknown.

For most people daily life rarely triggers the primal instincts. But after 9/11 great numbers of ordinary people in America were seized by the fear that terrorists were coming for them next. On one level they knew this was irrational. On another, it was a genuinely-felt thing. They were sincerely convinced that they were going to die, not by random chance in an attack on something else, but in a direct attack targeting them. The rational part of them knew that was crazy. But they still acted, and reacted, in line with that fear. I watched someone I was close to go through it: she developed anxiety, panic attacks, fear of going outside... she knew it was irrational but it took months for the feelings to subside. Honestly, in the end I don't think they ever really did subside; she found another way to express them, targeting and eliminating other "uncertainties" in her life. That gave her a greater sense of control... but it came at great cost, the things she lost. Was she aware of any of that? I don't know, but I doubt it. She constructed complex conscious rationales that had nothing to do with her post-9/11 fears. Ultimately, where she couldn't explain some of her actions, she stopped trying to. And that's the kind of thing we all engage in. You and I included.

Rationality is not really a human trait.

/r/AskReddit Thread