Is there any way to tell whether people living in previous eras back to prehistory were more or less scared/fearful of life/universe on average than we are? Is there a fear treadmill where we are at a fear homeostasis?
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Like cortisol levels in mummies or something? Though that one would show us as more chronically stressed. Fear of universe = frequency of moments of acute stress maybe. Lion chasing you, God’s cursing you, lightning, toothache...
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Joining a communal settlement is a form of this, though only representing fear on some dimensions (bandits, food scarcity, etc). Doubly so if there are e.g. ritual sacrifices. Otherwise, as Against the Grain argues, hard to see why they'd choose to live in a pathogen paradise
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To compare to now, you'd have to evaluate the relative risks - how much tolerance for what likelihood of disease versus what level of risk of starvation/pillaging by bandits/etc
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Are you looking for adjusted to reality or absolute? Because for most of that history like half of your kids and a tenth of your mothers died.


