Evidence that we have been living in an increasingly risk-averse culture

When you know exactly how far away from homeless you are at any given moment it really doesn't exactly lead you to making risky moves

And the more people who feel that way the more it shapes culture as a whole

I've been there, both having been homeless and knowing how far from homeless I am at any given point

Without complete financial ruin, 6 weeks. Financial ruin embraced, 6 months to a year. Maybe a little longer if I'm careful.

“over the past 60 years the West has begun to shift away from the culture of progress, and towards one of caution, worry and risk-aversion, with economic growth slowing over the same period. The frequency of terms related to progress, improvement and the future has dropped by about 25 per cent since the 1960s, while those related to threats, risks and worries have become several times more common.”

I mean, when people are struggling to survive it’s hard to let yourself get excited about technology that will likely only benefit the most wealthy. All of the “easy” discoveries have been made. Anything else getting research funding is to further capitalism.

This is literally the GOP strategy. They're anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-education, and constantly push a message of fear and persecution. We're seeing the logical conclusion of that policy. The fact their anti-healthcare and proven wrong economic policies are also bad for people's health and financial stability is just the icing on top.
- What's GOP, if I may ask?
  
  Forgive my jadedness, I just get the feeling that maybe you're automatically assuming we're all in the USA and thus this GOP is a thing that we've heard of, and that this situation (which of course affects us all across the western world) is somehow caused by GOP, suggesting that the USA are somehow in charge of us all, and that they have much deeper control and influence in our nations than they actually do.
  
  I know, that's a pretty cynical assumption, I'm jaded, and shouldn't just assume you're talking about the USA. Maybe GOP is a German thing, or Canadian, or Irish?
By no means do I want to dismiss the socioeconomic issues that you’re hilighting - in fact, I agree on those points. But I think this is more about the pervasive philosophy of risk avoidance that’s been created by letting lawyers, financiers, and business types run everything, instead of anthropologists, sociologists, and engineers.
over the past 60 years the West

I reckon the writer is saying this about the West because that's the only data he had access to. And, that this techno-pessimism should be a worldwide phenomena.

On the other hand, I wonder whether other cultures, apart from the West, have adopted a similar risk averse mindset. I mean, "the Haves" (and not the Have- Nots) are the only ones prone to be afraid to loose their accumulated wealth & lifestyle. But probably other affluent groups in the Non- Western world, might have adopted similar tendencies.

Or, they might have not. And this risk averse mindset, is exclusively a Western post-industrial cultural element. It would be very interesting to find out what the cultural & regional differences actually are world-wide.
Corporations don't invent things, people do, as individuals or small groups. Unfortunately, they usually do it at work

You can just make a thing at home. The more time, freedom, and resources you start with, the more likely you succeed

And people do, all the time. There's so many amazing things that aren't profitable to mass produce, but you can do on your own

How about awareness that climate change will ruin us all.

It checks out that the peak of optimism in your graph is around the 80's and 90's. We weren't just "optimistic" in the 90's. We were delusional. We were ignoring problems instead of solving them

The big world ending fear of the second half of the 20th century was nuclear holocaust, which suddenly felt a lot less likely with Gorbachev and the end of the USSR. The next dire thing that popped up was the hole in the ozone layer, which the world actually acted on and had stabilized by the late 90s. It wasn't until the 00s that global warming entered people's awareness. So I don't know I'd describe it as "delusion" to feel good in the late 80s to 90s when the major problems that people were aware of were legitimately getting better.
- I remember this is exactly what it felt like. Yes there were some things to solve, but in the end it will all work out. Read Fukuyama if you want a taste of what it was like. We beat communism, famine will be solved, no more wars, everything will be fine because of economic and political stability and technological progress forever. Any crisis is just a bump on the road, never a regression
  
  That was the thinking in the 90's
- Global warming, climate change, has been known to become an issue since somewhere in the 1890's, iirc.
  
  I'll agree that the general public cannot really be blamed here, especially how information was available back then (basically nobody really was in the internet until end 1990, and even then this type of information wasn't widely available yet) but humanity as a whole really fucked up badly on this one.
  
  We've known for well over a century, yet even today there are "skeptics", be they either idiots or paid shills, that deny global warming is a thing and even those that are not skeptical don't seem to worry too much.
  
  Politicians still are more worried about their local economies that must expand and keep expanding infinitely, somehow, and spend weeks arguing how bad we're willing to let it become before taking actual real steps, ignoring that we might be standing on the edge of a cliff here.
  
  We've been pumping extra CO2 into the atmosphere for a good two centuries, receiving useful energy that we used to shape our world as it is today. That extra CO2 has been partially taken up by oceans, acidifying them in the process, and some has been taken up by the rest of nature, but most CO2 is right there in our atmosphere.
  
  Wanna get rid of it? You'll have to spend pretty much that same about of energy that you got (adding in loses, I'd even argue twice or tripple) from burning CO2 for those two centuries to get that CO2 out again. Effectively this means that (adding in the losses) if we double our energy production today, and have ALL of it be wind, solar, or nuclear, and counting for other CO2 sources we can't really stop (electrical airplanes likely will never happen) we'd still be spending 50% of our energy budget for the next century or two to get that done. I'm being generous here, it likely will be more than that.
  
  This is still ignoring pretty details like 'how to do this efficiently" and what will we do to stave off global catastrophe within the next two decades.
  
  Like it or not but humanity is going to have to pay the bill for the party is had, or die.
  
  Meanwhile, politicians are nowhere near about talking about that, they're only talking about how long they want to continue the current path towards destruction because local economies and reelections and whatnot
  
  It's not that the common citizen is delusional, as that they are badly educated about the sheer scope of the problem, if they would be, the world would revolt. So far people know there is a thing called climate change and it will have weird consequences that they do y really understand but they trust their politicians to solve it.
  
  It's not being solved, we're still actively making things worse and arguing on if we really should switch to a non CO2 energy economy THAT fast...
  
  Sorry, this may behave shifted into a rant, perhaps, but I'm tired and angry with the world for being led by anti-scientific scum that will end the world for us so that they can still enjoy another day on their yacht.
I feel every era had its "boogey man" issue. I doubt there was ever an era of "nothing to worry about"
- Understandable to think this. Maybe we did come really close to some of those disasters, such as nuclear war. It's just survivors bias to think that it wasn't civilization ending danger we were in back then.
  
  I hope we learn from that and steer clear of the danger next time, rather than think it'll be alright because nobody happened to actually press the red button back then so I guess we worried about nothing
They were also high as fuck on coke back then. All we got is damn fent. Of course they were peppier and riskier.
Climate change is bad but it's not an asteroid impact or super volcano eruption bad. It will not "ruin us all" and no credible scientist is claiming it would. Uneducated fear mongering like this is what causes extreme anxiety to people that don't know any better.
- You're wrong. Scientific consensus is that this will be catastrophic. We're still emitting more greenhouse gases year over year, and the rate at which global warming is happening is still increasing year over year. Anyone who says this will stop at 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees, 3 degrees, whatever, they're all wrong because no slowdown is happening at all. It's wishful thinking. Climate predictions are being broken all the time, never in a good way. And that's not taking into account any tipping points that suddenly speed up climate change, such as melting ice releasing trapped methane.
  
  There is no reason to say it won't be that bad. It will

This makes sense if you think of “progress” since WWII, overall peoples’ lives and standard of living improved because of technology and progress in other areas.

Today, we don’t see things like politics as being able to “progress”. The thought of technology progressing further at an exponential rate is scary because we don’t understand it and there could be some real consequences.

And of course, the ones who control said technology like AI are the billionaires who control so many other things and have bunkers in New Zealand or what have you for when it all goes to shit - largely because of their bad decisions that got us here in the first place.

So yeah…there was a time when “the future” was exciting. Now it’s just terrifying because it doesn’t seem like there is any practical way to avoid whatever bad thing awaits us. And those who truly could make a difference have noped the fuck out and decided that we should just all go to Mars instead of trying to improve things here….those who can afford the ticket, of course.

Don't worry, rich people are not going to live a good life on Mars while we suffer on a borken earth. It doesn't matter how much we fuck up the Earth, it will still be a paradise compared to Mars.
Imagine Saudi Arabia in 10 + years.

With all the weapons that they have also purchased from USA, with all the mutual agreements.

Them being a non human right country, which had abused its own powers. The alliance that it had formed with Iran and China, despite their crimes towards human rights, just as well. We're in for a hell of a future to deal with, after biden flies away with his golden parachute that is - probably in a far far away land.

And trump supporters lunatics are going to increasingly think that trump is the solution.

To hell with them all. And the grand court; what's it going to do ? Cave in to the masses demands ? It's a great feat of them, all on its own, to be complicit to all the things that has transpired thus far in the years we have endured without as much voicing their opposition to all of that which is sought to be immoral and unethical by all standards of maintaining human-rights.
- Take your pills man

I totally agree with that conceptual knot: people who live precarious lives aren't going to make any risky moves because they live drenched in anxiety of ending down on the street. And it's patent that every advance in technology will benefit an handful of mega rich, and the trickle down economy was a bull****. (Very interesting about this is Varoufakis and his concept of techno feudalism). Now, having said that: the only answer is political, the governments must build consistent safety nets to allow the growth of middle class, alleviate them the angst of turning into an army of homeless, so that when the basic needs are met: a house, cures and food, one can concentrate about how to plan and thrive in the future. The only method is taxing the rich, the tragicomically rich. https://digg.com/2020/this-scrolling-visualization-of-jeff-bezos-wealth-is-breaking-our-brains

A digg link. Have I time traveled?
- All this has happened before and will happen again.
Politicians don't give a fuck about the middle class though. To get rich after holding public office, you need to get in bed with the currently rich

Even if they are not completely corrupt: it's easier to talk to a couple of mega corp CEOs instead of those of thousands of small companies (who employ the most people in total). So policy will always favor large corps. And that's where the obscenely rich are.
- Until people won't vote a socialist party things will go the way you've described. People can't childishly complain about politicians when they have voted them. In America, during the elections, a meager minority go to vote. Until people won't become politically active, why should things change?

That's normal. Every culture goes through the usual arc:

One for all and all for one.
What's in it for me
Fk you I got mine
KO

It goes from a lot of solidarity as the culture just broke free of the previous ruler. Over time sentiments change and become more individualistic until the entire thing becomes very top heavy. Eventually some external force (economy, war, climate and usually a combination of those) topples the whole thing over. Some parts break away and start the process over again.

I don't know, I think a lot of modern life things have broken the capacity/effectiveness for solidarity in a lot of ways. Infrastructure, cost-of-living, surveillance state/police brutality, corporate money/efforts, underhanded politics etc. The worst part is that wins were made in the past but were undone systemically... and without fixing the broken political system first (if that even happens), some things won't change for generations.

At least that's how I feel as a broke shut-in in semi-rural USA... I'm just stuck.
- lot of modern life things have broken the capacity/effectiveness for solidarity
  
  It's not just modern life. It's a recurring theme throughout history where nobility, priests, kings or chieftains got a bit too greedy to refused to pay for upkeep and don't want to change the system until the system fell apart. It's the same for politicians and businesses.
  
  some things won’t change for generations.
  
  Like it's said: “Gradually, then suddenly.” China invading Taiwan can be such a trigger for things to go suddenly but nobody can predict how things will go.

I was reminded of one of my favourite paintings: 'Young Woman on her Deathbed.' There’s a striking contrast between the opulence of the bed and her physical deterioration. While she lies amidst luxury, her life ebbs away in her youth. This image serves as a metaphor for our civilisation

The only information I can see says she's dead in the painting:

The first is in the very originality of its subject: the portrait of a dead young woman. A short text in Latin found in the top right-hand corner on the back of the picture even specifies that it is the portrait of a young woman who died at 25 years of age, and that is was painted two hours after her death in 1621

Source.

Following the metaphor, is civilization already dead too but some of us just don't know it yet while we're being painted in a much less opulent existence?

Also, More risk! More Risk!

Why take risks when there is literally no reward? Are you serious

I think risks are a lot higher generally now, just in everday life.

Back 20 years ago people were a lot more understanding and had a lot more tolerance for things.

Now everyone is looking to get offended or make a big deal about stuff. That mentality has affected everything. The risks are higher which makes the entry higher and deflection from the status quo dangerous.

People feel on guard just with talking. That sort of mentality will bleed into everything.

https://genius.com/Howard-zinn-chapter-5-a-kind-of-revolution-annotated Read this chapter turns out to be always useful

Dear Nitwit,

A reduced faith in science might, hear me out here, ••might•• have something to do with science, ya know, killing the planet and what not. You wanna get some faith back? Maybe apply these new technologies to human happiness, or even, who knows human survival.

One more thing, nimrod. The real risk averse culture? It ain't your unwashed "zero-sum thinking Millennials" No, it's your hyper capitalist who's rigged the system to the point where taking financial risk is erased by government bailouts. They're the ones who want to eliminate risk.

And it's that, plus their increased control of what is and is not researched in practised science that leads to our dismay. See above: "planet dying" Imagine something like pencillin, developed entirely within an academic risky environment, getting made today.

There's risk in true critical thinking, instead of lazy "Kids Today" hand-wringing. So, in future, take a fucking risk.