My take: life is always and everywhere relatively precarious. No matter how things change, things stay the same. There is always the relative predator, the relative prey, the the cast of secondary characters, and the grab bag of plot twists whether we are in a jungle, a suburb or a ghetto. Also typical is the way we adapt towards states of emotional normalization as best we can. The human adaptive range is pretty good. So it is always the worst of times and the best of times. Always precarious and always, eh, what it is….

Neanderthals seem to have used the same stone tools for 200k years without much change. That’s very stable. But I suspect they has as much day-to-day drama as we do. On the other hand, people adapt to life in some relative states of hell like Auschwitz.

Maybe I’m just too old-school, but the precarity framework seems a bit too fussy or self-absorbed.

PR