Yes. It seems like there's a baseline tension in the U.S. from socioeconomic circumstances that doesn't allow for a long-term approach. It's like constantly being in survival mode, one happenstance from ruin (real or imagined).

As if the lower one's income, the closer one is to the heaping mass of natural inevitability: decay and death -- its gravity crushing.

> Its not zero-sum (if it were, the grand-scale effect would be neutral.)

I think I was referring to emotionally. There are so few great sources of positive emotion to tap into, that the zeitgeist is simply "take as much as you can for yourself, before it runs dry."

That in order to escape from "loss," you must create negative externalities and emotions -- no matter how small.

It feels cultural. There is no great basin of tradition and culture here; the positive emotions built off the backs of forefathers that sacrificed and endured negative emotion for the hope of a better tomorrow: missing.