> People broadly are short term thinkers.

I wonder how much of that is "nature vs. nurture"?

Like the Tolkienesque elves in fantasy worlds, would humans be more chill too if our natural lifespans were counted in centuries instead of decades?

Or is it the pace of society, our civilization, that always keeps us on edge?

I mean I'm not sure if we're born with a biological sense of mortality, an hourglass of doom encoded into our genes..

What if everybody had 4 days of work per week, guaranteed vacation time every few months, kids didn't have to wake up at 7/8 in the morning every day, and progress was measured biennially, e.g. 2 years between school grades/exams, and economic performance was also reviewed in 2 year periods, and so on, could we as a species mellow the fuck out?

I've wondered about this a lot, and I think it's genetic and optimized for survival in general.

Dogs barely set food aside; they prefer gorging, which is a good survival technique when your food spoils and can be stolen.

Bees, at the other end of the spectrum, spend their lives storing food (or "canning", if you will - storing prepared food).

We first evolved in areas that were storage-adverse (Africa), and more recently many of us moved to areas with winters (both good and needful storage). I think "finish your meal, you might not get one tomorrow" is our baseline survival instinct; "Winter is coming!" is an afterthought, and might be more nurture-based behavior than the other.