[rakejake]

People are products of their environment. There are people with mettle/grit and then people who are more sensitive to perturbations of fate. The society they live in sets the base level of grittiness that you can expect any average person to be equipped with.

Dahl here is a very hardy man who approaches these issues in a very practical and logical way. But this was also in the post WW2 era where millions died, people lost their families and possessions, and had to start their life anew. It was a period of rebuilding after the devastation of war and hard times build hard people.

Today, all this feels like too much because we were all mostly born and brought up in wealth and prosperity. We have not seen any real hard times and there is no need for mettle.