Maybe it's not risk-aversion, but an adjacent concept I'll call stifled freedom of action.
It's very hard to just do stuff nowadays. For example, building something on your land, selling stuff to other humans, marrying someone, immigrating somewhere, renewing your id, paying your taxes.
The immense burden of paperwork and the knowledge required to navigate it all, and the paralysis that comes from just being aware of the burden, is not trivial.
The individual really ought to stay in their lane and fit into the template that's expected of them by the systems they are subject to.
It legitimately wasn't like this a century ago. We were oppressed by nature (disease, material poverty), but in many real ways we had more freedom of action to just do life stuff.
I think it is fairly shortsighted to think that modern society is approaching "steady state" when we are on the "stick" part of the hockey stick curve of progress.
There are plenty of risks to take today (with things like gene editing - which does not mean "monoculture") and there will be plenty of trajectory-changing risks to take tomorrow.
It's very hard to just do stuff nowadays. For example, building something on your land, selling stuff to other humans, marrying someone, immigrating somewhere, renewing your id, paying your taxes.
The immense burden of paperwork and the knowledge required to navigate it all, and the paralysis that comes from just being aware of the burden, is not trivial.
The individual really ought to stay in their lane and fit into the template that's expected of them by the systems they are subject to.
It legitimately wasn't like this a century ago. We were oppressed by nature (disease, material poverty), but in many real ways we had more freedom of action to just do life stuff.