We quickly forget that not even 120 years ago it was common for kids to be helping their parents butcher chickens and have at least one of their siblings die of

We quickly forget that not even 120 years ago it was common for kids to be helping their parents butcher chickens and have at least one of their siblings die of a horrible disease. Humans are more robust to shock than our cozy modern world might have us think. It is, like you said,the non-stop barrage of horror that crushes people. I distinctly remember being a bit shocked when I was ~6-8 and my great-grandfather smacked the fish I'd just caught on the gunwales of our boat. sudden, violent, but I pretty quickly realized "well yeah, I guess you do have to kill the fish at some point". Though I did get messed up by a Discovery channel documentary about spontaneous human combustion when I was a kid. Mostly because I didn't get to finish it.