"If you're a baboon, and you're stressed, it's not because a lion is chasing you. It's because some other baboon has been working really hard to make you miserable."

Robert Sapolsky

Yes, that’s a Robert Sapolsky gem — he studies stress in primates and figured out that baboons, like us, don’t just get stressed by life-or-death stuff (like lions or unpaid bills). No, they spend their downtime bullying each other, gossiping, and generally making each other’s lives awful for no reason at all. Sound familiar?

So the quote’s about how most of our stress comes not from actual danger, but from social nonsense — hierarchy, status, petty rivalries, office politics, and, of course, other baboons (you know, people).

GPT