If you think there are very long term existential threats we can’t protect against without massive technological advances, or if there might be existential threats we don’t know about yet, you probably don’t want a relatively static society regardless of how internally stable and comfortable it seems to be. We probably need to up our game a lot to even be safe from existential threats we know about, like asteroid/comet impacts. And what about supernovae? And what about stuff that might be even less frequent that we don’t even know about?

I guess what I’m saying is that optimizing for stability and comfort almost certainly is at odds with optimizing for longevity. Unless we eventually have some good reason to think that we’ve discovered all the long-term existential threats and are protected against them.

I won't stand in your way if you want to live in a commune in the woods foraging for roots and berries. It's your life so do what you want with it. I prefer living in a heated house with modern amenities like smokeless lighting and clean drinking water.

I'm talking about future mass extinctions. The hard fact of life on Earth is that species die, we've had several mass extinctions (defined as >75% of species going extinct) but there is always a background extinction rate. That background rate is conservatively estimated to be 130 vertebrate species every 100 years. The reason people are saying we are at the beginning of another mass extinction event caused by human activity is because we have apparently accelerated that rate. I say we are at the beginning because as it stands about 1% to 2% of vertebrate animals that were present throughout human history have now gone extinct. We have a fair ways to go before we hit mass extinction levels but there are a significant number of species that are threatened or endangered. The confounding issue is that we are studying this problem and also have been mitigating it for at least 50 years if not longer if you count less organized attempts at conservation.

Personally, I don't think we are going to continue to increase the rate of extinction as long as we continue to modernize the rest of the world. As people are lifted out of poverty they have more time to spend worrying about their environment and the animals that inhabit it. The best thing we can do is to make sure that no one on Earth lives in poverty that requires them to cut down and burn wood for fuel and heat, make sure they have fertilizer so they can get the best crop yields out of limited land without having to slash and burn wildlands, have access to refrigeration so they don't waste l3% or more of the food they grow, and have proper infrastructure so they can manage their waste water and garbage disposal without polluting natural water ways and the land surrounding urban centers.