1. We are on version 30. By this time emacs should have come with some better defaults. It's 2023, not 1960 people.
2. Why are 90% of emacs frameworks trying to make it into vi?? I choose emacs, if I wanted vi-ish I would have used vi from the beginning
A lot of people want the power of emacs without the RSI that so often goes with it :)
Idk, I can navigate in Emacs using native bindings, though I like vi modal editing more, it just feels more natural when working with text. Also I can't say about 90%, but in Doom Emacs you can easily switch between native and vi bindings (even on the fly, via the keyboard chord), it's not forced in any way.
(I just checked - you can disable evil mode in spacemacs too).