I think you’re looking at it the wrong way - triggering the flight or fight response won’t make you able to fight or flight by itself. You have to practice the responses or they’re useless - detrimental even, like a deer in the headlights
Play is a way to exercise those instincts and practice responses, but in a safe way. We even creep into the danger zone a bit sometimes, but most people (and animals) keep the danger measured
Fear isn’t pain - it’s not meant to be an absolute deterrent. It makes us think twice and go into fight or flight mode to handle a challenge - it doesn’t discourage behaviors, it moderates them. Sometimes you do have to face off a rival, or need to take a risk for a reward. It releases endorphins if we come out of it better off
So it’s not weird that we are drawn to it - horror stories/movies/games trigger it artificially, but so does fighting each other or tests of courage
I don’t think life is rare, nor photosynthesis, but complex life might be. A planet needs to be really thriving with life for it to be worth it to go down the path to something like animals
But I think the bigger filter is much stranger.
Humans are a hive-like species. We’re not just social - we’re insanely interdependent, we don’t function on our own and yet we’ve ended up in this place where we (often) try to individually succeed, even at the cost to our community
We’re greedy enough to want the stars, yet interdependent enough we could only swarm over them in endless numbers
There’s many problems with the fermi “paradox”, but personally I think one of the largest is assuming all species would spread like a cancer blotting out the stars
A more individualistic and long lived species might instead be careful explorers, taking what they need and leaving little sign of their passage. A more communal species might be careful and control themselves to not destroy pointlessly. They might also feel no desire to contact other species
We’re just the right mix to want everything a star could give, and to want to find others at great energy cost