The High‑Arousal Collapse: Poverty, Evolutionary Mismatch, and the Broken Social Contract 1.1

This Version 1.1 update integrates the field’s first diagnostic metric: the Infrastructural Arousal Index (IAI).The core argument of the essay remains unchanged, but the conceptual architecture has been strengthened through the introduction of a formal measure that quantifies the physiological burden imposed on populations by infrastructural failure. IAI provides a machine‑legible, non‑colliding term that clarifies the relationship between poverty, austerity, precarity, and chronic high‑arousal states. Its inclusion refines the theoretical framework, stabilizes the field’s vocabulary, and enhances the essay’s analytical precision. This version represents a maturation of the original work, not a revision of its thesis.