You can find that same "Screw it. If I die, I die" attitude all throughout history.

Look at how people reacted to prevalent capital punishment back when it was widespread. There are accounts of child pickpockets in London plying their trade amongst audiences gathered to watch other child pickpockets being hanged. In Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast about capital punishment, he reads a letter written by a wealthy French woman describing how her friend did a decent job of not crying or screaming during her beheading for some trivial offense; the letter reads like the beheading was simply a casual affair. In various Roman and Greek historical accounts, people often treat their imminent executions as matter-of-fact chores. Cicero, Socrates, Regulus, and Agrippina come to mind; ditto early Christian martyrs (though they are least believed in an afterlife).

Look at how people treated warfare. For example, in the early gunpowder era there was a volunteer group in most armies called the forlorn hope whose job was to run straight at an entrenched enemy to make them fire their already loaded muskets and cannons. After the forlorn hope did their job as cannon fodder, the rest of the army would advance while the enemy reloaded and reorganized. What's surprising is that the forlorn hope, the name of which made clear how screwed its members were, was an all volunteer job yet frequently saw repeat members. There are letters from some of these repeat volunteers describing the absolute horrors of being in the forlorn hope and watching their friends in front and all around turn into red mist when hit with cannon fire or musket volleys. There were some soldiers who just didn't give a fuck whether they lived or died.

Look at the cold war nihilism, born from a common belief that the whole world was going up in mushroom clouds any day now. There are songs from the time poking fun at the inevitable doom. For examples: https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs and https://youtu.be/KXSUEU7ISfQ and https://youtu.be/8XPzICHxXoQ

And those are just off the top of my head. People in the past were much like us. Any time things got really bad, bad to the point where hope seemed a distant memory, people have been able to put on a "eh, fuck it" face and keep on trudging on autopilot.

I honestly think part of it is living in relative luxury. For past generations the threats we’re much more immediate. If you didn’t keep moving forward during the Great Depression death was a very real possibly not just abstract melancholy. We can live in our heads and be complacent while still getting our basic needs met.

It’s gets harder the further back you go. Did you ever read a historical biography and note how many children they lost to illness yet somehow kept going?

It was basically only the second half of the 20th century on (depending on demographic) that a large number of regular people experienced fairly dependable comfort and security.

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Wow I thought I was alone in my newfound nihilism. Glad I'm not!