A lot of advice seem to be about avoiding worst case scenarios, especially the ones that tell you what not to do, which are useful of course, but the best things in Life come from just going for something wholeheartedly, without restraint or care in the world. Love is not safe. Freedom is not safe. Living consciously is not safe.
It makes some sense that the society we live in tends to have so many safeguarding mechanisms, because it only takes one problem for an interconnected fragile system to experience a failure. For instance:
Complex machines break down if one of their components break down, like one part of a car's engine, or a single error in a computer program, or one step in an assembly line, or one link in a supply chain. Because the world we live in is utterly dependent on those machines, it makes sense that the social infrastructure also has to find ways to remove problems from the bottom percentiles
People don't feel safe if they have recently heard about a tragic incident, and if they don't feel safe, they don't feel as compelled to take part in the usual consumer activities, and even their job. This is why terrorism works, and why public safety is so important for the system
Standardization is not just a practice in manufacturing, which allows parts of different machines to be modular, or in programming, but is also found with human beings, which is why institutions always have to homogenize people to fit its standards
It only takes one computer in a network to be infected for the whole to be potentially at risk. Obviously good IT security is about reducing that type of dependence if it is unnecessary, and preventing viruses from entering the network in the first place, but the point stands that strong connections also make transmission of viruses easier, whether computer viruses or physical ones
All of this to say that the dominant paradigm, and the structures downstream of it, is mainly concerned with maintaining itself through homogenization, rather than promoting excellence, which isn't particularly hard to understand why. Excellence is deviance, which is unpredictable, and so even though it can be celebrated after the results come in, very few (if any) aspects of our society actively promote the nurturing of excellence.
It is how it is, and there is no point in getting upset about it. Better focus on living rather than caring so much about what the vast majority of people think or do.