Bringing this back to the origin of this thread.

Emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, stress, even grief and greed are emotions felt by most mammals and are due to infusions or the lack thereof of serotonin, adrenaline, dopamine and other nerve acting chemicals.

The major difference between animals and humans on this issue is the human's ability to be self aware of these effects and to manipulate them. In all ancient cultures and many modern ones this is done through religion.

Meditation, confession, ritual, putting your faith and worries on a higher power are all more or less proven ways to decrease adrenaline and increase serotonin.

Is civilized man only a superior brain with a greater degree of control of his endocrine system? Amos would certainly disagree. In fact I don't fully agree with that myself. But it is an illustrative paradigm and it does explain most things.