Might have eased

F. Scott Fitzgerald thought that the test of first-rate intelligence was the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still function. The eons shaped our brains in the opposite direction. Confirmation bias is a term for the way the mind systematically avoids confronting contradiction. It does this by overvaluing evidence that confirms what we already think or feel and undervaluing or simply disregarding evidence that refutes it.

Testimony from members of the Crow tribe about the destruction of their culture provides an extreme and tragic example of this. A man named Plenty Coups reported that “when the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground and they could not lift them up again. After thisnothing happened.” He was not alone in describing the depth of despair as the end of history. “Nothing happened after that,” another Crow warrior said. “We just lived.” The emotion was so strong that the brain rejected evidence of the continued existence of normal, everyday life that might have eased it.

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“that might have eased it.” means “that might have eased the emotion if the brain did not reject the evidence”?