That assumption is as old as time. Whether true of false Bret Devereaux did an analysis on it and it made for an interesting read: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

As far as we can tell, historically your assumption is wrong. Hard times do not really breed hard people it's a myth that comes from the antiquity and was used by philosophers and elites to link the moral corruption of a people with its inevitable downfall.

That was a weird read.

For instance:

> Under the assumptions of our Fremen Mirage, we ought to expect farming societies to be frequently overtaken and subjugated by their non-farming neighbors

Isn’t it basically the Vikings crushing their neighboors to get fertile territories ? That’s also France’s whole history, getting overrun in waves of invasions, backing up what he calls the “mirage” that is supposed to get debunked.

PS: in economic terms the counterpoint to his theory would be the resource curse, so it’s not a foreign to us concept either

I think this sentence taken out of context gives it a completely different meaning. Farmers were being killed by the Vikings for sure, but France the farming society was never under existential threat from the Vikings.

Sure, yet in the blog's context, arguing wether there are 100% pillaging societies that never had farmers nor developed land under their control is also an argument I feel nobody is making (that's also not the argument made in the parent posts)

Pirates would be the closest thing that comes to my mind, but it's more an economic activity inside a society than a separate culture.

The Vikings were themselves a farming society. So this has nothing to do with the postulate that non-farming societies would overrun farming societies -- I'd look for a different example.

It depends on what you call a 'farming society'. If it's about where their priorities lies, Vikings are not a farming society. They valued fertile lands and resources, and expanded where farming would be better, but that doesn't make them primary farmers until they fully settle and stop invading neighbors.

The same way I do chores, but I'm not a house maid (until perhaps I quit my job)

As far as I know, Scandinavia was absolutely a farming society to the same extent England and France were. It's not like they all up and went a-viking: the people that did were a small percentage of the population, and this is to be viewed as equivalent as Rome sending the army (a small percentage of Rome's population) to conquer Gaul. They aren't suddenly considered less of a farming society when they do this. It's just how farming societies fight each other.

This form of selection bias is extremely common. An ethnic group and their neighbors rarely meet, if they do, then one side is a military force on an expedition which leads to a characterization of the ethnic group being violent.

Examples: Vikings, Barbarians, Huns, ...

The gaining of strength through adversity and its inverse of atrophy can be found in countless places throughout nature, biology, and human history. There's nothing mythical about that.

Take a cat that has lived an easy life indoors its whole life and put it outside.

How long do you think that cat will survive outdoors compared to a cat who has lived outside its whole life?

It’s not about being pampered or shielded from the world. There is a difference between a) being challenged, being put into competitive environments, and having access to a wide range of experiences and b) having negative childhood events or trauma.

You are moving the goalpost. The whole comment thread is about how humans that had a harder upbringing could be more resilient to mental breakdown for long-term interplanetary colonization. A cat would not be a relevant organism to study to answer this question.

Hard times may not make strong men, but it's certain that weak men will make hard times.