Climate and Ecological Harshness: How Environment Shapes Hierarchy - Friday's Edition
How culture originated
Stand in a village north of the Arctic Circle in November. The sun barely rises. Temperatures drop to forty below. The reindeer must be moved to winter pasture. Fuel must be stockpiled. Food must be preserved and rationed to last until spring. Every household depends on every other household. A mistake in timing, a dispute that delays action, a family that fails to contribute, any of these can kill people.
Now stand on a Pacific island where breadfruit grows year-round, fish swim in the lagoon, and winter never comes. Harvest season is every day. Forget to fish today and fish tomorrow. The margin for error is wide. Cooperation helps, but is not mandatory. Disagreement does not starve anyone.
Daan van de Vliert, a psychologist studying climate’s effects on culture, found that harsh environments such as extreme cold, extreme heat, drought, flood, produce predictable cultural patterns. The mechanism is simple: when survival margins are thin, certain social structures keep people alive. Others get people killed.
What Counts as Harsh
Harshness is not just cold. It is any environment where resources are scarce, unpredictable, or require coordinated effort to obtain. Northern Russia is harsh. So is the Sahel. So are flood-prone river deltas and drought-prone highlands. Temperate climates with reliable rainfall and long growing seasons are not harsh. Survival there requires less coordination and tolerates more variation.
Van de Vliert’s research shows that the combination of climate demands and available resources matters. Harsh climates with wealth (Norway, Canada) develop differently than harsh climates with poverty (Mongolia, northern Russia). But both develop differently than mild climates.
Climate harshness shapes specific cultural patterns.
Power Distance
Harsh environments need someone in charge - high power distance. Decisions about when to move the herd, how to ration food, and who works which task cannot wait for consensus. Debate costs time. Time costs lives. Cultures in harsh climates develop clear hierarchies where leaders decide, and others follow.
Mild environments can afford to debate and question leaders - low power distance. If the decision is wrong, the cost is low. People can challenge authority, negotiate, and push back. Flatter structures work because survival does not depend on immediate obedience.
Uncertainty Avoidance
When the margin for error is thin, you do what worked before. People develop high uncertainty avoidance they take fewer risks. Experimentation is dangerous. A new technique for storing meat might fail. A new route to winter pasture might lead nowhere. Harsh-climate cultures develop strong preferences for proven methods, clear rules, and predictable routines. Innovation happens slowly and carefully.
Mild climates tolerate experimentation and allow for low uncertainty avoidance, more risk-taking. Try a new crop. Test a new approach. If it fails, you recover. Cultures in these environments show more comfort with ambiguity and more willingness to deviate from tradition.
Long-term Orientation
Winter is coming. This is not a metaphor in Siberia. It is a fact that organizes life for half the year. Harsh-climate cultures learn to sacrifice present comfort for future survival. You dry fish in summer because you will need them in January. You stockpile fuel in autumn. You plan. This is long-term orientation.
Mild climates reward present focus. Food is available now and will be available next week. Planning matters less because the future looks like the present. Immediate gratification carries fewer penalties. This is short-term orientation.
Harsh environments favor certain psychological types. Hornby’s North archetype, the leader who directs and decides, fills a necessary role. Someone must organize the group’s response to scarcity. The Blue archetype, the guardian who maintains proven practices, keeps the village from fatal experimentation. The South archetype, the worker who executes tasks reliably, does what survival requires without complaint.
These are not optional roles. The environment demands them.
Climate harshness explains hierarchy, risk avoidance, and long-term planning. The mechanism works where physical survival requires a coordinated response to environmental threat. Where it does not, other forces shape culture. Tomorrow’s synthesis examines how all four hypotheses interact and where the framework reaches its limits.
If you enjoyed this article, buy me a coffee!
Interestingly, Canada is a country extending north of the 49th parallel that respects individual choices much more than the US, and is more welcoming. We have a strong reaction against centralized authority. All 10 provinces and 3 territories have developed as quasi independent republics loosely bound together by a federal government. So, not much centralization and rigid authority there.
In Quebec, my province, any changes to laws need extensive consultations to be accepted. Top-down decisions generate antagonism and opposition. The government had to back down from a gas-powered electricity plant it had arbitrarily decided without consulting the population. A protest with 200,000 people in a city of 1.8 million at the time killed the project. We have hydroelectricity, no need to generate gas pollution.
In the US, areas with the most rigid mentalities, religious fanatism and intrusions in the personal life of others tend to be located in the south. This is where the highest concentration of political extremists and fanatics is.
I've long considered these questions of individualism accompanied by intolerance that are linked with the South of the United States, whereas northern US regions are more tolerant and inclusive, in comparison with even more acceptance and respect of differences in Canada, accompanied with more solidarity.
When the first French colonizers arrived in Canada, they were welcomed by people from the First Nations who actually saved their lives and helped them survive those terribly cold winters.
These French exiled were few. They also were rebels of the rigid French system, and this rebellious mentality against rigid centralized authority still informs our mentality today.
They didn't exterminate First Nations people, maybe because of their small number, but their rebellious and anti-hierarchic mentality certainly helped them ally and trade with First Nations people. Until 1825, French was amongst the four most spoken languages across the Great Plains of the US. Even today, there's still 10,000 French names of locations in the US, traces of that cooperative success.
I've always wondered if our present sense of solidarity and inclusion has been shaped by these experiences of collaboration for survival. It's clearly more difficult to survive alone in the cold, than in warmer locations, so more collaboration and mutual help is necessary, which favours generosity, tolerance and respect. Contrary to locations where one can more easily survive without support from neighbours, so mutual caring and cooperation are less necessary.
There's also the cultural influence of the Red Jackets the British Empire sent by the thousands, who exterminated innumerable Indigenous people in the future territory of the US. As everyone knows, their jackets were red so the enemy couldn't see if they were wounded and bleeding. Meaning they came there to fight and kill at the cost of their own life.
Even if climate and geography influence social organization and mentalities, human values and will have an even stronger influence.
This is what Canadians discovered with Trump's threats. Even if all provinces used to feel closer geographically with corresponding US regions south of them, we immediately realized that we have a much stronger sense of belonging east-west because of our shared values, despite all our differences and disagreements.
Risk taking and investment as a cultural thing can also take place if envy does not put down a few rich people.