Current cultures in threatening, comforting, and challenging ecologies

Abstract

Places of residence have multiple, yet largely unintegrated, cultural characteristics. Here I make a distinction between human environments that offer demanding winters or summers together with collective poverty (threatening ecologies), undemanding temperate climates irrespective of income per head (comforting ecologies), and demanding winters or summers together with collective wealth (challenging ecologies). After reviewing prior research into cultural characteristics under these environmental conditions, I am reporting a climato-economic study of we/they discrimination across 95 nations. Together, these investigations show that threatening ecologies are prone to mental ill-being, bureaucratic organizing, press repression, autocratic politics, survival goals, societal collectivism, and relatively strong we/they discrimination. By contrast, challenging ecologies are prone to mental well-being, organic organizing, press freedom, democratic politics, self-expression goals, societal individualism, and relatively weak we/they discrimination. In between these extremes, comforting ecologies are prone to intermediate cultural realities.