I quite enjoyed Bret Devereaux's insights regarding a popular cultural narrative he coins as "the Fremen Mirage", named after the fictional society in Dune. The Fremen are described in the novels as materially poor, but more pragmatic and virtuous for it. They live on a desert planet where the basic necessity of water is a challenge to find. They are unlearned but cunning; with street-smarts beyond the book-smarts of more sophisticated civilization. Sounds familiar? Yup, it's a variation and extension of the "noble savage" trope. Its premise is that harsh environments make humans hardier, and should the hardier be set in conflict with the pampered, the hardier ones win by their better survival skills. In Dune the Fremen conquered their more "civilized" counterparts. This model is often cited as an inevitable cycle of hardy barbarians conquering the decadent, complacent, urban cultures that have grown too soft.

Of course, Devereaux coined it "mirage" because he proceeds to demonstrate how this belief doesn't line up with reality. One should read his article to understand the argument, but here's my summary of his conclusion: this trope doesn't line up with reality because it is based on an overly simplified toy model of societies as "analogous to an individual human birth-death cycle". It is popular because it draws its memetic persuasive power from the very flaw that makes it a bad model; human individuals love stories, and love using analogies of a human life to the "life" of a nation-state or entire groups of people. And it is often created for propaganda purposes because of this ease of memetic transmission; the qualities of these "Fremen peoples" are often made up with no heed to reality because they are meant to contrast against the more civilized peoples. Again, similar to the motivations behind any depiction of the "noble savage" trope.

Devereaux concludes that living in harsh environments does not make one hardier or more martial. The evidence and reasoning he presents are fascinating for anyone interested in historical societies.

https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/