> Medieval knights and samurai were the best of their time, did they recruit recruit starving peasans?

The best fighters of the Medieval period were probably the Mongols. But even Medieval knights and Samurai were often leading lives that were so rough that it's hard for most modern people to realize it. And they knew that if they failed to train properly, that in the next war (which was probably coming soon), they were likely to die first.

> No, they were a social class and were offered the best training and considerable social cloud. Commanders and officers where basically a nobility.

During times of war, capable warriors tend(ed) to increase their rank. Capable yeomen can become men-at-arms, men-at-arms can be knighted, knights can become commanders and maybe given a barony, on so on.

Such soldiers might certainly provide good training to their sons, making this multi-generational.

> we should find best MMA fighters in places where they encounter tought times

If you look at the backgrounds of a large set of MMA fighters, you would find that a LOT of them come from rough working-class conditions. (Or at least they did when I stopped following MMA about 10 years ago). For practitioners of golf, tennis or polo, you will find more upper class people, of course.

> Maybe 'strong men' means being morally upstanding and doing what's right, even when it is going to cost you?

'Strong' men tend to develop strong codes of honor, that may be considered un-empathetic or even brutal in civilized societies. Look at present day Afghanistan. 50 years of almost constant conflict has hammered the Taliban fighters into such a group. Their sense of morality is quite different from the western sense, but they seem to feel it very strongly. Currently, opium production is being shut down at a high rate, for instance. Whether or not their sense of honor will lead to prosperity over the longer term remains to be seen.

> If this were true, we'd expect to see less corruption and fewer crimes in communities that are poorer, right?

Maybe that will be the outcome 500 years from now. But short term, corruption and crimes lead to poverty faster than poverty leads to a strengthening of moral character, so such cycles may take a long time.

> Bad times only create bad things - they create uneducated, malnurished, and psycologically damanged people, and they lead to violence. Anything good that ever happens, happens in spite of them, not because of them.

Really bad times also remove the damaged people from the population, either by death or inability to have offspring, partly because of that violence you mentioned. Over Darwinian time that is an absolute necessity to keep random genetic drift (random mutations) from destroying the gene pool.

Over shorter periods, the same MAY be the same for the "meme pool", to use the Dawkins original use of "meme". Cultural shifts that accumulate randomly over time are likely to result in a reduction of social and economical robustness in an area. Only when a society is under some survivial pressure, will cultural elements that reduce the "fitness" of the culture be weeded out.

External pressure can lead to increased group cohesion, while economic downturns CAN lead to improvement of economic organization. Or, if a culture is not able to build robustness against such preassures, it can collapse and be replaced by a new culture.

Now, I'm looking at these things like a biologist would when describing animal populations. I'm not making the claim that the societies created by "strong men" are morally superior to older civilizations where men have become "soft" or "weak".

My point is rather that if a civilization makes life very easy for the inhabitants, if will over time lead to the same outcome that you will get if you start feeding wild animals. Eventually, those "wild" animals will come to depend on beeing fed, and may face extinction if the food stops arriving. If what you want is a pet, that's ok. If you want to ensure a sustainable species, you really have to limit the amount of food and other help you provide to wild animals.