Ii; inimical

Adjective

1. adverse or unfavourable: inimical to change

2. unfriendly or hostile [Latin in- not + amicus friendly]

Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

Winter is an inimical world; its punishment for doing things wrong is sure and prompt: death from cold or death from hunger. No margin, no reprieve. A man can trust his luck, but a society can't and culture change, like random mutation, may make things chancier. So they have gone very slowly. At one point in their history a hasty observer would say that all technological progress and diffusion had ceased. Yet it never has. Compare the torrent and the glacier. Both get where they are going. Le Guinn (The Left Hand of Darkness) page 99.