Achievement and guilt help regulate those environments. A person who is successful because they live in a place that has plenty of food might work to bring food

Achievement and guilt help regulate those environments. A person who is successful because they live in a place that has plenty of food might work to bring food to places that don't in order to feel a sense of achievement. That would improve the environment of others. Likewise, someone destroying a place's food stores would damage that environment but guilt makes it less likely for that to happen. The exact things that cause feelings of achievement and guilt are defined by consensus (like you said, social construct). Also, if there's a genetic factor in how we come to that consensus, those genes are more likely to survive multiple iterations if the consensus results in more survivable environments, so there is substance in the sense that these rules are well tested and proven.