The city is too much with us
This article mentions that the world has passed an important milestone: more than half its population lives in cities. That means that city life is having a greater and greater effect on our culture, bodies, and psyches. So there’s reason to be interested in the crop of recent research discussed in the piece, which indicates that cities dull our ability to think, reduce our impulse control, and increase aggression.
This isn’t really all that surprising; some of these results have been known for some time What is somewhat new is that the same research suggests that just a bit of greenery can mitigate some of these effects. Although we are social animals, apparently we are also meant to be natural ones amidst the world of plants and foliage:
[J]ust looking at a natural scene can lead to higher scores on tests of attention and memory. While people have searched high and low for ways to improve cognitive performance, from doping themselves with Red Bull to redesigning the layout of offices, it appears that few of these treatments are as effective as simply taking a walk in a natural place.
Wordsworth had a thing or two to say about it all:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.””Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Neo, Wow. Over half the world’s population residing in cities. Is there any wonder why violence rules modernity? And not only in cities, but I believe that people in rural areas don’t have much of a relationship with nature either. It’s a matter of intent and awareness.
Although I live in an incredibly beautiful place, (the entrance to Sequoia-Kings Canyon Nat. Park), surrounded on all sides by mountain peaks and a river canyon, I still require 3-4 weeks a year submerged in pure wilderness to maintain my sanity. No phones, computers, cars, conviences, or comforts! It usually takes 3 full days to get out all the junk.
Wordsworth is right on. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
I have advised my 19 yr. old daughter, who was born and raised here and is now navigating Los Angeles and UCLA that whenever she hits the wall and has a creative block to find a park or coastline where she can open her senses to the sights, sounds, and rhythms of nature.
“You are going on a strange journey this time, my friend. I don’t envy you. You’ll have a hard time keeping your heart light and simple in the midst of these madmen. Instead of the music of the wind in the spruce-tops and the tinkling of the waterfalls, your ears will be filled with the oaths and groans of these poor, deluded, self-burdened people. Keep close to nature’s heart, yourself; and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean from the earth-stains of this sordid, gold-seeking crowd in God’s pure air. It will help you in your efforts to bring these people something better than gold. Don’t lose your freedom or your love of the earth as God made it.
-John Muir
How many of these so-called city dwellers are really small-town peasants and rural farmers forced by a bulldozer planned economy into high-rise apartments and other new-built ghettos? I saw shocking numbers of these buildings rise over the rubble of ancient villages just on the outskirts of Shanghai. I can’t help but think that worldwide these are a contributor to the urban statistic, yet not at all understood — and with fuses burning.
Our tour guide in Bulgaria explained how the Communist forced the farmers out of the country and into the cities. ( Kinda opposite the Khemer Rouge in Cambodia) The communist era apartments in Bulgaria were these ugly, tall, white concrete looking things. I feel sorry for the folks that were pushed from thier beautiful farms to those crowded things.
Have you ever looked to see where Obama won by COUNTY, not by State. Note that in ‘Red State” Texas Obama won in the big cities and suprises, suprise, the border counties. See link below:
http://images.newsmax.com/misc/2008_Election_Map.jpg
In the Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell complained that people forced to live in the country were terribly bored. And, rich people came to the city for stimulation didn’t they. So I wonder how true in all circumstances the claim that the city creates a lot of negative stress really is.
I used to travel a lot for work. In fact I was regularly flying over 100K miles per year – United loved me. Anyway – now I spend most of my time behind the keyboard Ip-ing into phone systems and letting others do the grunt work. However if I have something within a 1.5 day drive I will do on-site work and when I go I travel the back roads of the south. I love the small towns and their dynamic. I wrote here a couple of months ago about how the crowding of cities (and the consequent loss of personal space) was the cause of much of the violence in urban areas. I stand by that. In rural America people can go out at night and see the stars. Maybe that’s part of being able to believe in something greater than humankind.
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I think the modern Democrats can’t be understood without understanding metropolitan social anxieties about status, money, race and gender.
At the same time, the work of the cities is dominated by the work of the Symbolic Analysts, people (like artists, lawyers, programmers, actors, media people, politicians, bankers, writers etc.) who manipulate symbols to make the living. The mood of the crowd–social pressure–is felt with more immediacy and urgency than the weather. “What everyone knows” and their feelings becomes the facts.
These are the people who would elect a leader primarily for his symbolic meaning, and they are the people who will bitterly reject the idea that there is no substance to the symbols.
When traveling by car, I prefer back roads or at least conventional highways. As a practical matter, they add probably half to the time required if most of the trip can be taken on the expressways. Still, worth it.
I do not like large cities. Had one guy from Chicago tell me that the bustle and hustle characteristic of the city, and, he suggested, of other large cities, is almost entirely people trying to get to work and back. Their productivity is another issue.
Many years ago, I ran into a guy writing a paper on what was unique about Medal of Honor awardees. I suggested small town origin. He did not quite sneer. That was a given. Obvious. He’d done that and gotten into other issues less obvious. But not, I think, less profound.
Tom Wolfe, writing about stock car racing, mentioned that the sponsors had been mining a mother lode of courage from West Virginia–I think he said WV–for drivers. And that there were more Medal of Honor awardees from within twenty miles of Junior Johnon’s back porch than from all of Manhattan. I wouldn’t know, but Wolfe is known for doing his homework.
Nothing really new, as you probably know. I seem to recall John B. Calhoun’s famous experiment (1962?) with rats and overcrowding.
An interesting tangential point to my earlier comment about Calhoun’s rat experiment and how it reflects on human behavior.
In rural Alaska, where you have a very small widely dispersed population in a natural setting, you find extreme crime, violence and suicide. (The statistics reflect it and having lived in the bush myself for nine years I saw it)
Especially among the young. While on its face this seems to fly in the face of inferred conclusions about overcrowding such as were made about Calhoun’s famous experiment, it seems that there are other contributing factors.
Just as green belts in urban zones can mitigate some of those effects as Neo said above, I think certain elements of our ‘urban culture’ produce a profound psychic dissonance even in an so called idyllic setting.
While true enough that remote isolated settings, such as a small bush village might be likened to living on a small island, where travel to anywhere else is a task and the close proximity of your neighbors can sometimes become hard to deal with. This problem seems to have manifested itself only recently with the increased encroachment of the modern world, i.e. television, junk food, erosion of traditional culture and lifestyle, etc. (though not necessarily for everyone) Also, with the large influx of money and programs that did not exist until Alaska became awash in oil money.
I’d like to see a study on that. Probably never happen though.
OK, Neo, I’ll be your dissenting voice. I’ve lived in cities, rural areas, and small towns, and I’ll take cities, hands down. I enjoy the numerous activities that are available in cities–restaurants, theaters, museums, professional sports venues, nightclubs–that you simply can’t find in “out in the country”. There’s also a wider choice of doctors, dentists, hospitals, plumbers, roofers, etc., for those times when things don’t go quite right. Don’t get me wrong, I like natural beauty and breathing fresh air, but I don’t want to live there. As a non-farmer, I found living in a rural area to be incredibly boring, more so since I’m a lifelong bachelor. If I had had to work the fields, it would have been a different story, but having to walk a half mile to the nearest neighbor or drive a dozen or so miles to the nearest town in order to see another person just didn’t do it for me. Yes, it was relaxing, but I can only gaze at the mountains, fields, rivers, etc., for so long. (I hunt and fish, BTW, and don’t find those activities boring at all. But I can’t do them all the time).
In the two small towns I’ve lived in, I found my neighbors to be nice, but a little too concerned about my business. It’s a cliche, I guess, but I found it to be true in my case. I travel a lot for work, which they found odd all by itself, but asked me so many personal questions that at times I felt I was being interrogated rather than having a friendly conversation. They were always especially curious as to why I was in my mid-30s at the time, obviously straight, and “still single”. The correct answer–that I simply had no interest in getting married–never occurred to them. The towns themselves had very limited offerings in terms of restaurants, and nightlife, well, forget it.
Unlike Bulgarian or Chinese peasants, I make the choice of urban life freely, and know what I’m getting myself into. I haven’t had my family plot bulldozed or been forced into a massive Socialist Modern-style apartment by the secret police. I just prefer urban life, and don’t feel particularly stressed by my choice. The large foreign city I currently call home has its share of problems, most of which have been noted in Neo’s posting and the comments, but its share of compensations as well. The compensations are what keep me a city boy.
There are a lot of answers to the observation. It is interesting to read.