Happy Monday! As always, today’s post is by Stephen Hall. Thanks, Stephen!
I’m going to disagree with a lot of conservatives right off the bat and say that contrary to popular opinion leftism/progressivism/liberalism is not a mental disease. Rather it is but one of many symptoms of a much larger problem, and one which goes back much further in history than anyone cares to believe.
I, of course, am far from the first person to note the urban rural distinction in culture and politics. One only has to peruse a county level voting map of the last few elections to note the concentration of liberalism in the major population centers while the vast areas of rural America are clearly more conservative.
We must do more than simply note this division within our society, we must take pains to determine what is the cause of this division.
In the days of the Roman empire there was a similar division between the people of Rome and the rural people they labeled the “hill people” who lived in the Apennines. Those who lived in rural areas of the Roman empire were viewed by people in Rome much like the residents of New York City or D.C. view the people of Appalachia.
There is a certain elitist condescension which has them paint the more rustic residents of that society as backwards, uneducated, and uncouth. There is a certain superficial element of truth in that rural areas naturally lag behind trends in music and fashion, even late adopters of new technologies, so that it is easy to exaggerate that effect to more fundamental elements such as education and manners.
Those who lived in any Roman city throughout the empire had much more in common in many ways with citizens of Rome than did people living just a hundred miles outside of Rome in the rural farmlands and hillsides.
The political division between the urban population and the rural population mirrored much of the political divisions in America today. But this is not only a shared trait between Rome and America, the same urban and rural dynamic can be seen in virtually all great empires throughout history on every continent.
However, while it has appeared in all the great empires, it has not really appeared in all nations and in all places. One is left to wonder why? What is it about places like Rome and New York City which should foster such a view of rural people? Obviously the difference cannot be the rural people as they exist everywhere.
Well, perhaps we ought to take a review of science. We know from scientific studies and experiments of rats and monkeys that when a population gets too crowded there are increases in certain observable behavioral characteristics. In particular, there are observed markedly increased levels of violence and homosexual behavior in the populations.
It is important to note that it is not the total population which appears to affect the animals’ behavior but the density of that population, overcrowding to use a phrase popular among the leftist themselves.
It is not even, as some would have you believe, a matter of competition over scarce resources as the experiments increased the amount of food and water proportionately with the populations, yet the behaviors still persisted.
The scientists observing these phenomena attributed the behavioral changes to the stress caused by simply being too closely packed together. It appears that all animals have a natural preference for not being packed together like sardines in a can.
We can see these same observable traits in human populations, with large inner cities being far and away more violent than rural or sub-urban areas; we also see the greatest concentrations of sexual perversities, including homosexuality, located in the larger cities.
We accept that as part of modern city life, but it has also been a historic phenomena. What if it is not that leftist join together and concentrate in these centers of power, chasing the money and power, but that the effects of urban, overcrowded living creates a psychological stress upon the people living there which warps their minds and values in other unhealthy ways which inevitably will lead to that society’s collapse?
So if we can observe certain behavioral anomalies resulting from overcrowding, then why would we be reluctant to imagine that there are more metaphysical philosophical anomalies which result from those same stresses of overcrowding which can be seen in human populations?
Certainly leftists would not want to deny the behavioral sciences associated with demographic pressures on the species.
The push for a societally destructive welfare state as a way to pacify and control these urban populations is ubiquitous in the annals of history, as is the tendency of unpacified urbanites to rise up in rebellions to unseat the vastly outnumbered rulers residing in those same cities.
It is like the people living in those cities can sense how vulnerable those rulers are in number and use their numerical advantage to extort welfare from the rulers. If you listen closely to the rationales of many advocating for more welfare, it very much falls in the line of fearing that people deprived of such welfare will become more violent.
There was a time when people in America thought that our cities would be immune from the fate which befell the cities of the Roman empire. American cities, they reasoned, were not planned cities established for political power like in Rome, rather they were cities built upon commerce and industry.
In ancient Rome, most of the production of society was done in the rural areas then shipped to the cities: wine, food, metal works, and textiles. But America had cities built on manufacturing and commerce: port cities like New York and Philadelphia, steel making cities like Pittsburgh, and every other American city. They believed this public freeloading problem would never arise in America as it had in Rome and had destroyed that empire through the mechanics of the welfare state.
Smaller states which did not develop the mega-cities like Rome did not fall into this welfare trap and were not held in fear of the citizenry rising up in revolt like they often did in Paris. Nations without large cities appear to be more stable and long lasting than the empires around them in that they do not fall to internal strife the way that large empires do, though they may get swept aside in the wake of those larger nations.
So, how does this work exactly? If we take the examples of schools, a small one room schoolhouse can’t offer the variety of classes a medium sized school can, but a medium sized school where you still know all of your classmates does not have the problems of the large schools with cliquish bullying and individuals being lost in the crowd and feeling isolated.
Cities are the same way. If the cities are too small they cannot offer the cultural enrichment that a society needs, but if they get too large they create factions vying for the power and wealth, to take over and rule the other factions rather than to live with them and listen to them.
On the individual level, in the large city there is pressure, stress, hustle, bustle, and all the hassles of urban living. In the small towns there is space, time, and a modest pace. There is something different in character of the modest city from the large concrete jungles, and that difference affect the people so dwelling. People do not dream of retiring to the inner city.
Somewhere out there on that horizon
Out beyond the neon lights
I know there must be somethin’ better
but there’s nowhere else in sight
It’s survival in the city
When you live from day to day
City streets don’t have much pity
When you’re down, that’s where you’ll stay
In the city, oh, oh.
In the city
I was born here in the city
With my back against the wall
Nothing grows, and life ain’t very pretty
No one’s there to catch you when you fall
Somewhere out on that horizon
Faraway from the neon sky
I know there must be somethin’ better
And I can’t stay another night
In the city, oh, oh.
In the city
– The Eagles.
Humans, as a species, like rats and monkeys, are social animals and function better in groups. The key it would seem is to discover the optimal operational limits of human population density. Personally, I do not think any city should ever get larger than a quarter million people, and would not personally want to live in a town smaller than fifty thousand people.
Not to disparage rural living, but I am more comfortable in town with the city amenities, but not so crowded that I can’t yell at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn.
