If The Dems Made A Concerted Effort To Appeal To Rural Voters What Would You Recommend They Do?....

[tama]

116. In that sense

Why did some people - and what kind of people?! - leave Africa and then spread everywhere? I've wondered about that. We Finns are traditionally considered quiet people who seek peace and solitude away from other people. Who need lot of space and can be easily considered "antisocial".

But there are also studies. Rural agricultural life is very much based on more or less zero sum game. If someone claims more land than others, that's away from others. The idea of living within means is ingrained and explains much of the "conservative" more slower pace of change, and also the closer community. Everybody know everybody (and family feuds can continue for centuries...). But on the other hand if you look anthropologically and geographically, there is lot more rural variation and different ways of life all over the globe, and compared to that cities tend to be pretty much same everywhere, monoculture.

Urban life is more individualistic, or rather anonymous, as you can disappear in the crowd and nobody knows you and you can feel more free from continuous social control of knowing that everything you do, everybody else in the community knows. And the idea of infinite growth has encouradged ideas of infinite possibilities and much of artistic etc. creativity in the urban melting pots of various cultures.

But on the grand scale, as Age of Oil is coming to end, and no "next big thin" in horizon, it is cities and urban way of life that are in trouble and need ways to ground themselves and find balance with nature.