The urban-rural distinction is one of the oldest ideological divides in human history, and that has built immense and unexamined prejudice. We have words like “urbane” and “polite” on the one hand and “pagan,” “villain” and “heathen” on the other, and nobody stops to think about how this is a one-way street of city-dwellers condemning their rustic relations. A lot of modern political decisions boil down to “everyone should live in cities” when cities are historically demographic sinks (lower birthrate), largely because the people who make political decisions live in cities.
alt Hacker News
The urban-rural distinction is one of the oldest ideological divides in human history, and that has built immense and unexamined prejudice. We have words like “urbane” and “polite” on the one hand and “pagan,” “villain” and “heathen” on the other, and nobody stops to think about how this is a one-way street of city-dwellers condemning their rustic relations. A lot of modern political decisions boil down to “everyone should live in cities” when cities are historically demographic sinks (lower birthrate), largely because the people who make political decisions live in cities.