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Every time I visit my relatives in their rural area, I feel a sense of liberation. The air is cleaner, there is less noise, you can hear the breeze, and even th
by jackcosgrove 7y ago
Every time I visit my relatives in their rural area, I feel a sense of liberation. The air is cleaner, there is less noise, you can hear the breeze, and even the sky seems bigger. You can see the Milky Way at night. Coming from a city, it's a relief.
However I also know the dark side of rural areas, mainly substance abuse triggered by boredom and lack of opportunity. There is always a trade-off.
- LiquidSky 7y agoI feel the same way...for a day or so. Then I remember that it's the peace and serenity of a tomb and miss the city.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sdegutis 7y agoIt's the peace and serenity of nature, which is often more alive than we are. How many songwriters over the past century have written about being lonely in the midst of constant but worthless interactions?
- wearenotsafe 7y agoIt sounds strange to label something brimming with life as "tomb". If nature is a tomb then a city is a prison.
- captainredbeard 7y agoI think the magic combo is spending a large amount of time (not necessarily continuous) in nature with a large group of friends.
- CompanionCuuube 7y agoA tomb is normally defined as a place of no life, while the opposite is true. There is a lot of life and biodiversity in nature.
- username444 7y agoLack of upward mobility in rural areas is much more damaging in the long term, mentally, than living in the city.
- challenger22 7y agoWhat evidence do you have for this claim? The article just laid down a lot of evidence that contradicts what you say.
- jackcosgrove 7y agoIt's not direct evidence, but people continue to move away from rural areas and into cities all over the world, to better themselves.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoPeople will do all sorts of things that aren't good for their mental and/or physical health in order to make a decent living. I would wager that the overwhelming majority of people moving from rural to urban areas are doing it to better their bank accounts.
- magduf 7y agoIt's not to "better their bank accounts", it's to survive, because people need jobs to make money, and money to survive. Modern people can't support themselves on rural land any more, and even 100+ years ago ones who tried had short and unhappy lives (remember sharecropping?). There aren't enough jobs in rural areas to support the people there, so they leave.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoYou can totally live somewhere rural and support yourself and a family. There's just less opportunity to make easy money there so it will be harder. If your optimizing for least effort for a given income level moving to the city is a no-brainer since it's where all the easy money is.
- sdegutis 7y agoThat's not a trade-off. You have the exact same substance abuse in suburbs and cities. It's a universal problem.
- esoterica 7y agoThe substance abuse epidemic is much worse in some places than others. Saying it’s exactly the same everywhere is disingenuous.
- LUmBULtERA 7y agoEvery time I visit relatives in rural and suburban areas, I'm so disappointed in having to drive everywhere. To me that infringes on some feelings of freedom, where you are entirely dependent on a car. I love where I live in a city, love not owning a car, and love the ability to walk or take the metro anywhere I need to go.
- magduf 7y agoThat's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives around in. I don't know where people get this idea that rural America is some kind of idyllic, serene place. It really isn't, for the most part. If you want idyllic, you'll have to find some extremely remote place in the mountains of the western states.
- camjohnson26 7y agoI smell more sewage in the city I live in than cow manure or pig farms visiting the rural areas.
- magduf 7y agoDo you live in NYC? That city really does stink. However, I just spent 2 weeks in Japanese cities, including almost a week in Tokyo, and it was extremely clean. Even on trash day it didn't stink.
- opportune 7y agoIt can stink sometimes down by the canals
- adamson 7y agoIt's by no means a constant, permeating stink. Sure, there are some neighborhoods with open air food markets that can be smelly, or some that are downwind of waste processing centers (most of East Williamsburg), or smelly because of wastewater (parts of East New York and Canarsie), but for 95% of the city, you're not going to smell anything unpleasant unless you're leaning in to sniff trash bags.
- magduf 7y ago
- seisvelas 7y agoAll the cities I've lived in also have pretty significant substance abuse problems. According to this article, https://drugabuse.com/country-vs-city-addictions-differ-says-samhsa/ https://drugabuse.com/country-vs-city-addictions-differ-says... Rural people are more likely to abuse alcohol, whereas city dwellers are more likely to abuse hard drugs.
- mrob 7y agoBy any objective standard, alcohol is a hard drug.
- jondubois 7y agoI spent most of my childhood in suburban towns but most of my adulthood in big cities so I was shocked to discover that many city people seem to think that suburban towns are full of crazy people and violent criminals... But I still feel that city people are crazier and more dangerous on average. The stick and carrot aspect of big cities does drive people at least slightly crazy.