3 ms·

As someone raised in a small town that moved to a big city, I'm very skeptical of small communities as a solution to anything. Anonymity inside a big mass of pe

by narag 7y ago

As someone raised in a small town that moved to a big city, I'm very skeptical of small communities as a solution to anything. Anonymity inside a big mass of people provides freedom from nosy neighbors and relatives. It does has drawbacks, but so be it.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Anonymity inside a big mass of people provides freedom from nosy neighbors and relatives I partially disagree. I think you are assuming a set of specific circumstances that often apply but are not universal. I think it depends on what you want to use your freedom to do. On a timeline measured in months or more there is no anonymity anywhere. If whatever it is you do is so socially unacceptable as to be a problem people will take notice. What changes is the criteria you need to meet to become a problem and how big of a problem you need to be to get attention. My observation is that diversity increases freedom and community resources available to enforce social norms decrease freedom. dense cities are high in both, rural areas are low in both. So in the city it is usually much harder to be the tall nail but if you are the tall nail you will get hit much harder and in BFE you're probably a problem but not a big enough one for it to be worth the community's resources to go after. This is why various religious and political fundamentalists/extremest communities tend to wind up living in a compound somewhere rural (they're big enough and violate norms enough to be noticed anywhere, best to go somewhere the community probably can't justify harassing you too much) and when they do get bothered it's often by the state not the local community/government. (if it's not obvious, I'm defining freedom as "the ability to do things that most other people don't like without bad things happening to you").
- narag 7y ago
  I think it depends on what you want to use your freedom to do. Sure. I didn't mean anything illegal or inmoral, just different enough from the norm as to make the usual idiots to tell you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, chances are you haven't lived in a small community.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Yeah above a certain population density you're mostly free from your neighbors gossiping at church about your project boat yard ornament or marijuana cultivating hobby or loud parties because you don't know your neighbors and probably don't go to the same church but the trade-off is that if you do step out of line they sick the local bylaw czar on you instead. This is what I mean by more resources to track down minor deviance from social norms. Some things are more tolerated in the city but the trade-off is that the things that are not tolerated are addressed by the government (which means fines that will make you destitute if you don't step in line and men with guns who will put you in a cage if you don't pay). By contrast you can usually tell the small town busybodies to pound sand and unless you're actually negatively affecting a lot of people with whatever it is you do then it's probably a non-issue. Those people are always crying wolf about things and nobody takes them seriously because everybody knows that most of their complaints are unfounded or not serious enough to be worth dedicating the community's limited resources (at a small enough town level the distinction between private action and government action does get a bit blurry) to doing anything about it.
everdrive 7y ago
We end up equivocating the word anonymity here. I've had this same debate with a gay, older relative. She spent most of her time in small towns, and constantly felt the social pressure due to being gay. To her, a city is "anonymous" because nobody generally cares what she's up to, and certainly nobody cares that she's gay. It's not even just about being accepting of homosexuality. Rather, most people she meets are strangers, and don't have any preconceived notions about who she is or who she should be. I find cities anything but anonymous -- you're always around people, there's no privacy in the sense that there's always someone observe you. (ie, you're never alone in the woods) So, you have at least two definitions of anonymity: - a lack of social pressure due to lack of interest, and interaction with (mostly) strangers - the ability to escape from observation for brief periods
- narag 7y ago
  Obviously you can't escape from observation in a city, on the contrary. Also in a city you may know as many people as in a village. The difference is that people that you cross paths along the day are not constantly people you know. You need to go some specific places to interact with people you know. People that doesn't know you is as if they weren't observing you. So it's more or less something in the middle :m

by narag 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>Anonymity inside a big mass of people provides freedom from nosy neighbors and relatives I partially disagree. I think you are assuming a set of specific circumstances that often apply but are not universal. I think it depends on what you want to use your freedom to do. On a timeline measured in months or more there is no anonymity anywhere. If whatever it is you do is so socially unacceptable as to be a problem people will take notice. What changes is the criteria you need to meet to become a problem and how big of a problem you need to be to get attention. My observation is that diversity increases freedom and community resources available to enforce social norms decrease freedom. dense cities are high in both, rural areas are low in both. So in the city it is usually much harder to be the tall nail but if you are the tall nail you will get hit much harder and in BFE you're probably a problem but not a big enough one for it to be worth the community's resources to go after. This is why various religious and political fundamentalists/extremest communities tend to wind up living in a compound somewhere rural (they're big enough and violate norms enough to be noticed anywhere, best to go somewhere the community probably can't justify harassing you too much) and when they do get bothered it's often by the state not the local community/government. (if it's not obvious, I'm defining freedom as "the ability to do things that most other people don't like without bad things happening to you").

narag 7y ago
I think it depends on what you want to use your freedom to do. Sure. I didn't mean anything illegal or inmoral, just different enough from the norm as to make the usual idiots to tell you. If you don't know what I'm talking about, chances are you haven't lived in a small community.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Yeah above a certain population density you're mostly free from your neighbors gossiping at church about your project boat yard ornament or marijuana cultivating hobby or loud parties because you don't know your neighbors and probably don't go to the same church but the trade-off is that if you do step out of line they sick the local bylaw czar on you instead. This is what I mean by more resources to track down minor deviance from social norms. Some things are more tolerated in the city but the trade-off is that the things that are not tolerated are addressed by the government (which means fines that will make you destitute if you don't step in line and men with guns who will put you in a cage if you don't pay). By contrast you can usually tell the small town busybodies to pound sand and unless you're actually negatively affecting a lot of people with whatever it is you do then it's probably a non-issue. Those people are always crying wolf about things and nobody takes them seriously because everybody knows that most of their complaints are unfounded or not serious enough to be worth dedicating the community's limited resources (at a small enough town level the distinction between private action and government action does get a bit blurry) to doing anything about it.

everdrive 7y ago

We end up equivocating the word anonymity here. I've had this same debate with a gay, older relative. She spent most of her time in small towns, and constantly felt the social pressure due to being gay. To her, a city is "anonymous" because nobody generally cares what she's up to, and certainly nobody cares that she's gay. It's not even just about being accepting of homosexuality. Rather, most people she meets are strangers, and don't have any preconceived notions about who she is or who she should be. I find cities anything but anonymous -- you're always around people, there's no privacy in the sense that there's always someone observe you. (ie, you're never alone in the woods) So, you have at least two definitions of anonymity: - a lack of social pressure due to lack of interest, and interaction with (mostly) strangers - the ability to escape from observation for brief periods

narag 7y ago
Obviously you can't escape from observation in a city, on the contrary. Also in a city you may know as many people as in a village. The difference is that people that you cross paths along the day are not constantly people you know. You need to go some specific places to interact with people you know. People that doesn't know you is as if they weren't observing you. So it's more or less something in the middle :m