Interestingly, the quote you cite here seems to be specifically directed at G.K. Chesterton, who said exactly the opposite—that larger societies tend towards re

Interestingly, the quote you cite here seems to be specifically directed at G.K. Chesterton, who said exactly the opposite—that larger societies tend towards reducing the amount of variety that you experience, precisely because you can choose to associate primarily with people who you relate to [0]. In a small community, you could choose to be entirely isolated, but if you want company you'll need to associate with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker—there's no way to keep company only with the particular class of intellectuals that you find stimulating. Speaking as someone who's currently living in a small rural town, I concur with Chesterton here: if you really want to understand people in all their varieties, the city isn't the place to be. In most cities I've spent time in everyone walks or (worse) drive past thousands to reach the few who they already relate to. If you want variety, if you want to stretch your own perspectives, then you want to be in a small town where people actually stop and talk to each other because there's no one else to talk to. [0] > It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us. ... the men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul ... A big society exists in order to form cliques. A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness. It is a machinery for the purpose of guarding the solitary and sensitive individual from all experience of the bitter and bracing human compromises. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/470/pg470-images.html