The City, The Country
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shakahislop
Well-known member
massive cities are great but fucking exhausting, you can see it on everyone's faces, the neuroses
shakahislop
Well-known member
i always feel better in the countryside myself. but cities have an addictive appeal and capture the imagination. coz they're the center of the universe now. where the action is.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I picked this book up in Fopp or something a while back and it's perpetually on my I must read this list - anyone read?
en.m.wikipedia.org
The Country and the City - Wikipedia
sus
Moderator
It's pretty good, I read it in undergrad as part of some personal research on pastoralism. He has a great section on the "escalator" of nostalgia. Like most non-fiction books, I recommend skimming and reading sections of interest, jumping around via indices/tables of contents, over linearly tackling.I picked this book up in Fopp or something a while back and it's perpetually on my I must read this list - anyone read?
The Country and the City - Wikipedia
sus
Moderator
Yes everyone in New York is mentally ill
shakahislop
Well-known member
i think its part of what's going on here. the city is so inhospitable in many ways. the noise and the tiny apartments, the lack of space for anything, always being packed in with so many other people wherever you go. the lack of insulation from other people, listening to your neighbors through the walls, the helicopters overhead. etc. the reaction everyone has to that is part of the thing that people love or hate (or love and hate) about this place
sus
Moderator
Yes and the mental illness is contagious so everyone on the subway/at parties is giving it to each other constantly.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Between that and The Gay, large cities are probably best avoided altogether.
Leo
Well-known member
there are a lot of big, crowded, noisy cities in the world. is New York unique in that sense? wouldn't you imagine people in Cairo or Seoul or São Paulo would have the same anxieties?
sus
Moderator
No, what you call "The Gay", i.e. people who identify as homosexual, are fine good respectable, in fact, some of the more sober denizens of the city. I'm not normally one to call out political incorrectness but that sort of label, casually thrown around, is exactly what's wrong with contemporary society. Treat people like human beings, not like some conglomerate egregore. Really disappointing.
shakahislop
Well-known member
i've never been to any of those places but i think nyc is a bit unique in 'the west' or in the universe of rich countries or some similar way of categorising places. there's nowhere in europe which is as disordered. even massive cities like london and paris are quite a different kettle of fish because they're much more predictable, everything is more rules-based, stuff is regulated. even something basic like how loud lorries are allowed to be, but other more important things like what happens if you have a serious mental illness (ie in nyc it looks like loads of people don't get treatment and end up homeless on the subway etc). nyc is also very densely populated compared to any other massive western city i can think of.
on the other hand there are a ton of cities in poorer and middle-income countries which have the same carnage crazy vibe as nyc. karachi springs to mind, there's a lot of similarities in the intensity, the human interest. a lot of south asian cities actually. beirut has it. probably loads of other places. the difference is my own position though, in those places i'm rich enough to totally escape it, like the people here who live in tribeca and uber everywhere. can't do that in nyc so there's no insulation.
line b
Well-known member
This is why Im distrustful of any person under 35 voluntarily living out there. You go there/stay there to be a god. I had an old buddy who voluntarilly moved back to his hometown 7 hours up the texas panhandle and last I checked on him he was posting videos of himself publiclly threatening the mayor
sus
Moderator
> [In the city], personal identity can only emerge through attention-grabbing signals (e.g., public lists of books that one has read, pathetic in retrospect), yelling “I am here”... [in] rural life... there is space for one's emotions and, in aggregate, personality to emanate from the self. One interacts with few people, repeatedly, for long periods of time. One’s uniqueness and irreplaceability become obvious, attenuating the neuroticism.
shakahislop
Well-known member
i'm in the countryside now. it's silent. you can hear your footsteps. it always provokes a sense of dislocation for a day or two. you get unmoored
shakahislop
Well-known member
from the perspective of the countryside a lot of the things people are interested in in the cities seem vain and silly. talking about novelty restaurants and how much they love being around diversity. it's an understated thread, the disdain that is generated when you're living in the countryside and looking at the people in the city. the people there look like they're flapping around throwing tenners away on nothing at all.