I like this thinking. It seems quite logical.Kelloggs wrote:My thoughts on your thoughts: Hmm. Try this (it's brutally simple thinking, I'm afraid - I've not done too much of it):
When we all lived hunter-gatherer lifestyles, it benefitted us (largely) to keep doing what had led us to survive thus far. Don't go changing too much, or that last change might be the one that leaves you to be eaten by the lion. (conservative)
Once cities were available, they tended to attract the people who wanted to change something, initially better job prospects. There's a potential gradient set up, between rural and urban. The ones who are happy where they are, stay rural. The ones who aren't, move urban. (progressive)
Nowadays, urban is as "complicated" as it gets. No-one moves to the country looking to advance their lives in any way other than "more quiet" (or, I suppose, more farming). It feels to me as if, should someone want to be where things are constantly changing, they need to be urban; conversely, should someone be happy with the way they are, this will be less of a geographical magnet for them.
As I'm seeing it these days, the people who are where they want to be, and want to stay, even if it's at solely local maxima, are the ones we might describe as conservative - especially if that local maximum benefits them and any change might upset that benefit - while the ones who want to see if "the grass is greener on the other side" are the ones who maybe have less to lose and more to gain by being somewhere else, or doing something else - for them, change isn't necessarily going to make them worse off.
Indeed.Kelloggs wrote:As to why the hate? *shrug* I'd love to glibly answer "Trump", but I see him as either a symptom or a shining exemplar, moreso than a cause. Are rural people jealous of townies, breathing in all that pollution, while living in crowded high-rise tower blocks without enough room to swing a cat? Could be. I feel that there's some wisdom to be cained from pondering this... but I'm buggered if I can work out what it is.
I'm now thinking, off what you've said, that perhaps it might reflect the old wisdom which urges you to try things and always say "yes" to opportunities. The logic being that people always regret the opportunities they passed up, but rarely regret the opportunities they took up.
So the jealousy is not, of course, in breathing pollution or living in crap high-rise accommodation. But the jealousy could come from those who do jump at opportunity and make a change, which is really a manifestation of their own regret at perhaps just settling.
It's like, say, a guy who's worked in a factory for 20 years then, out of the blue, feeling miserable in his job, he declares "I'm going to throw it all in, and become a musician!". And everyone's conservative instincts kick in at such a seemingly mad impulsive risk. But then this guy actually ends up being a really successful musician and is loving his life, making way more money and living in a nice big house that he'd never have afforded on his factory wages.
And that might be the root of the hate. They daren't take the risk. Which is fair enough. But then they look over at those that did take the risk and succeeded - living their best life - and a jealous rage builds. Though, of course, it's not really jealousy of others, so much as it's regret at themselves. It's actually a self-loathing that's just projected externally as jealousy.
If you've gone out there, worked hard, grabbed that bull by its horns and succeeded, then you honestly haven't done a single sodding thing wrong there. No, what is actually riling me up with seeming "hatred" towards you is really the regret I have that, nope, I'm too risk averse to ever do that. So it's not really hating you, it's more hating myself for not having the balls to be like you - made all the more painful, the more I see that you're living your best life and loving every minute of it. A nagging voice inside "why can't you be like that guy? That guy's awesome and successful. While you're barely surviving, doing a shit job that you hate".
You've given me more to think about. I love a good philosophical talk. And I'm always keen to dig down and try to work out what is the underlying psychological problem with us humans.
Indeed. By that reckoning, I'd be their anti-Christ.Kelloggs wrote:I should probably not move to America. I'd get shot for thinking too much.
(No, joking aside, my most favourite person for quotation is an American: Mark Twain. Perhaps the wittiest man who ever lived. Because I'm reading quotes by him that are now over a hundred years old, and yet he genuinely gets me laughing out loud. He manages to be both clever, honest and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny with it too. His quotes like to carry a punchline, and I like that.
There's many a cruel libel applied to Americans that we shouldn't take as indisputable fact - even if, yes, it's the Americans themselves that propagate most of them.)
