I'd like to hear about how your farm was more social than a city, with higher incomes.
I can't speak to the income stuff because I also worked remote during this time, but I will say there were less divisions along economic lines out there than there are in the city, for sure. People share meat and produce with each other regardless of whether they are pulling in a bay-area tech salary or they are working HVAC for the county. We're more similar than you think around a bonfire or with fishing poles in our hands.
I live in a city now so these thoughts are comparing some of my experiences in both places:
- I spent more time with my neighbors helping each other, sitting around a fire, cooking and sharing food than I do in the city. - seasonal help was much more of a thing in the country - we'd help each other every spring with brush clearing and burning, fall harvests, culling and processing. - I'd go to bars just as much as I would here in town, and there was a coffeeshop from which I'd work (though much more rarely compared to now). - We'd drive in to town to go to sporting events or concerts together, like I drive across town now for the same thing with my friends. - we'd go hunting/fishing together, I guess sort of like I'd go paddling boarding here in town. - volunteering and charity work was very different - you'd mostly go directly help whoever needed help; there weren't as much donation drives or petitions signed.
In coming up with that little list it occurred to me that just like in a city there are people that stay to themselves, there's definitely folks in the rural areas that do that also. It might vary so much from person to person that it's not a good comparison to make between rural/urban environments.
The farm has less overall "social points", but if you subtract the antisocial behaviors your are subject to in many cities the rural areas can come out ahead.
Take all the interesting subway conversations you have had on one hand, then subtract all the times you have smelled human urine or stepped over a heroin needle.
I can promise you that you'll find antisocial behaviors in rural America.
This attitude about rural life coming from city folk is almost infantilizing. Noble savages, the farmers are in your eyes.
I grew up in rural PA. I'm not city folk, I chopped wood and raised livestock. I walked though the woods with my dog after school every day. I got third place in the county youth skeet shooting competition when I was 14. Half my friends were Pennsylvania Dutch. I live close enough to NY and Philly to have spent a lot of time there. I live in the suburbs now but I'm moving out as fast as I can now that my career is established and I can work remotely.
It's ok if you like living in a city, I'm not stopping you but it isn't for me.
It's just dishonest for you to pretend like cities are the source of problems, and not -people-. I'm assuming your village never had any issues with elders being bigoted or sexually exploitative? Cities are no less pious than the country to me.
What I find interesting is that you're in the suburbs: the worst of both worlds. Suburbs were truly designed by a demon, in my mind.
Let's say 1% of people are antisocial assholes, in a city that's tens of assholes within a 5 minute walk from your door. In a rural area that's less than 1 asshole per ten square miles.
In a rural area if your neighbor likes loud drum and bass music, you learn that if he invites you over. In NYC, you learn that your neighbor is a chain smoker as you are moving in.
Rural areas limit both total assholes in a area and the asshole blast radius.
As for the suburbs, I only moved here to work. Thanks to Covid I now have a choice where I live and I prefer the countryside.
Frankly you should be happy people want to live in the middle of nowhere, rents are high as it is.
It's already started and I hate it.