Why Are People Grumpy In Dense Population While Rural Is Friendly?
Why is it that people who live rural are (generally) more friendly and helpful than people who live in population dense areas? As the population density thickens, it seems as though more and more people have ‘drawn in’ to themselves and are less friendly or helpful to others. Many of them become downright grumpy (or worse).
While there are certainly exceptions (not everyone follows this pattern), my life experience indicates that it is definitely the general majority.
Why is that?
We have been living in a rural area for going on a year now, and this time period has been the first we’ve lived outside of any fairly dense population. Although never having lived in ‘the city’, we’ve lived in a number of various densely populated metropolitan areas, partly because we’ve grown up there (Mrs.J and I), and partly because we’ve moved around several times over the years to other similar regions (career choices). I’ve even worked near ‘downtown’ in a major city for more than a decade during a previous career. The way that people are and the way that they behave (in these regions) has simply been a part of my normal life experience.
Having finally moved to a rural area, the stark contrast of human behavior characteristics are quite evident (and refreshing). So far, most all the people we’ve met are friendly, mostly outgoing and not seemingly ‘afraid’ to talk to others, happy to offer help, they can take care of themselves, they are not jumbled up with ‘technology overload’, they don’t need to ‘Google’ something on their smartphone to know the answers to the most important things that matter, they are seemingly not too concerned about criminal activity (the town doesn’t even have a PD), they leave their doors unlocked, there’s no one walking around with their pants hanging from their ass, they actually smile, and they seem to be happy with what they have…
By contrast, in a typical population dense region, someone might be a multimillionaire but they’re not happy because they don’t have an even nicer car or even bigger house (etc..). Population dense regions contain people who are generally more ‘closed off’, introverted, aggressive, all about themselves, often phony, are always in a hurry, buried in their smart phones, they’re often rude, grumpy, or inconsiderate, they always have to be ‘first’, and will ‘stab you in the back’ when it suits them to do so. These same people are often fine within their own sphere of friends or family – but out in public it’s quite a different story.
This might not be ‘you’, and certainly not everyone is as bad as portrayed here, but I think you know what I mean…
While I have many of my own presumptions as to why this is, I’m curious to hear your opinions. It might make for an interesting discussion especially when considering the behavior of these same people under ‘real’ duress or even SHTF.
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