[swayvil]

Ignoring 99% of your reality frees up tons of attention for attention-demanding tasks like engineering and officework. Not to mention somewhat insulating you from the toxicity of urban life.

It's an attention-management-strategy that's popular and efficient for cultures like ours.

Of course it's evil as hell too. So we compensate with an appropriately self-serving "well they're just dumb animals" narrative.