| As soon as your middle-class farmer children finish high school they will be 1 of 3 (descending, from most likely to least): - Leaving for the big city/college - Staying in your small town, but slowly becoming helpless as they fall into bad crowds, bad habits, or both - Staying in your small town, but successfully continuing the way of life It is unsustainable in its current form, unless you inoculate your children against modern ideas and technology (like the Amish) or make it more desirable for people to stay. I will point to European villages as a counter example. And then I will point to: lack of cultural homogeneity, the tenuous nature of living in the United States without a stable and growing source of income, and a lack of spiritually-enriching outlets as reasons why people move out of small U.S. towns towards cities. The first leads to unstable communities. The second leads to subconscious unease and anxiety. The last leads to a restlessness which to leads to various mental ailments like consumerism, that can only be fulfilled by staying on the hedonic treadmill. I posit that it is not cities that have all the opportunities, but that it is small communities that lack them. |