> This sort of thing is fascinating to me. I think that somehow, humanity needs to transition to a political structure where cities are the primary unit of governance, rather than nations. That won't happen quickly or soon, but someday...
> More immediately, it's becoming increasingly clear that the "polarization" that we're seeing in U.S. politics isn't really between left and right or Ds and Rs. It's between the urban and rural. I'd love to see a version of this that drew boundaries between urban centres and the countryside. That would give us a way to start thinking about how to craft policy that recognizes the differences between them.
Well rural-urban differentiation is certainly not something new. Marin Držić, a Croatian renaissance playwright, and his novella "Novela od Stanca" comes to mind since it was in my reading materials in high school..
The story takes place on a carnival night when the old peasant Stanca comes from the hinterland to the city of Dubrovnik to sell his wares where he rests at the fountain. There he gets made fun of by the youth who assure him that fairies will come and rejuvenate him. The fairies are ofcourse masked carnival goers who paint his face black with soot and trick him from his goats and cheese he wanted to sell. He points out the nuances in the mentality of the city and the village and other cultural differences be it in speech, mannerisms, thinking or expectations.
But to get to my point, the urban-rural conflict is certainly not something new. It's probably present since the first cities and it's more got to do with ingroup-outgroup mentality than anything else. Crafting specific policy in that sense which explicitly recognizes the percieved differences would certainly not be wise and would possibly be ridden with fallacies. Also one could argue that it already is implicitly recognized which brings its own set of questions..
> More immediately, it's becoming increasingly clear that the "polarization" that we're seeing in U.S. politics isn't really between left and right or Ds and Rs. It's between the urban and rural. I'd love to see a version of this that drew boundaries between urban centres and the countryside. That would give us a way to start thinking about how to craft policy that recognizes the differences between them.
Well rural-urban differentiation is certainly not something new. Marin Držić, a Croatian renaissance playwright, and his novella "Novela od Stanca" comes to mind since it was in my reading materials in high school..
The story takes place on a carnival night when the old peasant Stanca comes from the hinterland to the city of Dubrovnik to sell his wares where he rests at the fountain. There he gets made fun of by the youth who assure him that fairies will come and rejuvenate him. The fairies are ofcourse masked carnival goers who paint his face black with soot and trick him from his goats and cheese he wanted to sell. He points out the nuances in the mentality of the city and the village and other cultural differences be it in speech, mannerisms, thinking or expectations.
But to get to my point, the urban-rural conflict is certainly not something new. It's probably present since the first cities and it's more got to do with ingroup-outgroup mentality than anything else. Crafting specific policy in that sense which explicitly recognizes the percieved differences would certainly not be wise and would possibly be ridden with fallacies. Also one could argue that it already is implicitly recognized which brings its own set of questions..