The health and economic crisis will see some people leaving the city. Are we prepared for the radical change?
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Most of us have ancestors who swapped fields for the cement at some point. Very few of us were preceded by 20 generations of tarmac treaders. It may be that the history of mankind is the story of a two-way closed circuit between the countryside and the city. It’s no coincidence that since medieval times, it’s been fashionable for the wealthy to retire to a little countryside cottage, to enjoy a calm and peaceful way of life, as did French humanists John of Montreuil, Nicholas of Clémanges, and Gontier Col.
But today’s countryside is not what it was. Technological and economic wealth has made small rural villages places where one can live without having to endure poverty or isolation. Perhaps the big difference between the countryside and the city is a question of authority: knowing who is in charge. In the city, it’s normally the mayor, while in the countryside normally no one is in charge, but don’t you go thinking that it’s Hayek’s paradise. It’s not freedom we’re talking about, but a degree of anarchy that often degenerates into tyranny: the tyranny of the harvest, which demands superhuman efforts by the farmer; the tyranny of poisonous insects, which are oblivious to the Geneva Convention; the tyranny of the climate, which imposes its hardships mercilessly; or the tyranny of foxes, free to choose whenever they want, to breakfast on your chickens, and reasoning with them is all but impossible without the aid of a good shotgun and a lack of scruples relating to animal welfare.
The prospect of returning to the countryside may sound like failure to Millennial urbanites, who have known it only as a place of leisure and a romantic pursuit. The truth is that this countryside, of such bucolic nature, attracts us only until we discover that weeds have no respect for private property, that it’s infested with insects almost as dangerous as tax inspectors in the city, and that milk does not miraculously travel from the cow to the breakfast bowl. It’s obvious that cities have made life easier for us, but it has come with a price: If you add up the traffic fines, the rush hour protests downtown, the time wasted queuing at the supermarket, and now the coronavirus pandemic, you might prefer to go to the barn and milk a cow, although to do so you’ll need to know something about mammaries, and not the Playboy kind.
The divine mandate to rule over nature is much better understood in the countryside than in the city. This is probably why most of the apostles of new environmentalist religions live in luxurious cities and have never even set foot in the countryside. The countryside is often an arena for a duel in which only one can remain. That’s why one of the first virtues the countryside imprints is courage, followed closely by determination.
Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
