Urbanization Part III (alienation)

"The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity." -Arthur Schopenhauer
Approximately 80% of US citizens live in what has been defined as an urban area. Furthermore, 95,707,078 Americans live in one of fourteen metropolitan centers. Before I delve into my own perspective, let us accept that all that is nature ends at the entrance to any city. Humans had lived in nature for more time than we can easily quantify, suffice it to say it was many thousands of years. If you take a creature out its natural habitat it will be confused and disoriented. If you take a elephant from India and put it in the Andes, things just aren't going to work out. People are a slightly different animals in this respect. Before the headlong sprint to urbanization had begun, we had spread to just about everywhere on this entire planet (excepting the two poles). We can adapt better than the rest, in no small part because we are capable of eating a very wide variety of things. There is one very important difference between this ability to adapt and the new environments we have built in the cities however, and that is that urbanites have no interaction with where their food comes from. To them food comes from stores which you access through an imaginary device called money. This may seem to be a trivial fact, but I contend it is not. People learn two things from procuring their own food- One is you reap what you sow, and the other is you are utterly dependent on the earth for your survival. Sure, on an intellectual level they will all admit these facts, this doesn't mean that they fully grasp it though. The tragic truth is that people who live in urban areas are by virtue of their environment alienated, confused and vulnerable. One thing that has been proven time and time again is that when people are in such a state of mind as this they are easily manipulated. No matter how much they may be opposed to the power structure they live under, their complete dependency on it for food and electricity means any criticism is hypocritical. The old saying 'all roads lead to Rome' is an excellent description of how cities operate. They suck all nourishment from the surrounding countryside to satiate the demand for food, building materials and entertainment. The bigger the city, the more land needed to support it. Warfare, Bubonic Plague, Cholera and Influenza had for centuries been the only check on urban growth. These hindrances have been largely removed lately, thus are we seeing the population of cities skyrocketing with careless abandon. The primary premise of Marx's observation was that the urban worker, or proletariat, was alienated from his work, he didn't grasp himself as an integral part of the larger social machine. Which as a result made him easily exploited by the moneyed classes. What he apparently failed to grasp was that as long as people are forced to live in the fundamentally chaotic and inexplicable city they will never be able to fully justify or enjoy their existence. Thus is the foundation for any urbanized utopia completely untenable. Communism tried very hard to create a classless society, but that is just not how any city has ever functioned for any length of time. Hierarchy and urbanization have a symbiotic relationship that for very logical reasons will never be severed. The result of this is that class conflict is little more than a dog chasing it's own tail, then marveling at the pain when it finally catches and bites it. I've seen many people in my life denounce all the other people in their area, as if they were the lone sane person in a huge mental asylum. Someone once commented that "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible", such indeed seems to be the mindset of the urbanized homo sapien. It is a perfect simile because people, like snowflakes, are individually appealing, but collectively become a cascading chaos that consumes all in its path. Because they are living in a limbo which no one can comprehend or excuse, they turn with one body and mind to the demagogues and politicians, in the desperate hope that someone has an answer to the question they are all afraid to ask- why are we living like this? Such is my perspective and I make no apologies for it. I have met many a fine individual that lives behind the concrete curtain, and do not have anything but compassion for all of them, individually. Collectively though, they are nothing more than a bacteria growing on the face of an otherwise sanitary globe. I can't believe that they are in essence bad for what they are doing, merely lost in the wilderness of man made edifices that force them to accept lies that make it possible for them to survive. Many of the things that people cling most passionately to (patriotism, religion etc.) are at their core idiotic notions made to placate the masses and fill the hole created by removing them from the land. Cheap substitutes for the one thing that can never be imported to a city, a meaningful and worthwhile life of harmony. Once more I refer to one of the greats, Voltaire, to make my point- "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities". I make these points not to criticize anyone or to be some arrogant misanthrope, but to take a stab at the cause of the malady that is making our whole planet sick. If you doubt the disease I suggest you take a visit to the Favelas of Sao Paolo, the shantytowns of Lagos or the endless slums of Mumbai. You will find there millions who every day come face to face with the brutality and injustice of this system.