The Metropolis and Mental Life

Living in a urban setting can be very strenuous on a persons mental health. Constantly being surrounded by people, noise, commotion, and crowds can cause one to feel stifled, anxious, and useless. A person uses less mental energy to process lasting impressions, ones that happen more often and regularly. It takes more energy to process the rapid changes that occur during urban life. Even walking from block to block takes more mental energy than someone living in a small town walking down their street. A person in a small town knows all their neighbors and surrounding very well whereas a person in the city could have the same neighbor for ten years and not recognize them from a hole in the wall.

Since city dwellers have to process so much more and are consuming more mental energy they tend to react on a lesser emotional level than those who live in rurality. They are less sensitive and more removed from their personality. This removal from emotional reactions has given city dwellers a reputation for being cold hearted, rude, obnoxious, and even violent sometimes. In reality they are just adapting to city life, to the sensory overload and can no longer process stimuli in the same way as a small town person.

City dwellers and small town folk often share a mutual aversion to one another. This seems to have a lot to do with them not understanding each others reactions to situations. City dwellers have to have less emotional reactions in order to survive the constant stimuli from their environment whereas small town people can react emotionally becasue they are receiving less stimuli. They are all just surviving in their environments.