Humans are living increasingly smaller lives. While jet travel and the internet give humans the illusion that the world is their oyster, their actual routine physical lives have become smaller and smaller, both metaphorically and geographically. A few generations ago, nearly half of Americans had a physical connection to the land through farming. (True in large parts of the entire west, not just America). People rode horses, they planted crops, they tended chickens and sheep, they could distinguish one tree from another by name. They roamed long distances physically, whether on the farm or in the hills or valleys, to tend to chores and farms, or to hunt. Part of our modern attraction to the Old West is our fascination with the idea that people back then actually knew the names of the mountains and rivers that surrounded them! They could cook their own food on a fire, repair their own clothing and machinery, go from A to B without GPS, and shit in the woods.
Consider the typical modern urbanite like myself, likely raised in a small town or the suburbs where it was normal to walk to school, walk to work, walk to visit friends. She may have gone sledding in the hills near home, shot BB guns nearby, played hide and seek in a gulley, swam in the river, all without parental permission or even parental knowledge. The physical reach was broad, an understanding of the reality of nature and its gravity tangible and persuasive. This exploration of nature created problems that she needed to solve, like how to I get home with a broken ankle, or how do I avoid getting poison ivy next time, or how long can I stay outside in the snow before my toes start to hurt? Or when the big kids come down into the gulley, how do I get the F out of here before they grab us and thump on us? Or, what do I do with a twelve-hour day and no computer?
Physical wandering does more than aid in problem solving, it expands a person's reach into the lives of others. When you get your milk from the milk guy and get your paper from the paper lady and pick your cherries from Red's orchard and you raise money for the school play by going door-to-door selling candy bars to people you've never met, you meet these people in real life and are less likely to attribute ill political will to them, even if you disagree with them, because your physical roaming creates and reinforces a true interdependence and interconnectivity. Even if Red voted for Nixon, you won't want him to be destroyed, because after all his cherries are a good price and his stories are funny, and his wife Jan is a hoot and a community leader. Even if Tammy loves Barry Goldwater and you don't, you can appreciate her, because whenever you have the candybar fundraiser, she buys twenty of them and tells you about her son who is in a band in Los Angeles. Even if Dr. Taylor listens to conspiracy theories on AM radio, you won't write him off completely because when you hurt your elbow playing basketball and he happened to be at the game watching, he took you to his clinic and gave you free medical care.
Or, you simply wind up having lunch with someone unexpected. Your friend Sally's mom's boyfriend says some weird stuff over bologna that you have to deal with, because your parents couldn't censor him, because they didn't know he existed, and therefore couldn't and didn't try to protect you from his stories.
This person (me), once young, now an urbanite, travels greater distances by car to get to work each day, but lives in a bubble relatively speaking, listening to talk radio or podcasts that reinforce existing political or cultural beliefs. Even when she travels abroad, she goes from city to city, going great distances to have the same types of experiences that she has at home (museums, restaurants, cultural events, films, sporting events.) The soccer game in Paris is a lot like the soccer game in Salt Lake City, other than the language spoken. People in New York City and people in Paris and people in San Francisco are a lot more like the urbanite than if the urbanite simply talked to some folks from Vernal, Utah, or Box Elder. An even more adventurous experience would be to walk ten feet away from the apartment and talk to the homeless person who lives on the grass out front.
The fruit man and the paper lady are gone, or are two to three to four steps removed, so that the consequences of political decisions are removed from sight -- now the urbanite sees Red's Facebook post about Trump, takes action to have Red destroyed economically, but never has to face Red or the consequences of Red going out of business, because Red is three layers removed from the grocery store where urbanite shops, and there are fifteen other interstate or international vendors ready to take Red's place when he goes under.
The urbanite reads about Italy and France and Russia and in her mind she understands the earth much moreso than her grandmother did, but on her way to work she drives 40 MPH in a climate-controlled vehicle and doesn't see or feel the community right around her on both sides of the street as she speeds to work. Meanwhile, her friends are pre-selected and pre-screened as sharing similar political values. They meet for coffee or drinks and all nod and grow appalled at the same stimuli. Perhaps fifty yards down the street is someone who disagrees with them, but in a way that would be meaningful to both parties, but they will never meet in real life because neither really exists outside of her apartment or condo except through the internet.
In other words, if there were a circle showing a person's physical reach, the modern person's circle would be huge due to jet travel, but if we removed vacations and work-related conferences, and drew circles to simply show physical space traveled by foot each day, the modern urbanite's range might be 1 or 2 blocks per day, in a circle around the living space, and day after day that same space would be traveled. That same person's grandfather probably had a circle 10 or 20 miles in every direction.
There's nothing holy about farms or wrong about cities. Cities are great places. Lots of stupid things have happened on farms. But there has been a loss of real interdependence at the local level. Now we are dependent upon a worker in China or Detroit or Italy who is nameless and faceless, she makes our garments and our toys and cars, but we don't know her, can't see her, so we can easily make decisions that harm her without knowing or caring.
The modest suggestion in this regard is to try to expand our physical reach each day, spend a bit more time on the bus or train and a bit less in the car, try walking down different streets once in a while, say "hi," strike up a conversation, listen to something you disagree with, help someone whose beliefs are alien to yours, spend more time in the real physical world and less time in the pretend virtual world.
