Wisedigs

Everyone has heard of culture shock: a state of bewilderment and distress experienced by an individual who is suddenly exposed to a new, strange, or foreign social and cultural environment [dictionary.com]. Generally, it is assumed one goes through this upon leaving their country of residence. Or possibly upon discovering a strange tribe or rural village with unusual habits.

How about traveling from a smaller town, to a bigger town? The feeling shouldn’t really be described as a “shock”, its more like “disgusting”. What the heck am I on about?

In small cities, there is a higher chance of encountering a unique personality vs a personality witnessed before. Everyone is content, people are not too keen on outdoing each other in every department. The environment is relaxed and non-toxic.

Enter the big city mentality: everyone is better than everybody else, they will lie, cheat, steal, do whatever is necessary to protect their image of being the best. Too busy chasing after money to worry about correcting that mentality, or to worry about raising useful offspring. From this we can conclude that big city folks are dumber, in general, than their small city counterparts. It’s simple: when you use up precious brain processing power worrying about how to one-up your neighbour, you end up shutting down the rational and the logical part of the brain. Your brain is no longer giving enough time to other processing units, there is only one unit constantly active using up all the juice. “Oh look she just got a new car” “oh look he just got that $150 haircut” “oh look their house is shinier than ours” “oh look his kids are wearing designer diapers”… It never ends. Everything will be evaluated, judged, and compared to whatever they have.

I actually wouldn’t mind all of this, if people feel like they have to prove they are better than someone else, they have already proved to everyone observing that they clearly are not. What I do mind is the fact that you can’t befriend these people. How can you be close friends with someone who judges the colour of your socks to determine whether or not they are in a higher class than you? “Stop looking at my socks you fool!”. Or one who will lie to you to cover up their shortcomings? Or one who will say anything and everything to their friends, even if it means exposing all of your dirty laundry? I am talking about your best friend. So-called.

It does have its advantages though and supporters of the “big city” can you tell all about them.

It isn’t 100% of the population of a big city that thinks like this, you will find pockets of intelligence dispersed throughout. You just have to be picky. And careful.