I wonder if part of it is (or originally was) the danger aspect?
If you lived rurally, particularly in the days before extensive education and general knowledge, there were a lot more things which could potentially kill or cripple you if you didn't know what you were doing. To keep safe, you relied on wisdom passed down by the local elders; wisdom which had often been paid for in blood and death over the generations. You didn't eat this color of berry; you didn't go near that kind of tree in winter; you didn't go near the river without friends. You listened to the local elders and did what they said or you often didn't survive (or you got seriously injured). And things which were passed down as wisdom didn't get challenged, because people who challenged them either died or got injured, or they were socially ostracized for going against the village wisdom and the decrees of the elders.
A progressive/exploratory mindset in all but the most curtailed circumstances could not only get you killed, it could get your friends killed. Thinking and acting conservatively could literally save your life.
If you live in the city, however, particularly a modern city in a fairly prosperous nation where there isn't too much income disparity and there are quite a lot of people's rights and (effective) rule of law, the situation is reversed. You're far less likely to be killed or crippled by exploring new things, or challenging past methodologies or mindsets. You're more likely (although of course not guaranteed) to discover something new and interesting, or create a new business, a new fashion, a new social movement. Discovering new advances is easier because you're not likely to have to deal with exploding trees or poisonous berries in your lunch. And while there are still elders and their wisdom, testing and challenging that wisdom is less likely to get you shunned by every single person you really need to be on your side in order to survive, or end up with you dying five miles from any help.
As a result, I can see there being a slight inherent bias between city and countryside mindsets, purely as a result of environmental factors. And the easier it became to travel between the two, and the more that the two could communicate and know about each other, the easier it was for people to relocate to whichever location most suited their own internal conservative/progressive preference, thus exaggerating the imbalance, and reducing the likelihood of people moving away from their own preferred areas.
Once you have that imbalance, too, it accelerates. Do you want to have a high-salary, white-collar job? Or an acting job? You're not going to find most of those in rural areas. Do you want a lifestyle where you can live on five acres and own horses, or grow your own wheat? Damn hard to do in most cities. Better pick up and move... and a lot of people want to fit in with their neighbors, so maybe they adjust their own lifestyles to be more like those of others in the area... and the stereotypes become just that tiny bit more reinforced.
28 Dec 2020, 3:21 pm
