Posted on 01/11/2009 5:17:25 PM PST by SolitaryMan
THE CITY HAS always been an engine of intellectual life, from the 18th-century coffeehouses of London, where citizens gathered to discuss chemistry and radical politics, to the Left Bank bars of modern Paris, where Pablo Picasso held forth on modern art. Without the metropolis, we might not have had the great art of Shakespeare or James Joyce; even Einstein was inspired by commuter trains. (Yuko Shimizu for the Boston Globe)
And yet, city life isn't easy. The same London cafes that stimulated Ben Franklin also helped spread cholera; Picasso eventually bought an estate in quiet Provence. While the modern city might be a haven for playwrights, poets, and physicists, it's also a deeply unnatural and overwhelming place.
Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Mr. niteowl77
It figures, did a search with no hits...
Maybe this explains why large population centers frequently vote DemocRAT.
clearly it’s causing me to see double, with a delay. Could have sworn I read this very post about two days ago.
Me. I am headed for the south pacific. US is over the edge and going down the tubes. The Obamans will complete the mission of destroying capitalism within a year.
Another thing that hurts the brain of urban dwellers is blunt force trauma, administered by Mr. Mugger.
Additionally, the rapid twisting of the head from one side to another in a continuing effort to spot Mr. Mugger also strains numerous parts of the brain.
Thanks to the Internet, one can share ideas with members of one’s ‘invisible colleagues’ around the world. Unlimited phone calls help too. ;-)
I am a child of the big city (Lower East Side of Detroit).
Since leaving I have lived in rural Ohio and rural Alabama.
I will never go back to the big city.
I wonder if this would apply to heavily populated nations that aren’t necessarily urban.
Bump....
"Norway rats have been bred in scientific laboratories since the middle
nineteenth century. Artificial selection has elicited-partly
through unconscious choices by laboratory personnel-a strain of rats
that is calmer, tamer, less aggressive, more fertile, and with significantly
smaller brains than their wild ancestors. All this is a convenience
for those experimenting on rats.
In a now-classic experiment, the psychologist John B. Calhoun let
Norway rats reproduce in an enclosure of fixed size until the number
of occupants, and therefore the population density, was very high. He
made sure, however, to provide everyone with enough to eat. What
happened?
As the population increased, a range of unusual behavior was
noted. Nursing mothers became somehow distracted, rejecting and
abandoning their infants, who would wither away and die. Despite the
surplus of ordinary food, the bodies of the newborn would be greedily
eaten by passersby. An adult female in heat or estrus would be pursued
relentlessly, not by one, but by a pack of males. She had no hope
of escape, or even sanctuary. Obstetrical and gynecological disorders
proliferated, and many females died giving birth, or from complications
soon after. When crowded together, the rats lost their inclination
or ability to build nests for themselves and their young; their desultory
constructions were amateurish and ineffective.
Among the males Calhoun distinguished four types: the dominant,
highly aggressive ones who, although "the most normal," would occasionally
go "berserk"; the homosexuals who made sexual advances
to adults and juveniles of both sexes (but, significantly, only to non ovulating
females): their invitations were generally accepted, or at
least tolerated, but they were frequently attacked by the dominant
males; a wholly passive population that "moved through the community
like somnambulists" with nearly complete social disorientation;
and a subgroup Calhoun calls the "probers," uninvolved in the struggle
for status but hyperactive, hypersexual, bisexual, and cannibalistic.
(from Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan-Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors 1992 pages 184-185)
“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”
Lucky for us that the The Great and Powerful 0 has arrived on the scene with enough hope and change for the densest - in every sense - of populations.
Mr. niteowl77
Cities attract people who can’t survive on their own, and the predators who prey on the weak. The overwhelming power of the urban vote is going to destroy all freedom in this nation.
I very much prefer a rural environment.
Perhaps there is a quiet wisdom in the phrase “Ghetto Rats”?
Just wondering.
Jefferson thought large cities would have deleterious effects, Calhoun found such effects in rats, and the common language coined “Ghetto Rats”. Hmmmn - might there be a pattern here?
Perhaps we should sell off the huge gooberment land holdings for home sites for the American people, rather than regulating ourselves, and our children, into the teeming urban centers so beloved by the socialism impaired?
I can sense towns and cities when I first enter the city limits. I can’t really explain the feeling. It is something like a mild sense of being crowded or crushed. It makes me uneasy. I love the open countryside.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.