Living in a city apparently dulls the mind:
…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.
Could this explain why they vote Democrat?
I think this explains why I prefer living in the ‘burbs. It really chaps me when green urban snobs start running on about “sprawl”. I find cities depressing. Too much pavement and too many people. I think suburbia is the best of both worlds. Living amongst the trees, grass and chirping birds, but with ready access to the opportunities of city life.
I dunno, there’s an unexamined assumption here about what is good for the brain. The behaviour mentioned — faster forgetting, more impulsivity — could well be simply adaptive in an environment with far more sensory data to take in, more rapidly changing circumstances, and a lack of subtle threats.
and a lack of subtle threats
Personally, I think watching out for dog poop, bums on the make for a handout and potential muggers constitutes a “subtle threat” and there’s no lack of it.
When my evil genius project gets going and I’ve attained absolute power, I’ll ban large urban areas. Particularly those that dominate the politics of a state like LA and Frisco – at the expense of the rest of the population. Those cities should be broken up into small communities and spead out in the wilderness someplace. Someplace like Alaska for example.
K, why do you hate caribou?
The idea of a bunch of effete anti-sprawl snobs complaining about having to dodge polar-bear poo…
Priceless.
The idea of a bunch of effete anti-sprawl snobs complaining about having to dodge polar-bear poo…
Priceless.
Actually, they’d have to learn new skills to avoid becoming polar bear poo.
Don’t you just love it when some city dweller tries to lecture rural people about protecting the environment and wilderness areas – something most of them have never experienced.
Eh, that’s just human nature, Larry.
Film stars with 4 restraining orders and 6 DUIs on their record lecture us about morals, priests lecture us about sex, wealthy talk-show hosts with at most one child raised by paid nannies lecture us about parenting, and community organizers and lawyers lecture us from Washington about how to start and run profitable businesses.
You know what they say about those who can’t do…
Interesting study. “Shaving down” prior to swim meets helps because the body’s hair follicles provide TOO MUCH input to the brain. Remove the follicles, and the body “feels” the water better.
This would seem to have some comparability.
I’ve found some cities to be absolutely great to live in and would take them in a heartbeat over the suburbs or country living. Paris and NYC come quickly to mind. Others, not so much, like Dallas or LA.
I would even consider that the heightened levels of sensory input leads the body to filter what details are important and need to be remembered and which don’t. (and that the interviewer and interviewee may not agree on that) Also, I would argue that it takes a great deal of self-control to not punch the idiot tourist wandering around, and impeding the flow of foot traffic, in the back of the skull.
Not that, you know, I ever considered doing that while I was in NYC.
“Could this explain why they vote Democrat?”
If the political right is going to keep on a tone
of denigrating city life, and citizens, then the
republican party will continue to become more
margnal less effective and more rural.
Cities were a social innovation that over
10 millenia have produced 90 percent of human
GDP, innovation, change, trade…
Mr Simberg may deny being a republican, but
if the republican right continues denigrating
city life as a policy platform, expect to see
the 2010 elections to be worse for the GOP
Ken —
Dog poop, muggers and bums are not SUBTLE. They are less like a leopard crawling in the grass, and more like a rhinoceros. You have to keep an eye out for the rhinoceros, but it is not hard to spot. Whereas with leopard you have to keep scanning the same patch of grass wondering if one is hiding there.
Carl is right, modern cities lack subtle threats.