I live in a condo, in a city. My nearest neighbors are about 12 inches of sheetrock and less than adequate sound proofing away. The rest of my neighbors share hallways, rooftop, garage, streets and freeways with me. I have friends who are way the f**k out there. So far it actually gets dark, I mean dark when we drive out to see them in the evening. As best I can tell their nearest neighbors are just a distant light at night, they are better acquainted with the surrounding wildlife than their neighbors (landlord excepted). To be honest I couldn't really tell you which I prefer - having grown up in a detached house in a small village where you could go out at night and be on your own reasonably far from the madding crowd.

But there is something to be said for living in a city. Living in together in a crowded space we hear each others slamming doors and when the neighbors are fighting on the street you can stand by the window and hear every word of the "you said, I said" show (yes, I did that tonight). So we get to share each others experiences to some degree, we get to complain about each others foibles and basically we all have to "muck in together" to get through life, or hit the high road for somewhere else. The only problem is those people who just don't get the "together" part. Even though you might technically own several hundred square feet of a city, you really can't treat it as your own. The boundaries of everyone else's space encroach so far into yours that in reality you barely have space to go to the bathroom in peace, let alone just do your own thing and expect to be uninfluenced by the chaos of city life around you.

I suppose, when it comes down to it, some people need some more breathing space than others. I think crazy, rude, obnoxious, and inconsiderate people piss me off just as much as anyone else, but I just have come to expect that's the average human condition. For that reason I just put up with it. I listen to "their shit" while simultaneously ignoring it. If I caught myself caring too much about it I don't think it would work for me. That's not to say I don't care about anything, everyone has a set of things they care about, its just its a different set of things. Ultimately I may find that the set of things I care about are not getting high enough priority in my life - that'll be the day I might decide to leave my city, county, state or country. To the extent you are more isolated from the powers that be, I suspect country living just gives everyone a lot more elbow room to care about stuff and not be influenced by everyone else's (inherently selfish - its the human condition) cares.

I start to wonder if there is some theory of peaceful human existence. One where we are able to live sustainably, and be in proximity to and being dependent on sufficiently few people that life will be inherently peaceful and stressfree. At such a point will people seek out the maximum distance from their neighbors, or will they still clamor together in cities while trying to maintain some semblance of isolation?

For me living in a city is an exercise of tolerance - you really don't have the option to run away and hide unless you're ready to just ignore the world around you. And if you do choose to complain or try to change your surroundings then you've also got to be ready to face the world around you. The two seems to be about as equally hard to pull off... ignore and never complain about the world around you regardless of what it throws at you, or face the world and meet its complaints on a daily basis. As Gozer said in Ghostbusters, "Choose your destructor!". You could do worse than get the Stay Puft Marshmallow man.

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