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I think life is what happens to us. It is a buzz. A flow of sound, light, feeling.
And yet people around here seem to enjoy their city more because they can abstractly compare it to other cities on measures like density, land area, percentages of minority groups.A very posh, detached sort way of living, when living breathing people like these minority groups are just treated as a fact to support one's need to feel they live in a great place. It is so tiring. There is a vague undercurrent of insecurity and hostility to it, over-concern with self rather than a self-forgetting directedness outwards into the actual sticky, warm human goo that a real life pulses with. So many posts with dozens of pages where all people do is reference statistics and sub-statistics and analysis of statistical backgrounds and it all comes across as really insecure.
Am I the only one who feels like this? Is this my own personal problem? I think its worth talking about.
I grew up looking at maps and reading the World Book encyclopedia. At 64, I have now been in all 50 states (lived in 7) and around 45 foreign countries on 5 continents with plans to expand that list. I suspect there are others like me who post here. While I sometimes feel I’m a bit old for this, I don’t feel insecure about who I am and where I live. It’s harmless fun to come onto this forum to make . . . yes, sometimes silly arguments . . . but I frequently learn a few new facts at the same time from people I suspect are fellow geography and urban nerds.
If it’s “so tiring” to the OP, then don’t participate.
I mean, you're not wrong that the incessant attempts to rank cities above one another get tiring, but I don't think statistics themselves are inherently useless when applied to human societies. They tell stories concisely. If you've never been to a city, knowing its population, population density, population growth rate and how it's changed over time, unemployment rate, median income, etc. can give you a basic idea of what it would feel like.
I mean, you're not wrong that the incessant attempts to rank cities above one another get tiring, but I don't think statistics themselves are inherently useless when applied to human societies. They tell stories concisely. If you've never been to a city, knowing its population, population density, population growth rate and how it's changed over time, unemployment rate, median income, etc. can give you a basic idea of what it would feel like.
but but but but.. New York City is #1!!! Because I said so!
anyway, I like to think of myself as a bit of a data nerd, although I'm not nearly as much of one as some people I know.
I feel like this is a website for data nerds though, so that's kinda what you're gonna see. I come here just to read about stats and discussion/stories about places I might be interested in living in.
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