On Metropolis
How to Live Well in the Modern City
Metropolis has its own charm. Each in its own particular way.
When we hear the term, what comes to mind is the image of skyscrapers, cars running on the road in their hectic jam, millions of lives held together by two opposing pressures — the hope of a better life and the basic mechanics of survival. Both, at the same time.
Ask anyone who was born in such an environment, or has lived in it for a very long time, and they will likely admit to a quiet draining. A hidden desire to escape. At the very least, the wish to take a break — to a small town along a mountain creek, or a coastal boulevard.
Yet for those far from the noise of car horns, far from the countless mega-buildings raised in the International Style; the metropolis still appears as a sign of the advancement of humanity. The progression of mankind.
Which is not far from the truth. The metropolis is, in many ways, a direct by-product of the past two centuries of industrial revolution. But the price most people pay for it — is soul siphoning.
The phrase may sound exaggerated. But the phenomenon — of millions of people coexisting in dense proximity, and yet the loneliness crisis that has arisen alongside that density, and the never-ending pursuit of capitalist accumulation that defines modern metropolitan life — is not far from the experience of a soul being drained by the essence of the big city. New York. London. Tokyo. Whatever name you give it.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have no intention to revolt against the nature of the human condition — in this case, the form of capitalist economy, and the many modern phenomena that have grown out of the psychology of mankind. At the largest scale, it is what it is.
But for the metropolitan reader who is done with endlessly drifting through the city without joy, unable to find beauty in it — I think this piece will give you something worth carrying:
A way of living in the big city differently than others. And of finding the hidden beauty within it.
