On Cities and Civilization

I think that Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he argued that American society should be built around the yeoman farmer.

It is no surprise to me that cities have long "enjoyed" a very mixed reputation, one entirely and wholly deserved as well as justified, as being both centers of power and cesspools of degeneracy.

The phenomenon I call "Empire", today manifest in both literal and Cultural Marxist forms, requires centralization to achieve its control. This means that cities (and towns, etc.) are key to its schemes. There is a reason for this requirement, and it is because cities have a quality that any entity seeking to create a cult must possess: the power to isolate and sever from reality those it preys upon.

Those who live on the land, such as farmers and ranchers, live in the real world. Nomads do also. You rarely, if ever, see the sort of nonsense commonplace to Empire's cult fronts (such as today's Social Justice cult) where people grow their own food or hunt routinely to get it. You don't see obsessions with pointless and superfluous things (such as fashion) when you are concerned with keeping your sheep alive long enough to sheer them for their wool so you can make cloth with it.

In short, cities are cesspools of degeneracy because they are divorced from reality. When you are not confronted with the necessities of life on a direct and immediate basis (i.e. daily), and you have no experience or memory of what they are, it is very easy to become convinced of unreal delusions because you are insulated from the consequences of those delusions.

I do NOT adhere to the insistence that cities are civilization. Cities are technologies, and when strictly confined to lawful uses they are a good thing to have, much like one uses fire for various things but only under strict control. When you allow a city to outside of the specific functions that it is good at doing, you open the door to insanity and degeneracy of a culture and thus of nations.

I say that Civilization comes from being in accord with reality. Locking oneself away in a city run amok, as Social Justice cultists lock themselves away in their "safe spaces", does nothing more than create echo chambers that produce insanity and self-destruction. Empire wants to consume that which is real, so such things are pleasing to it; reality, however, is sovereign and inevitably destroys that which is unreal.

Civilization, therefore, is best served when cities are reduced to the absolute number required, and then confined only to those functions that only a city can fulfill, and then only allowing mission-critical personnel to reside indefinitely- everyone else commutes, and only admitting those with lawful business within. Cities, quite frankly, should be treated like nuclear reactors- and when no longer required, shut down and dismantled.

You don't have Social Justice when the population is spread out and living in reality in rural communities. You don't have Marxism. You don't have many other manifestations of Empire, and what does come up is easily put down by right-thinking neighbors. Civilization, therefore, doesn't need urbanization; urbanization needs Civilization to justify its existence.