I'll confirm this from my experience when I lived in NYC. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote :
You are extrapolating for about two hundred million of us (urban dwellers). There is no constant low level fear here. As usual, I don't know anyone who thinks the way you assume they do. My daughter lives in a big city, and goes drinking with her buddies in sketchy neighborhoods, sometimes - no low level fear, there. I blew a tire in the evening in Philadelphia, and pulled off the freeway, into their worst slums. Just changed the tire and got going again. And please don't tell me you won't get mugged in some parts of Paris, as easily as you would in DC. You make Europe out to be some kind of wonderland, but just like your meditation beliefs, something else has to suffer, as a result. The world is not some zero sum game, dude, so that if you discover something cool, someone, someplace, or something else has to lose, as a consequence. It doesn't work that way. All these imaginary people that you accuse of being small minded? A fantasy. All the 'cult behavior' that you enjoy studying here? Imaginary. These are just games you must play with your ego, to feel better about yourself. Are you capable of enjoying someone, something, or someplace, simply for its own sake, and not only because you perceive it to be somehow 'better'? That's a question you need to ask yourself. It would improve your writing, too, if you ever got past it. You're welcome.
