Amerika

Humanity can survive when it consists of independent farmers and artisans who produce as independent businesses. Once it becomes a labor pool, it forms cities, and then the neurosis of reality mediated by peer pressure kicks in.

It turns out that cities also deplete your gut microbiome through lack of exposure to crucial early influences:

The study compared blood samples from urban infants with those from infants in a farming community, specifically the Old Order Mennonites (OOM) of New York’s Finger Lakes region — known for their low rates of allergies. Researchers found that while urban infants had higher levels of the aggressive Th2 cells, OOM infants had more regulatory T cells that help keep the immune system in balance and reduce the likelihood of allergic responses.

While additional research is needed to identify a possible cause, Jarvinen-Seppo speculates that differences in the development of the gut microbiome between the two populations, and more exposure to “healthy” bacteria in rural children, may be a factor.

“The farming environment, which is rich in microbial exposure, appears to support the development of a more tolerant immune system. Meanwhile, the urban environment may promote the emergence of immune cells that are primed for allergic inflammation,” said Jarvinen-Seppo.

Not only that, but people in cities have more mental illness possibly because cities attract the weak and drive everyone else insane:

In both cases, increased biomarkers of mental illnesses such as major depression have been observed. Additionally, applied human research emphasizing the emotional impact of environmental threats associated with urban habitats is considered. Subjects evaluated in an inner-city hospital reveal the impact of combined specific genetic vulnerabilities and heightened stress responses in the expression of posttraumatic stress disorder. Finally, algorithm-based models of cities have been developed utilizing population-level analyses to identify risk factors for psychiatric illness. Although complex, the use of multiple research approaches, as described herein, results in an enhanced understanding of urbanization and its far-reaching effects–confirming the importance of continued research directed toward the identification of putative risk factors associated with psychiatric illness in urban settings.

The proof of that being driven to insanity is found in the effect of cities in reducing attention span through constant irrelevant external stimulus:

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. According to the United Nations, that urban head count tallies up to more than half of the world’s 6.7 billion people. While city life may offer many benefits—ready access to social and cultural events, more employment opportunities, and the promise of higher living standards, as examples—research does show that city life can have drawbacks. For one thing, it’s hard on the brain.

Scientists who have begun to look at how the city affects our brains have uncovered some surprising findings, including evidence that city life can impair basic mental processes, such as memory and attention. A study conducted by University of Michigan researchers in 2008 found that simply spending a few minutes on a busy city street can affect the brain’s ability to focus and to help us manage self-control.

That peer pressure creates social stress as people are spammed with the needs, desires, and neuroses of others:

Living in urban areas has been associated with increased risk for mental disorders, including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. Research using functional magnetic resonance imaging has identified changes in the brain indicating that urban upbringing and city living are linked to social stress processing.

Pollution in cities from internal combustion engines via benzene also reduces intellectual ability which influences risk of mental decay:

Benzene is a natural constituent of petroleum, so cities, which concentrate combustion through industrial activity, transit and heating, generate a great deal. In addition to causing cancer, theory also predicts that benzene may chronically affect the human brain, even at a low level (<5 µg m−3). In this study, we estimated associations of ambient benzene exposure before 2010 with brain disorders (261,909 participants) and brain imaging phenotypes (23,911 participants) in urban residents in the UK (enrolled during 2006–2010 and followed up to 2022). The results show that ambient benzene (per interquartile range increment of 0.30 µg m−3) is associated with elevated risks of dementia (hazard ratio, 1.18; 95% confidence intervals, 1.09 to 1.28), major depression (1.09; 1.03 to 1.14) and anxiety disorder (1.16; 1.10 to 1.22). Neuroimaging analysis highlighted the associations with brain structures, including the thalamus and the superior temporal gyrus.

This results in people in cities having a higher rate of mental illness than those who live more sanely:

Despite the challenges that arise from differences between studies as regards to the number and relative size of urbanicity levels, a linear association was observed between the logarithm of the odds of risk for schizophrenia and urbanicity. The risk for schizophrenia at the most urban environment was estimated to be 2.37 times higher than in the most rural environment.

A lack of social cohesion coupled with rampant crime produces psychotic children in cities:

Low social cohesion and crime victimization in the neighborhood partly explain why children in cities have an elevated risk of developing psychotic symptoms.

This is unfortunate because most of the first world lives in urban areas and is suffering mental decay:

One hundred years ago, 20% of people lived in urban areas; by 2010, more than 50% of the global population lived in a city. By 2030, it is estimated that 70% of people will live in urban areas (World Health, 2012). In the United States and Canada, for example, 80% of the population lives in urban dwellings (UN-DESA, 2011; Schewenius et al., 2014).

The distracting pace of being overwhelmed by the needs of an overpopulated area creates a shorter attention span among city-dwellers:

After undergoing a battery of psychological tests, the people who walked the city streets scored significantly lower on attention and working-memory tests compared to those participants who ambled in the park. The researchers concluded that the stimuli of city life — traffic, neon lights, sirens, and pedestrian-packed sidewalks — direct our attention to things that are compelling, but only fleetingly so, and that this alteration of focus can occur at a pace that leaves us mentally exhausted.

“On a busy city street, it’s probably more adaptive to have a shorter attention span, ” says Sara Lazar, PhD, an HMS instructor in psychology and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Laboratory for Neuroscientific Investigation of Meditation. “If you’re too fixated on something, you might miss a car coming around the corner and fail to jump out of the way. ”

Air pollution creates inflammation, linked to physical and mental disease:

In conclusion, our study provided novel evidence that PM2.5 exposure in long-term, mid-term, and short-term periods could significantly elevate small-airway inflammation represented by CANO.

This inflammation occurs at a chronic level and is usually undetectable but produces long-term health problems:

Sometimes, low-grade inflammation persists, unchecked, for months or even years. This is called chronic inflammation. Unlike acute inflammation that helps your body heal and then turns off, chronic inflammation does not switch off, which can damage the body’s tissues. This affects just about every part of the body and is a precursor to chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and more.

As part of civilization decay, we eschew direct responsibility for function, like running a farm or making items by hand, and replace it with jobs, subsidies, and peer pressure, then wonder why our lifestyles are killing us. This is why our best civilizations die after a relatively short period.

Tags: cities, crime, gut microbiome, mental health, mental illness, psychosis, urbanization