What makes rural areas retarded?

[Rye]

It's often said around here that rural areas are more intolerant, racist, religious, generally ignorant etc, and while I would agree with that conclusion, what're the reasons behind it?

[LadyTevar]

Homogenous population. Cultural isolation (never leaving to experiencing other cultures). General human 'us-vs-them' mindset.


Gimme some time, I'll think of other traits from my hometown....

[Darth Wong]

It's often said around here that rural areas are more intolerant, racist, religious, generally ignorant etc, and while I would agree with that conclusion, what're the reasons behind it?

Let's list some biggies:

1. Lack of diversity. Rural areas tend to be monochromatic in every way. Without the sheer size of a city to attract people from diverse ethnicities, cultures, and lifestyles, a rural area tends to have exactly one type of person living in it. This monochromatic nature only feeds the natural xenophobic tendency of social pack animals like us, thus making them more narrow-minded.
2. Lack of learning resources. For example, in Toronto we have a huge public library system, including the well-stocked public reference library downtown. Anyone can also walk into the University of Toronto libraries and read material, although you need a membership to borrow anything. The sheer volume of literature at your disposal in a major city is staggering. Now go into the public library in a typical small town. Pretty damned sad, isn't it? And no, Google is not a substitute.
3. Lack of exposure to higher learning. Every major city has a university in it or very close by. Most rural communities are many hours from a university. This lack of proximity is coincident with a lack of university graduates, so there is a dearth of exposure both to universities themselves and to people who have university educations. Small wonder that the rural conservative political movement is often actively hostile to university-educated experts.
4. Excessive familiarity with neighbours. They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I would say that it also breeds conformism. When everyone seems to know everything that you do, then you have to be more careful that you don't do anything unusual because people "start to talk". Small towns are very gossippy; this is a natural side-effect of everyone knowing everyone else. That leads to much stronger conformist pressure, which dovetails with the already-existing lack of diversity to exacerbate our natural xenophobic tendencies.
5. Agriculture. Agriculture tends to foster a reactionary "good old days" mindset, because it is a factual reality that in past centuries, the family farm was a much more commercially viable industry than it is today.
6. Unskilled labourers. Agriculture tends to hire lots of unskilled labourers, many of them with a fondness for burritos and tequila. Any time you increase the proportion of unskilled people in any given neighbourhood, you just knock the average education and intelligence level down another notch.

[LadyTevar]

Wong put it better

[Starglider]

Even worse than rural areas that worship ignorance, backwardness (usually under the misleading guise of 'tradition') and conformity are whole countries that worship the 'rural ideal', thus magnifying this crap into general acceptance. The US seems to have a mild case of this, but France has a pretty severe one (thankfully outbreaks in the UK are quite limited). According to Leena Germany is mostly quite urban and progressive, but the rural enclaves that persist are unusually bad (I've heard assorted horror stories of her friends getting dragged down and sucked back home by village-bound 'how could you even think of leaving permanently' relatives).

I love visiting national parks, but farming communities, not so much.

[sketerpot]

There's also a positive feedback effect: why would smart people want to live in rural areas where the average intelligence is abysmal? The stupidity and intolerance drives out the smarter segments of the population and keeps them out.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Sketerpot, I'd say that intellectual aversion to rural culture is a secondary cause at best. The more obvious and significant cause of rural brain drain is the way professional jobs gravitate to urban centers. In America a rural, small town area always has a professional class (doctors, lawyers, etc.) to service the local population. But professional jobs are much easier to find in and around urban centers and typically offer better pay and benefits than an equivalent job in the country, meaning that people with higher education will leave the rural areas. The prospects are simply better in cities.

This isn't to say that only the stupid people stay in rural areas. On the contrary, many intelligent people stick around. But these are exceptions to a rule.

[Twoyboy]

[*]Excessive familiarity with neighbours. They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I would say that it also breeds conformism. When everyone seems to know everything that you do, then you have to be more careful that you don't do anything unusual because people "start to talk". Small towns are very gossippy; this is a natural side-effect of everyone knowing everyone else. That leads to much stronger conformist pressure, which dovetails with the already-existing lack of diversity to exacerbate our natural xenophobic tendencies.

That's the big one I reckon. Rural communities usually say they're more civilised than the big cities, but the fact is that large cities are the product of civilisation. Small, homogeneous groups are a relic from our stoneage past.

Without a justice system, small groups can be controlled by peer pressure. For example Australian Aborigines used to split into two tribes if their tribe got larger than about 150 people. In small groups such as this, the group can be controlled by peer pressure. Diversity of any kind can't break through, and that's just how they like it. It keeps people in line, but it also keeps people in the dark ages.

[haas mark]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

[Invictus ChiKen]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

Alot of rural towns and they use water to cool the nuclear power plants plus the largest sore loser complex over the Civil War...

GET ME OUT OF THIS HELL HOLE!!!

[Darth Wong]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

What makes you think that the Deep South contradicts anything I've said?

[Broomstick]

[[*]Lack of learning resources. For example, in Toronto we have a huge public library system, including the well-stocked public reference library downtown. Anyone can also walk into the University of Toronto libraries and read material, although you need a membership to borrow anything. The sheer volume of literature at your disposal in a major city is staggering. Now go into the public library in a typical small town. Pretty damned sad, isn't it? And no, Google is not a substitute.

In general, towns too small to have a library will not have internet access, either.

[Broomstick]

There's also a positive feedback effect: why would smart people want to live in rural areas where the average intelligence is abysmal? The stupidity and intolerance drives out the smarter segments of the population and keeps them out.

A few reasons smart people might live in a rural area:

Lower crime rate
They don't like the city environment
Certain activities more tolerated than in the cities (hunting, aviation, certain motor sports)
Investment in land
Hobby farming

[Aaron]

Ignorance is a biggie, there was an article in the town paper here Friday on the town wanting to put in a wind turbine to generate electricity and hopefully lower our rates (Renfrew has it's own hydo company). But the residents are opposed because they think it'll be ugly, but they haven't stopped to consider that the water tower or the hydo dam in the middle of town are both eyesores.

[Uraniun235]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

Alot of rural towns and they use water to cool the nuclear power plants plus the largest sore loser complex over the Civil War...

GET ME OUT OF THIS HELL HOLE!!!

What the hell do nuclear power plants have to do with this?

[sketerpot]

There's also a positive feedback effect: why would smart people want to live in rural areas where the average intelligence is abysmal? The stupidity and intolerance drives out the smarter segments of the population and keeps them out.

A few reasons smart people might live in a rural area:

Lower crime rate
They don't like the city environment
Certain activities more tolerated than in the cities (hunting, aviation, certain motor sports)
Investment in land
Hobby farming

Good reasons all, and I didn't mean to imply that no smart people would live in rural areas -- I knew several smart and interesting people when I lived in one of those rural areas, and they presumably had reasons for it.

But in general, I'd say that those advantages are usually outweighed by the disadvantages of rural life, especially since you can get most of them by living in a moderately-sized town like the one I'm in right now. Its population is about 50,000 people, the crime rate is pretty low, there's a decent university, and there are rural areas within a few miles.

[Coyote]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

What makes you think that the Deep South contradicts anything I've said?

I think he means that even the big cities down there that have access to libraries and higher education, as well as diverse neighborhoods, still tend to be packed full of insular chuckleheads.

[darthbob88]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

Alot of rural towns and they use water to cool the nuclear power plants plus the largest sore loser complex over the Civil War...

GET ME OUT OF THIS HELL HOLE!!!

What the hell do nuclear power plants have to do with this?

Most likely the irradiated water mutated the ignorant gits, making them into ignorant mutants. How else can you explain families with 32 teeth between them?

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Alot of rural towns and they use water to cool the nuclear power plants plus the largest sore loser complex over the Civil War...

GET ME OUT OF THIS HELL HOLE!!!

What the hell do nuclear power plants have to do with this?

Most likely the irradiated water mutated the ignorant gits, making them into ignorant mutants. How else can you explain families with 32 teeth between them?

Inbreeding. Occam's Razor comes in handy. No nukes needed.

[Darth Servo]

There's also a positive feedback effect: why would smart people want to live in rural areas where the average intelligence is abysmal? The stupidity and intolerance drives out the smarter segments of the population and keeps them out.

A few reasons smart people might live in a rural area:

Lower crime rate
They don't like the city environment
Certain activities more tolerated than in the cities (hunting, aviation, certain motor sports)
Investment in land
Hobby farming

Good reasons all,

ALL? Three out of the five were based on HOBBIES rather than anything objective. I've lived in a city most of my life (23 years in Los Angeles and 6.5 in Houston) and realize that I can always take a vacation in the rural areas if I want to engage in any of those "non-urban" activities.

[Darth Servo]

He clearly was being sarcastic, particularly since a family with a TOTAL of 32 teeth among all the members teeth is easy to explain by a combination of bad oral hygiene and bar fights.

[haas mark]

As a semi-serious question in regards to Wong's post - how in the HELL do you account for the majority of the Southeastern United States?

What makes you think that the Deep South contradicts anything I've said?

I don't. I just wonder why it's like that in such a broad expanse, is all.

[wolveraptor]

I don't. I just wonder why it's like that in such a broad expanse, is all.

Only relatively recently has the South begun to industrialize. The North has traditionally held monetary, industrial, and population advantage over the south. THat's why, despite inferior quality commanding officers, it won the Civil War. That might soon change, since more and more people are migrating to the more comfortable climates.

[Elaro]

I think the root cause of rural backwardsness is the small population:necessary space ratio: it accounts for the "closed community" effect, the little concentration doesn't warrant the installation of universities, and the unavailability of the land makes it unattractive for big factories to be installed. Result: no industrial economy.

That's the key, really: industry. It needs educated people.

[Kettch]

Something that seems to have been missed is the selfselection effect. People who for one reason or another already had problems interacting with other social / ethnic groups will actively remove themselves from cities. Where do they go? If they can find a way to economicly support themselves, in to rural or undeveloped areas (and sometimes even if they can't support themselves).

I add this in compliment of Wong's top 5.