Very interesting piece.

If I may offer a contrast — I’ve grown up in the outer suburbs of a big city (Melbourne, Australia). One thing that increasingly bothers me is that while you might see and interact with a great number of people each day (I delivered a bunch of pizzas tonight) that doesn’t mean you’ll have deep connections with many people.

I wouldn’t say that I really have any close friends, just a bunch of people I either work with, or study with, or volunteer with, or play sport with, or am related to.

At the end of the day though, even though there’s literally thousands of people within a one mile radius of me, I don’t feel like a single one of them would be interested in having an in-depth conversation about life.

There’s a ‘city’ but no ‘community’. Even the average person is rich by most standards, but still depressed and oddly aimless. Everyone owns a smartphone, but something like a quarter of the population are on anti-depressants for instance.

Its very hard to make sense of it all. Maybe a place like Napoleon would be better.

I feel very much like Holden Caulfield sometimes.