Humanity’s been around for roughly 200,000 years. Civilization has been around for less than 5% of that time. We’ve spent more time out of cities than in them and we did well-enough to survive until we created them. Cities were founded after the advent of agriculture. Assuming a reliable source of water, husbandry made it so we didn’t absolutely have to hunt anymore. That allowed us to stop being nomadic and form the first permanent settlements. Over time, as the settlements grew, the population became more diverse and specialized. Invention permitted farming to be done by fewer people, and the focus on it gave way to interests in commerce and industry. That is when villages truly became cities.
The model worked very well. Cities became powerhouses of education, philosophy, artistry, and technology. But no city, no matter how advanced, no matter how pioneering in any field, can survive without the basic elements that permitted the very first cities – food and water.
Cities, while originally successful, have grown to the point where they no longer function as they were meant to. A certain amount of energy is required to grow. It has to be above and beyond what is required for simple maintenance. When there isn’t even enough energy for maintenance, things start to decay. Maintenance, however, must be the priority. How many cities can you think of that are falling apart from the inside but that are building brand new condominum towers that are too expensive for anyone but the already-wealthy to afford? All of them. When resources that maintenance needs are assigned to growth, decay accelerates. Growth for growth’s sake is cancer; it only serves to transfer wealth from those that have very little to those that have more than they need. If it was a pruely capitalistic process, that would be one thing, but the we live in a malignant corporatist society. If it was a capitalist society, we as consumers could chose not to do business with certain companies. Instead we are forced by law to do business with companies owned by the people we supposedly elected to represent and defend us. Insurance, banking, real estate, retail, pharmaceuticals, et cetera. We are cattle.
The economy is failing. People are losing their jobs. Everyone is in debt. People now go to cities because they are either naively hopeful for an opportunity that doesn't exist, or because they are desperate for resources guaranteed by social programs. Their presence adds even more weight to the maintenance costs which are already being sidelined for growth. They take up available housing and drive the price up for everyone, impoverishing even more people. Fewer and fewer people take up farming; and the ones that do are debt slaves for life. Farmers are also about to lose a majority of their crops in the relatively near future due to cyclical changes in climate trending on the colder side.
Don't even try to tell me that the rich and powerful got that way by being ignorant, shortsighted, and wasteful. The people in power – the ones who have access to all this information compiled in convenient little packages; the ones in whom we place faith to assign resources where they are needed – are acutely aware of all of these things and yet they continue to drive more and more people into cities to consolidate their own power. The system has become so bloated and fragile that if there is any kind of system shock – any kind of crop loss, breakdown in credit, or the just-in-time supply chain – cities are going to transform instantly into human slaughterhouses. Assuming their awareness of cause and effect, the only reason the rich and powerful could be making the decisions they are is because they want us all to die en masse.
Cities, once symbols of birth and development, have been co-opted by psychopaths. They are now meat grinders. Cities are where large populations go to be butchered. In war, they are targeted. In cultural interruptions, they implode.
Personally I feel like we've passed the point of no return. One way or another, war is coming. It will more than decimate us.
To the future remnants of humanity - please do not make the mistakes that led us to this point. Don't consolidate population or political power. Create small, redundant islands of commercial and industrial specialization in a sea of farms. If we want humanity to be successful in the future, we have to decentralize our population and our culture and prioritize sustainable agriculture that involves more human labor and fewer machines. Same with industry. We have to abandon the city model or it will become a tool of suicide instead of progress.