Recently there was a discussion about the virtues and vices of cities. On the one side are the ruritans who believe that cities are dens of evil and all bad things emerge from cities, and so when cities are laid low, so will the evil that comes from them, and the Pax Campos will be restored. On the other side are the metropoloi who believe that cities are the only civilized parts of the world and if the countryside hicks would only set aside their provincial ways then the Pax Urbana will be restored.
For the part of the metropoloi, there is something to the belief that “cities are the only civilized parts of the world”–not in the way they think, though. Cities are where civilization began; the first recorded civilizations we know of are from their urbane remains.
For the part of the ruritans, there is something to the belief that “cities are dens of evil”. There are two reasons this is true. First is the simple reason that if, of any given population, x% of people will be given to vice, cities have more people and so even if the proportion is still x% they are more densely packed and so more noticeable. Vice is not the exclusive domain of cities, but the density makes them stick out. The second reason this is true is a function of democracy. Any sufficiently large population which governs itself democratically will iteratively move towards the basest instincts of that population, because in order for elected officers to have “mass appeal” they must lower their ideals such that more and more people accept them. The fallacy of democracy is that the best ideas win–that is true in theory, but in practice it is the ideas which ask the least of us which win. The man with the plan to restore the city with hard work and austerity will lose to the man who says he will ask nothing of you, and do nothing in return.
Given that both the metropoloi and the ruritans have a point, why do both ideas sound wrong when stated simply as I stated them in my first graf? I believe the reason lies in how the conversation has been framed to begin with. Urban and Rural environs are connected, not separate, so thinking of them as distinct entities isn’t entirely valid. The far flung rural communities could not exist without the cities, nor could cities exist without their far flung counterparts. There are virtues and vices to both. So we must think in terms which account for this connection and for the flaws and features which we observe.
I argue that the dichotomy is not between urban and rural, but between what I will call the heartland and the frontier. Think of human society as spreading outward from cities. The cities are the beating heart of society, and on the leading edge of society, beyond which lies an alien wilderness, is the frontier. In American history, when there was an actual frontier, this was easier to think about. Gold rush homesteads became, over time, city centers and town squares, and there is no more alien wilderness for us to settle and civilize. The cities caught up to the frontiers, and cities arose where the frontiersmen stopped running.
This dichotomy allows for cities to be both centers of civilization and hearts of darkness for the reasons stated above. The reason frontiersmen prefer the frontier is because the frontier is per se away from the civilized aspects of the city–the density, the laws, the neighbors–as well as the vices of the city. Frontiers are likewise per se lawless, and calling them “provincial” is another way of saying they are governed by local custom–by politeness, in other words–and not by regulation. Metropoloi can be rude personally because they behave legally; ruritans must be polite personally because the law is not omnipresent for them. The rugged individualism of the frontier also makes frontiersmen hardy and virtuous in ways that their urban counterparts are not; and the opposite is true as well that the metropoloi are hardy and virtuous in ways that their ruritan counterparts are not.
To bring it all home, there is a specific point that Wood made in his article that I want to look at:
I love passionately my particular Big City – it happens to be the biggest of the big – and I do not ascribe to it the fantastical properties that I read here. My Big City parish has more offerings of confession in a day than my former country mouse diocese offered in a month.
I was thinking about this over the weekend as I visited a big city myself. For context, I have talked about how I live in the surrounds of Washington DC, on the Virginia side, which is very metropolitan but nevertheless when you are amid Northern Virginia you would recognize that it is populous yet not call it a city. So I visited a city which is indeed a city. I went to Mass at a Franciscan parish tucked away between two ramshackle buildings, across the street from a liquor store and the grafitti-ridden facades of other urban shops. Mass here was lightly attended–and this is even accounting for the crowd that was visiting to witness the baptism which happened to be on schedule for the day. But the Church itself was beautiful. The art, the music, the space, the sound–everything about it called the mind to God. The contrast was striking between the lonely priest, in an ancient and magnificent monument to the glory of God, with only a few faithful in attendance. It is here that I began to think about this idea of the Frontier vs. the Heartland.
My home diocese is vibrant and healthy–is populous, is well supported, has much in the way of sacraments. My home parish is not built to glorify God in the same way this Franciscan parish in the heart of the city was. My home parish looks like a bingo hall with a crucifix in the front.
The connection between these two observations is that there are multiple overlapping environments. This lonely Franciscan in an empty Church in the middle of a city is a frontier parish: he is in mission territory. He doesn’t have the resources or abundance which my home parish has, but what he does have is a will to live and a desire to make his living in the alien wilderness that is the heart of this city center. My home parish is a heartland parish: it has abundance of every variety, but many parishioners have a rude irreverence to the object of their worship. Wood’s observation in the quote above seems to me to be that he loves the ingenuity of his frontier church nestled in the heart of his city; while his interlocutors may prefer their perch on the frontier of civilization, regardless of the health of their local manifestation of the Church.
Nevertheless: It is the frontier which informs the rural virtues which are disdained by the metropoloi; it is the city which informs the urban virtues which are disdained by the ruritans; it is these mutually exclusive preferences which drive individuals to live in the places where they live. You cannot have one without the other, and both are here to stay.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 