The Cognitive Disconnect

Rural City Folk

By: Wihlem Otto von Grosenstammer

One happy by product of the ongoing meltdown in sub prime mortgage finance may be
the mindset modification of Americans from rural/agrarian to truly urban. America has
long been an urban society, at least since the end of the Second World War, but
Americans have continued to think of themselves as an essentially agrarian people. They
do not mentally identify themselves as farming the fields and milking the bears, no they
have simply closed their eyes and seen vast vistas behind their eyelids instead of urban
scenes. Though physically urban they remained emotionally rural, even wistfully so.

The great American Civil War changed the usage of “these United States” into “the
United States”, thereby signaling a mental mindset much modified from the four years
previous. The trauma associated with 600,000 dead at the hands of their countrymen
demanded a change of heart and mind, that is, a change of the most fundamental sort. It
required that folk, north and south, east and west, start thinking of themselves as one
people. Otherwise the great suffering and loss could not be tolerated.

Bank after bank is now unburdening itself of the previously secret truth of the losses each
has sustained by imprudent underwriting of mortgage debt. As these imprudent actions
come home to roost in fields as far removed from sub prime real estate lending as
consumer debt, corporate real estate mortgages and other corporate debt, waves of
negative energy will radiate out from the center like ripples on a pond. The initial impact
of this debt squeeze will be elevated to panic in ensuing months as commercial debt
tightens and companies begin to retrench and, in too many cases, collapse. This shock
will be followed by a total melt down in the structure of consumer debt with massive
write offs being required by non-performing credit card holders.

All this financial “terror” will occur, in the United States, accompanied by a currency
inflated to the point of being valueless. This will occur because the current federal
administration is insisting on putting the bad debt wringing chore off until the next
administration. In doing so, the new President will be confronted with a bad situation that
is rapidly deteriorating. The time required by normal prudence to evaluate the situation
and formulate some rational, workable response to it, will be time the American nation
cannot afford. When a response is devised and implementation begun it will be primarily
a program of fiscal and monetary response aimed at restoring integrity to the national
currency.

The programmatic responses will be a retrenchment of services affecting both the

domestic and military functions of the federal government. Civil disorder will be
widespread and there will be a period of painful disruptions in what Americans now think
of as normal life.
In the movies, situations like the one described above, generally result in urban areas rife
with chaos and anarchy. Historically, however, when societies experience periods of
social unrest and chaotic disruptions in the economic systems and governmental systems,
cities become places of refuge from disorder. This appears to be so due to a city’s ability
to organize itself around the resources available within its own population and the
immediate hinterland surrounding it.

Of course, not all cities will have the human resources within themselves, nor the
physical resources immediately adjacent to them, required to successfully adjust to
disruptions in the broader social and governmental order. Most will have the required
resources and most will successfully adjust to changing circumstances. Disruptions in the
broader social and governmental order will more negatively affect rural areas and
smaller, less diverse cities and communities than in larger more diverse cities.

This is no doomsday prediction. There is no intent to suggest the central government of

the United States will cease to function and interstate commerce collapse. The prediction
is that dealing with the fiscal and monetary crisis will require the federal government to
drastically curtail expenditures for much of anything other than domestic infrastructure
and maintenance of the most essential domestic programs. The prediction is there will be
a dramatic reduction in the military budget with the army and air force being most
negatively affected. The navy may well become something of a service marketed to the
international community of nations, paid to police the sea lanes and keep sea borne
commerce safe.

This is a prediction that urban dwellers will fare better than residents of rural areas and
smaller communities and cities. This disparity in well being will last for some
considerable duration. During this time the cognitive disconnect between the reality of
urban life and the self image of suburban/rural dwellers will begin to dissolve. It will do
so because a real sense of security will become associated with urban living and
insecurity with rural living.

The truth is, cities have always functioned in this way or they have ceased to function.
Earth’s landscape is littered with the ruins of once flourishing cities, now no more than
piles of intriguing rocks and bricks. For some of these we know, or think we know the
cause of their demise. For so many more we know nothing but a name and, for some, not
even that.

If well led, cities have the capacity to adjust to almost any circumstance and survive and
prosper. There is no reason to suppose some of the cities of North America will ride out
the coming Bush financial mess in better shape than non urban areas and many of other
cities as well.