Amazing you ignored my point.
Wow.
Wait for the next pandemic or collapse of infrastructure or WW3. Cities will be death zones. I hope you get out in time.
As they always are when civilization collapses.
You don’t worship progress, I was wrong, you worship the god of neoliberalism, money. And the market.
Truly it is a day when progressives sit at the feet of gigantic corporations and praise them for destroying the environment and rendering everyone an atomized cog in the machine of endless money making.
Because getting one up on those reactionary hicks is just so much more important than than the scientifically observed destruction of human happiness and health in the concrete jungle.
Shockingly, in the event that civilization collapses most people are quite likely to die, yes. That includes me, and it probably includes you as well, unless you're very confident in your chances of living a long and happy life without access to modern medical equipment, transportation, communications, and so forth. I imagine that out of all of us, the remaining hunter-gatherers in Africa who haven't adopted the vulnerable infrastructure of agriculture, let alone industry and the city, will fare the best of us. But unless that collapse comes--and I note that civilization has not collapsed in the last thousand years--how well they fare when the world ends means very little for how well they fare otherwise, does it?
Seeing as though I'm a socialist I certainly don't worship neoliberalism, lol. In fact, I don't worship anything--I'm one of the few actual mythical nihilistic bugmen that reactionaries try to paint all liberals and leftists as, hence why I get so thoroughly offended when people try to paint the rest of them with my brush. More accurately, I suppose you might call me a fatalist--I understand that technological development is inevitable, and that as a result any transformations of society that are driven by said technologies are likewise inevitable and cannot be prevented or reversed, and I am very grateful that it happens to be the case that the current transformation of society happens to be in favor of me and against my political enemies. If I traded my fortunate background for your unfortunate one, I imagine that my politics would have been very similar to yours and I would be just as angry and bitter, which is why I can't find it in me to hate you as much as I am opposed to most of what you stand for.
"Progress" isn't quite the right word for it, since as you keep noting progress has certain positive connotations that I freely accept aren't necessarily true. Technological growth is. No man truly has any power to stop it or change its course. If it happens to be the case that my lifestyle is compatible with the urbanized world this technological world is bringing about, and I am happy here? Well, then, that is true luck, and I am grateful for it. If it happens to be the case that the lifestyle of you and yours is not, and will inevitably die a slow and anguished death beneath its treads, then what is there that can be said? So long, I suppose. Thank god that it wasn't me.
Like you said--human difference and inequality exist, and cultures differ. What is good for me is quite possibly very bad for you. The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must--the cities will grow, and the countryside will wither. That is simply how the world works, and what sense is there in feeling either one way or the other about that?