> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour.

Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in.

In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting or Korean TV or opera. Producing great culture is harder without a local community, but it's not like there's no access to culture in small towns. They're binge watching Iron Fist just like all the other geeks.

People tend to use "culture" to refer, more often than not, to the local availability of global culture-production top-dogs. For example, New York has "fashion culture", because it's a place where you can expect to run into people who aren't just into fashion, but who lead and dictate the world's fashion.

In other words, people want access to socially-dominant individuals. It's probably some sort of backwards instinct that doesn't serve us very well these days, given that for each of the top 100 people in anything, there are a million people who want that "access", and obviously only an infinitestimal fraction of them are going to get it—and living closer to those top 100 people (or even going to events they hold) won't really increase their chances of doing so, any more than living in the capitol city of a monarchy means you'll get to meet the monarch.

That means "culture" is a dog whistle referencing some sort of elitism.

Its not elitism at all. There is just a lack of what people commonly call culture in less populated areas. Greater concentration of people leads to greater specialization and a greater diversity of interests. For example, when Id return to my Midwestern hometown during college break and Id be dissapointed by the local "Mexican"(Cheese, nacho cheese, doritos, and jalaoenos) pizza.

It just stands to reason that the more oeople you have in an area, the greater the diversity and intensity of interests, which we call cultyre. My hometown definitely doesnt have a Bat'leth martial arts class, but you can find it in a big city. Thats why you get such an influx of artsy types to places like NYC because no one ia into their art where they are from

I love urban high culture, so I'm a cheerleader for what I think you're trying to champion here, but I think most of what you just described is precisely cultural elitism.

It's quite possible to square traditional urbanism's affection for multiculturalism and an affection for artistic and culinary excellence, but it takes some nuanced language to express why those aren't in conflict.

Embracing cultural elitism while denying it linguistically doesn't really help make the argument.

That wasn't the best response, but I think it's indicative of how urban high culture often becomes conflated with elitism. As I reread it, it appears that I was being dismissive of my hometown while trying not to be.

First, let's be clear with our terms here. "Multiculturalism" is a heavily loaded term. Despite its Judeo-Christian heritage I would argue that the United States does not operate as a multicultural nation-state. Rather, it is more of a ethnically diverse unicultural society in that the population to a broad degree does share a common language, certain American beliefs and values, and have a unique optimistic view of the future that I've found rare in my travels...the so-called "melting-pot". A good example of a multicultural state is Iraq where multiculturalism is clearly established in policy at the federal level as the Kurds, Shia, and Sunni live in an uneasy alliance, separate into ethnic ghetto-states/territories with relatively little inter-mixing, and have vastly different agendas for the future of their country (Kurds wanting to create their own state, etc.)

After rethinking it, I believe that population density is only correlated to the amount of culture, not the cause of it. Cities like Taos, Santa Fe, and Santa Cruz have a high degree of appreciation for the arts despite being outside dense, metro city centers. I believe that openness and tolerance to unfamiliar ideas is the driver behind culture. It is also a necessary requirement for diverse urban centers, which is why you find a large amount of culture there, including the small town cultures that emigrants bring with them.

The easiest way for me to put it is this: No matter how small where you come from is or no matter how esoteric your interests are, there is some sort of meetup for all the things in a LA or NYC.

> ...there is some sort of meetup for all the things in a LA or NYC.

For your kind of things. In NYC, it's harder to find great snowboarding clubs, demolition derbies, Baptist churches, bass fishing, tacos, and BBQ places. I've been to a mule rodeo before. Haven't heard of something like that in LA.

Not all of those things are my bag of chips, but they're all "culture". Some "culture" either requires less population density or hasn't found a foothold in the coastal mega-cities for whatever reason.

>harder to find great snowboarding clubs, demolition derbies, Baptist churches, bass fishing, tacos, and BBQ places

Harder to find than where? A number of the things you mention are limited simply by geography (snowboarding, bass fishing, etc.) I'd wager that you'll also find a decent amount of taco and bbq places compared, to say, Utica. There appears to be a number of Baptist churches in NYC according to google.

When I talk about LA, I'm speaking more generally about the county and its surrounding areas...There are mule rodeos around a half day's drive from LA. You are right that some culture typically requires lower population density, but you usually find some form of it in mega-cities due to emigration.

It's about self-perfection: figuring out the best way to live, getting closer to that ideal, and exploring and trying to resolve its internal contradictions.

But the best way to live differs from culture to culture -- and I'm not convinced that the rural South has the same kind of ideal as the North, which means I came on too strong earlier. What does the Celtic or Celticized world's high culture look like...?

It's certainly elitism. Dog whistle, I don't think so. More of an elision of the implied "high" in high culture.

Point taken that you like small town culture, though.

> Point taken that you like small town culture, though.

I don't especially. I appreciate it. And I appreciate urban culture. I just find the "everyone knows cities are better" meme is really inaccurate.

It's weirdly dismissive of other cultures as well, which is weird considering how much urban centers want to value diversity. People will read 30 page New Yorker pieces about Botswana or listen to an hour or pan flute music before way before they'll take time to acknowledge that there's culture in Tennessee that's worthwhile, even if it's not their cup of tea (which should be obvious because Nashville, but not everyone's as well-heeled as they think they are).

With fewer people in a place there will be fewer people that match OP's cultural interests. Even moving from a medium city to a larger city has a noticeable increase in organizations of people doing cool things I'm interested in.

Right. To do things, it helps to be colocated. But in many cases, you don't strictly need to be in the same room with people even then.

There's complexity and sophistication. Which you don't simply find anywhere.

Having lived in small towns, big cities, and desert planets.

>"Culture" means "culture", not just "whatever the local savages are doing"

People are "savage" because they like different things to you such as country music? If so, you're an incredibly narrow minded and shitty person. If not, please elaborate.

Culture in Matthew Arnold's definition is the pursuit of human perfection.

Different cultures have different norms of human perfection, and pursue different things; this fits Spengler's (the real one's) idea that a culture has a core proposition. Within a civilization, high culture is a culture's full expression of itself; it seeks out and engages with the contradictory or self-defeating parts of its values, and tries to advance the culture's understanding of what perfection is and how it can be attained. (What the postmodernists call deconstruction, and Gardiner called "high parody," is a fundamental part of this process.) Low culture is mindless entertainment; it doesn't try to shape its consumers in any positive way, and certainly doesn't advance the society's understanding of its ideals. Middlebrow/bourgeois culture tries to be high culture and fails -- but typically fails intentionally. (To be at the forefront of understanding is prestigious but uncomfortable, and the middle class wants prestige but not discomfort.) Mass culture is typically low, since low culture sells, but can rise to middle or high. Low culture, and occasionally middlebrow or mass culture, can produce things that high culture finds interesting and takes up -- and high culture can similarly cross-fertilize downwards. See Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe for some very interesting discussion of this, which was more common then than it is today.

"Culture" historically means "high culture": the thrust towards self-improvement, plus the continued refinement of what exactly you're trying to self-improve towards. This sounds uniquely Western (especially modern Western -- "Faustian" in Spengler's terminology), but you see the same process in other parts of the world, especially in East Asia.

The catch is that you can't engage in high culture without access to high culture -- so perhaps it's unreasonable of me to condemn poor rural areas for not participating in it. Or perhaps not? It's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available.

Regardless, it's high culture -- or at least middlebrow culture, which is regrettably easy to mistake for it -- that reverend_gonzo was lamenting lack of access to.

> It's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available.

That whole discourse assumes things about actualized humanity that cannot be taken as granted. Who's to say that earning a simple living, caring for a family well, and being virtuous isn't perfect in itself? Who's to say that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain isn't a form of perfection? Who's to say that the human perfection isn't a distraction from the commands of a perfect deity?

> The catch is that you can't engage in high culture without access to high culture

That presumes that "high culture" can't be simple, commonly available, or digitally transmitted. It also presumes a one-size-fits-everyone kind of culture and not a more atomized, long-tail description of how cultures are formed, evolved, and maintained.

In more concrete terminology, why should large orchestral pieces be high musical culture? Maybe perfection is really about inclusion, peace, and affection. In that case, a receptive crowd, a guy with a guitar, and some lively tunes is all you need. Or even just a good playlist.

And that's why I push back against all the "life is clearly better in mega-cities" attitude. It's a zero-sum game to only evaluate culture in relative terms. I don't think we're doomed to live in a world the poorest and least connected wallow in cultural poverty and the wealthiest and best connected are privileged with cultural riches. I think life is simpler and better than that.

> That whole discourse assumes things about actualized humanity that cannot be taken as granted. Who's to say that earning a simple living, caring for a family well, and being virtuous isn't perfect in itself? Who's to say that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain isn't a form of perfection? Who's to say that the human perfection isn't a distraction from the commands of a perfect deity?

I'd say that the high-low-middle-mass divide is universal, but the goals that a given high culture aims for are different from civilization to civilization. This includes West European (including New England) versus Celtic (more or less including the South, descended mostly from the Anglo-Scottish Borderers and the West Country).

In the particular areas you're asking about, though, I see contradictions. Being virtuous doesn't have much of a history of being compatible with seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; but being virtuous is a form of human perfection, in fact the one that Aristotle would endorse most readily, and I fail to see how following God becomes easier if you're less able to follow Him. As for earning a simple living, well, look at the website you're on and its long history of destroying the ability to earn them...

On the second point, though, I feel misrepresented. I explicitly said that "it's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available" -- although if you don't share the goals of a given high culture, there's no point in participating it. What does a Celtic high culture look like? Such a culture definitely existed in the Middle Ages, especially in Ireland, but it's been on ice for centuries...

In music, an orchestra can just plain produce sounds that a guy with a guitar can't. There's also more of a filtering effect, which tends to weed out junk... but bigger and/or more formal music don't always mean better music. Music theory can become a burden, and the pentatonic scale is extremely expressive for something that has half the notes of twelve-tone scales; the Irish session is a different sort of thing from a Western quartet or band, with a different set of objectives. And music is something it's good to participate in, which is something in the guy with guitar's favor.

Still, whatever a Celtic (or Quaker? or who knows what else) high culture might look like, there's not much participation in it in the US countryside, certainly not in any organized and visible form (although a lot of cultural activity of all sorts is on the Web these days). I feel like Western high culture leaves a few things out, but I'd rather be around someone else's culture than around cultural passivity -- although Western culture has a horrible case of the middlebrows here in the US. (Has it always? I wouldn't rule it out.)

But if you want to specifically say that life isn't better in the mega-cities: I like urban living, especially walking to work. Of course, that gets challenging and expensive even in the mega-cities; the US needs more walkable areas, more narrow streets, and more trains, subways, and commuter rail. Rents low enough to raise families in the cities wouldn't hurt, either...

> In the particular areas you're asking about, though, I see contradictions.

I was listing various philosophical ideals, not optimizing humanity myself.

> I'd rather be around someone else's culture than around cultural passivity

You say that, but much (most?) cultural optimization has a religious component. The countryside in America is very culturally active, especially on Sunday mornings. And the "cultural ideal" of Protestants necessarily requires accessibility and even imperfection.

Taken to an extreme, but still an American example, there are the Amish. Their cultural ideal is, more or less, rural simplicity. To the extent that they need to iterate or collectively think about their culture, they do. They just don't need patronage to achieve their more straightforward cultural goals.

So to circle back to my original point, can we say they are uncultured? Or lacking or failing at "high culture"? I don't think that's accurate or fair. At least not objectively.

Recognizing that other cultures exist and that people have different preferences isn't a partisan idea. Nor is it cultural relativism.

I have to imagine I'm somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum. I could care less about attractions, since even when I lived in the city I was spending a lot of evenings just playing video games anyway.

I think the broad adoption of mobile gaming and the Millennial adoption rate on video games and the successor generation (whatever we are calling them now) basically being raised on them will break down the reliance on physically proximate entertainment for enough of a subset of these generations that businesses will have to adapt to remote more than they already are.

Plenty of people are going to be satisfied with what is available through technology, rather than just what they can commute to. This is on top of being able to do work remotely, its the value in being entertained remotely that truly separates them from the city centralization problem.

I pretty much think the expansion of drugs and crime due to boredom in rural America proves you wrong.

On top of the fact that many people are different than you (in fact the 100s of millions who live in cities) are not satisfied just playing video games all day long.

Or maybe logistics are so much better now that even illegal drugs are more accessible and cheaper than before.

That's probably true; but rural areas had alcohol problems before they had drug ones.

And they've always had poverty problems. The underlying point is that I'm sure we cannot boil down substance abuse problems to simple boredom.

Absolutely agreed there! The drug problem in the countryside is new -- really new, 20 years old at the most -- so it must be due to something that's happened really recently.

And alcohol can be coexisted with more easily than hard drugs can. "Meth: Not Even Once" is no exaggeration, but no one in the West except recovering alcoholics has that slogan for drinking.

> I could care less about attractions

That means you still care.

I'll show myself out.

I've heard this pitch for Chicago many times, and it seems reasonable if you are in the one of the industries, Tyler mentions, that are more diffuse.

The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? No, that's NYC. Is it healthcare? Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland or Rochester. Energy? Houston. Technology? SF. Entertainment? LA or NYC. Politics? DC.

What exactly is Chicago good at? They have Wilco, so that's cool.

Chicago is the center for futures and options trading, especially commodities. Proprietary trading is generally based in Chicago, while banks and hedge funds are usually in NYC.

There are a massive number of other companies headquartered here, like Boening, CNA, Kraft Foods, Walgreens, State Farm.

While NYC might be known for its comedy, it recruits directly from Second City in Chicago, and the numerous small comedy clubs and schools here feed into Second City. It has its own caliber of theatre it puts out as well, regardless of whether it matches NYC on notoriety.

Lastly, while having the benefits of a large city, Chicago also does not have the stupidly high rents of NYC or SF. It is a very livable city, even for those on modest incomes. Public transportation is excellent (though not as good as NYC).

And if you are doing well enough to have a six-figure salary, you can live very well here as opposed to how you would live even on an cost-of-living adjusted salary in SF and NYC.

The primary downside to this city is the weather. In my opinion, the secondary downside is how far it is from outdoor activities, but, then again, you can easily fly elsewhere via O'Hare/Midway.

Counterpoint...

I grew up and lived in Chicago for most of my adult life. I moved to the Bay Area in 2013. My main reasons were weather, crime, and jobs.

For some people, living with gray skies half the year with not-infrequent temperatures below zero or above 100 takes its toll. Also, the violent crime rate has gone through the roof in recent years, even in generally good neighborhoods.

On the jobs front, I'm in marketing and a more technical marketer at that. The job options in Chicago were largely unappealing, but more importantly was the major difference in culture. There are obviously exceptions, but Chicago seems to have a much more "conservative" corporate culture on the average. This means less competitive pay, 2 weeks of PTO, 2 weeks paternity (if that), stricter 8 or 9am start times, less free on-premise food, fewer perks overall, less competitive benefits, etc. Again, you can find exceptions, and large tech companies tend to have offices there as it is a hub (particularly for media companies like Google). But on the balance, due to the extreme concentration out here, it seems many Bay Area companies are forced to up their game and be much more in favor of the employee with regards to comp, perks, culture and benefits if they want to be competitive with the local giants.

I get very sad when I think about the cost of housing out here, but TBH, I'm not sure I could go back. Whenever I get off the return flight from a trip home and step out the doors at SFO, all of the color, sunshine etc. makes things look like technicolor compared to the ugly red brick, gray skies and black slush of Chicago.

Don't get me wrong--it will always have a place in my heart and I dearly love many things there. But depending on your priorities, in some cases there is no competition if you can afford enough to make it manageable.

All those exchanges are moving to the east coast. CBOE and CFE did a number of years ago. CMK is not the data center it used to be although it is still very large.

A few more winters like this one and it'll be hard to complain too much about the weather (although, in mid December, when I got back from Antarctica, it was much colder in Chicago than Antarctica).

> The main problem with Chicago is it lacks an anchor industry. Is it the best place to be for finance? ...

This is a weird expectation. Why does a city have to be "the best" at something? Seattle isn't the best place for software but I'd still choose it over SF any day. Chicago has plenty of industry.

The nice thing about not having one dominant industry is that the entire local economy is more stable and better able to take shocks to the system. (I've lived in NYC and Silicon Valley and both felt like boom/bust kind of places to live. I now live in Chicago.)

I think you're a bit misinformed. Chicago has two large keystone industries that serve the global economy: (1) Industrial large scale manufacturing (Boeing, John Deere, Caterpillar), (2) Insurance (all of them); not to mention a ton of Food and Agriculture HQs are based there as well.

Insurance is Hartford, CT. Food and ag I can see though

Slightly less so nowadays. I left that area and moved to a megacity so I could get into software dev without having to work at an insurance company (or ESPN). But there's a little bit more going on with CT nowadays, and I think the insurance companies are starting to spread out. They had a ton of leverage in the area and got away with a lot (not paying taxes, etc) but the well started to run dry and people started to push back. Before I left, the mere suggestion that we demand more from these huge companies always turned into highly publicized threats to take XX,000 jobs elsewhere.

The whole situation is dumb, overall I'd avoid living in CT for a ton of reasons. CT had a lot of industry going for it (Stanley Tools in New Britain, for example, and Hartford was the center of the gun industry 100 years ago) but those of course moved overseas. The insurance industry provided a safety net so it didn't go the way of the rust belt but, late capitalism y'know, so that was just a band-aid that's being slowly ripped off. This is happening everywhere but the systematic denial isn't as ingrained as in CT, it's weird.

USAA is in San Antonio!

Isn't Boeing in Washington?

Also, not too many people aspire to be in insurance. I don't think you can put it on the same level as finance, arts, software, fashion, film, etc.

Boeing planes are assembled in Seattle; their HQ is in Chicago.

Do people aspire to work in health, energy or finance, or even software aside from the money? If so, what difference does it make?

The 787 is assembled in (North) Charleston, SC.

The more common and widely used 737 is assembled at the Washington plant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Renton_Factorye

They left Washington a while ago; I think over taxes?

Also iirc they hired a CEO who lived in Chicago

No they did not leave Washington, that's ridiculous. Their executive HQ is in Chicago but that doesn't mean much. Many executive HQ are in Chicago but that's not many jobs.

Sorry, I meant the HQ left Washington. Doesn't it impact taxes if you're registered as a foreign corporation vs local?

Chicago is the "second city" in a lot of things. These are the top public companies in the city:

  Aerospace/Defense: Boeing
  Agribusiness/Foodservice: ADM, Mondelez, McDonald's, US Foods, Ingredion
  Communications:  Anixter, Motorola, TDS
  Energy: Exelon
  Finance: Discover, JLL
  Healthcare: Walgreens, AbbVie, Abbott, Baxter, Baxalta
  Industrial/Manufacturing/B2B: ITW, CDW, Navistar, Grainger, Univar, Tenneco, LKQ, Dover, Packaging Corp., Essendant
  Insurance: State Farm, Allstate, Old Republic, AJG
  Publishing: RR Donnelley
  Retail: Sears
  Transport: United

Apparently, Chicago excels in insurance, food, and manufacturing support.

If you intend to create technology for supporting businesses in those sectors, having a Chicago office would not be a bad idea. SV unicorns tend not to even want to solve problems like how to more efficiently route a single gigantic monolithic I-beam from the foundry to a building site without destroying buildings, bridges, and roads along the way. It isn't sexy, and doesn't attract money or eager and idealistic employees.

Chicago has finance, it just doesn't have Wall Street. If you want to trade options or commodities Chicago is arguably a better place to be. New York is undoubtedly the better place to be for stock trading.

As far as entertainment goes, it's no accident that a huge number of comedians get their start in Chicago.

Chicago has tons of anchor industries, the real problem is that they don't translate well to the unicorn strategy of most start-ups.

To your point, pretty much everyone who's ever been on SNL made their way there through The Second City.

NYC is more the equity side of finance, Wall St. and all that. Chicago is home to the largest futures exchange in the world, the CME and the largest options exchange, the CBOE.

CBOE and CFE moved to the east coast a few years ago.

What about debt?

Until recently, bond trading was dominated by NYC (and back in the day, almost one firm; Salomon). It may still be, but I've been out of the industry for a while so am not sure about modernities of it.

I don't know the city well enough to be sure, but traditionally it's transportation - back in the day as a link between the Mississippi and Great Lakes systems, then as a huge rail hub (cattle from the west would get repackaged and shipped on to the East), and most recently O'Hare (busiest airport in the world).

Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world and has been for almost 20 years.

Correction - sixth busiest. I posted too early (as in, I looked it up but misread it, because I was't fully awake)

That's also the main benefit of Chicago. The city isn't incredibly screwed when one industry goes belly up (i.e. Detroit and automotive).

Uhhhhhh....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Chicago

>Chicago and its suburbs, which together comprise the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is home to 29 Fortune 500 companies and is a transportation and distribution center. Manufacturing, printing, publishing, insurance and food processing also play major roles in the city's economy. The total economic output of Chicago in GMP totaled US$547B in 2012[1] making Chicago the 21st largest economy in the world[2] just surpassing the total economic output of Switzerland.

>The city houses one of the Federal Reserve Banks, established in 1914. There is also the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. The largest banks in the Chicago region (by % of deposits) are: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America (through its acquisition of LaSalle Bank), BMO Harris Bank (a BMO subsidiary), and Northern Trust. The largest banks headquartered in Chicago are: Northern Trust, Chase, BMO Harris Bank, Wintrust Financial, and First Midwest Bank. Many financial institutions are in the Loop.

>Chicago has five major financial exchanges, including the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX), the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), and NYSE Arca. While the city of Chicago houses most of the major brokerage firms, many insurance companies are in the city or suburbs, such as Allstate Corporation.

I have family in Rochester and it isn't known, at least to me, for healthcare in particular. The biggest Rochester companies are Xerox and Kodak neither of which are healthcare companies.

> What exactly is Chicago good at?

Geography.

Chicago's the primary water connection between the Great Lakes (which communicate with the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers) and the Mississippi River; that's the historic origin of its central role in commodities trading.

Commodity trading?

IIRC, Chicago is the main national hub for agribusiness.

>What exactly is Chicago good at?

Corruption.