I wonder why rural people have less empathetic world and political attitudes then. That is also paradoxical.

As someone who lives in a rural area, I'd say it's because they see their way of life under siege. In this context that means they disapprove of the incursion of the urban definition of empathy. Rural inhabitants consider themselves the ones with "genuine" empathy, based primarily on the foundation of more authentic personal connections. Urbanites (of which I've also been) tend to look towards the big hand of government as a force to affect social change, ideally of the uplifting variety. Rural inhabitants see such structures as a faceless machine, grinding their fragile way of life into the ground with one-size-fits-all algorithms.

There's a fundamental disconnect between the reality models of the two groups. This is also why you see them as devoid of empathy.

I think that one is pretty straightforward: homogeneity. I grew up in a much more rural area than I live in now, and you just don't get your perspectives and views challenged very much (unless you happen to be outside the norm, in which case your life can be extremely difficult).

I don't think most really realize how neglected rural communities are. It can take something like a miracle to get the government to fund paving a road. Now put yourself in those shoes, and imagine how it feels when you see a government sending hundreds of billions of dollars to countries half way around the world.

This is why things like 'America first' resonate so strongly with rural communities. It's not some jingoistic message, let alone some sort of a secret dog whistle for some sort of a race nationalism thing. It's just people seeing unimaginably large amounts of money being spent, yet with next to nothing to show for it.

The thing is, depending on what kind of rural community type we're talking about, there's no amount of money available in this world that could save them.

Even if you could theoretically build all that infrastructure, the maintenance burden would just crush you 20 years down the line, it would crush your kids and your grand kids.

The real tragedy is that cities are unaffordable.

With all due respect, you have to appreciate that nobody everybody thinks as you do. People in rural areas don't want to be "saved", and the vast majority have no interest in moving, let alone to a city - especially in current times, regardless of cost. Surprisingly there was a very recent poll on this exact issue [1].

As for maintenance, I'll elaborate on that story. People on the road of this town had been petitioning the government for years to get their road paved. Each time it'd rain, the road (made of mostly compacted dirt) would get into pretty rough shape. There'd been several accidents precisely because of this, particularly with kids, and it was also pretty rough on people's vehicles. People, as in people - not the government, would patch it up, but that'd take time, and it was non-trivial.

The government clearly had no interest in paving the road, so eventually the people raised the funds themselves over a rather lengthy period of time, and then paved the road themselves. As for maintenance, spot repairing potholes is a whole lot easier than dealing with part of a road getting washed out by rain. It wasn't cheap. And so things like this really make you wonder why you're paying taxes. And then you see headlines of a government and president seemingly gloating about sending hundreds of billions of dollars to countries half way around the world. It just doesn't inspire positive feelings, and makes the government seem desperately out of touch.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...

It's not really less empathetic, it's just more parochial (i.e. empathy tends to be reserved for the in-group).

Conversely, I find that urban politics often produce the kind of "empathy" where people say things in the abstract that are in line with empathy, but it doesn't translate to actual person-to-person interactions - i.e. it's more of a play act.

The "monkeysphere" concept comes to mind, and it does make me wonder sometimes if true empathy can even be scaled to large and diverse populations in principle.

I would propose a different hypothesis: that populations in urban areas might be more itinerant and much more likely to be removed from family structures.

I felt the same in NYC. It was a weird combination of aggressive and impersonal. I frequently felt lonely.