From city mouse to country mouse
On Aesop's fables, natural-born introverts, and the problem with assuming any place is the one true "Real America"
Tales that trumpet the moral high ground of the "country mouse" over that of the vice-beholden "city mouse" are at least as old as one of Aesop's fables -- recorded more than 2,500 years ago. So, on one hand, it is no surprise that the spirit of the tale remains around even today, when some people turn to spinning tales about where to find "Real America". Invariably, they find it off the beaten path.
■ On the other hand, the longevity of the supposed contrast should be all the proof anyone needs to dismiss it as absurd. The biggest city Aesop could have possibly meant in his allegorical tale would have been Athens, which might have contained 200,000 people at most. Not a village, of course, but probably a little bit smaller than the metropolitan populations of Monroe, Louisiana, or Johnson City, Tennessee, today -- places that almost certainly fit the stereotype to be called rural, "real" America.
■ Some people are "country mice" by nature, preferring an unhurried pace and lots of space to themselves. Others are natural "city mice", favoring crowds and noise and speed. But it's all relative: The biggest Greek city of Aesop's day would be only the eighth-largest in Louisiana today.
■ We shouldn't confuse some preferences for others. There's nothing wrong with preferring a country-mouse pace, nor with a city-mouse pace, either. Neither confers any elevated moral stature -- nor any depravity, either.
■ It's not even valid to think that they reflect adjacent preferences about things like introversion or extroversion. There are plenty of extroverts who like the country life, and plenty of introverts who want to be close to the center of action (even if they don't want to talk to anyone when they get there). "City" versus "country" is often a proxy for other assumptions, and quite often we're not at all clear with one another about which of those assumptions we're making.
■ What really matters is whether people have the maximum freedom to choose what fits them personally, allowing them to optimize their own lifestyle choices in the limited time any one of us has on Earth. The freedom to move about -- even to literally take an entire home with you on the road -- is the thing that actually makes America great. All of its places are real.
