> How funny, having grown up in a rural area, I'd never live one again due to the madness, filth, and ugliness!
The only reason there would be madness, filth and ugliness in a rural area is if you left it there, because you are the only one living on your property.
Obviously, you have to sometimes go out into a hub of activity to get groceries or whatnot, but the onus is on you to provide evidence that those hubs are epicenters of madness and filth in a rural area, but not the urban area.
Your argument makes 0 sense without any evidence.
The only reason there would be madness, filth and ugliness in a rural area is if you left it there, because you are the only one living on your property.
Use of sulfur by farmers causes asthma: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5783654/
Stockyards smell awful.
My childhood friend's grandfather owned a silage plant. Ever smelled silage?
The local pig farm has created the worst smell I've ever directly experienced, and it's been a problem since the 90s.
These are just a few examples of filth and ugliness. As for madness, meth use and inattentive, drunk, or road-raging pickup truck drives with provide you that.
I see that you have the full experience. Has a person really lived until they have experienced the smell of a pig barn a mile away being cleaned out? Maybe "lived" is the wrong word but damn will it give you new nasal experiences that are beyond description. Around me, it was mostly the turkey barns, but I drove by enough pig barns that I know it's equally horrifying.
There's too much "trad life" larping on Instagram these days, and one of the many many parts of the experience that viewers miss is smell.
My experience from childhood in a quite rural area (500m from a large nature preservation area) is the same.
There was noise from constant tractors running around (for both cereal agriculture and cattle farming), even more noise from the nearby gigantic steel building company. People constantly driving around for any reason with stinky noisy vehicles (often poorly maintained). You would get bad smells from the cattle farmer muckspreading or the porc farmer cleaning out. Sometimes you would actually need to stay inside because the nearby cereal farmer thought it was a good idea to spray pesticide with a helicopter.
And that's before even talking about the "nature" part, like a swan chasing you because for some reason he thought you were a threat when you were just passing by, a random confused board wondering if he should charge you or just go about his life, gigantic carnivore fish that will bite you if you are not careful (silurid fish, they caught one over 2m in the river next to my house). You can add the random stray dog (or just common farmer dog) that may not be that friendly and agressive bulls that may catch you by surprise if you unknowingly walked on their territory (to take a shortcut or whatever).
I have learned the hard way that nature is a bitch and rather nasty most of the time. We built society/civilisation because otherwise we wouldn't fare very well alone or in small groups. And the parts of nature we exploit for civilisation are not better than cities, in fact they are often much nastier (you get the nature default, plus the crap humans put on top).
I think people who have some sort of fetish for nature are low IQ or weird excitement with unnecessary risks. My experience living with/around the people there taught me that indeed, most of them are quite dumb and that's probably the reason they are here.
You seem to be confusing living in the country with living "right in the middle of animal farming and agriculture farms".
There are plenty of small developments (e.g. 100-150 houses with 2-3 acre plots with some basic amenities like road clearing) that are far away from anything you describe.
> because you are the only one living on your property.
This makes me think you don't actually live in a rural area. It's not like you're pioneering, no connection to the rest of society. There's still school for the kids, church, stores, and yes, even neighbors.
Plus, most humans find having a social life to be one of the greatest joys in life.
I find it fascinating that you think it's acceptable to call cities centers of madness, filth, and ugliness, but think it's completely unacceptable to think that of rural areas. Have you actually lived in a city? Or are you just basing it off of perceptions you get from media?
Many people have romantic notions about the country. Reality is there are “good” areas and bad. Lots of helplessness and poverty, shitty agricultural and industrial operators destroying the environment.
The beautiful areas are breathtaking if you can afford to live there.
I experienced both. I grew up in a beautiful pastoral landscape with prosperous dairy operations and a mix of tourism and small business. Small scale dairy farming is dead, and that death caused a chain reaction. My old home is a rural ghetto at this point. Distribution centers are the big thing that was supposed to save the day, but they have high turnover and generate truck traffic and other issues.