AgreeableLandscape
Suburbanite carbrains: "High density is dangerous! More people means more crime! You could be murdered right outside your tiny apartment!"
Correlation-causation fallacy. More people close together does not cause crime. Poverty causes crime. High density areas reveal a more accurate cross section of society, including the lower class which are much less stable, have fewer good opportunities, and thus more likely to turn to crime.
High density living is not what's dangerous here. Capitalism is.
AgreeableLandscape
I'm also not convinced that the per capita crime *rate* is that much higher in most downtowns. The raw numbers are higher yes, but there are also way more people. Unless you go to a skid row or red light district type place, but, once again, the existence of those places is a sign of the failure of capitalism and the government to protect people, NOT side effect of living close together.
Humans aren't betta fish. We're not going to start instinctively killing each other if we get too close.
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@AgreeableLandscape can confirm. I grew up in Moscow during USSR time, and it's a highly populated city. Nobody worried about crime at all. Elderly people would go to parks at night. Parents would let their kids run around all day unsupervised. I would go out and play with friends all day, my parents didn't think anything of it.
Then once we transitioned to capitalism, crime quickly became prevalent all of a sudden.
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@yogthos@mas.to The town in China where I'm from is the same. Not the part about capitalism, but the part about being highly populated, high-density housing, but extremely safe and thriving with a robustly healthy social and cultural life. The city is almost 2 million people but with virtually zero crime. There is vibrant street life. The parks are always full of elderly and children. The streets are populated. Children play freely and walk to and from school unsupervised and without fear.
Meanwhile, living in America, everything is totally empty and alienated and atomized. Everyone is suspicious of one another and unfriendly. The crime rate is much higher despite virtually zero population density by comparison. @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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@adiz @AgreeableLandscape I definitely expect the relations between Russia and China to keep improving. It seems like we're heading for a multipolar world again with China leading the opposition to US based world order. I'm hoping Russia will eventually return back to a form of a communist system under Chinese influence.
Collapse of USSR was a huge tragedy in my opinion, and it set back the development of former eastern bloc countries by decades. Many have now become western colonies.
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@adiz @AgreeableLandscape and the tones are hardest part for me. I find a lot of words sound very similar, but mean completely different things. I have to use context to figure out what the word is a lot of the time.
And of course, writing is pretty challenging as well, but recognizing the characters is a lot easier than learning how to draw them. Pinyin is a big help there, since in modern world you don't really have to write anything by hand often. :)
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@adiz @AgreeableLandscape I didn't know there was a sizable sub-culture of former USSR people in China. That's really cool.
I'm hoping that geopolitical tensions will sort themselves out eventually, and it'll be easier to make the move then.
I've been slowly learning Mandarin here on my spare time. It's definitely challenging, but slowly starting to get more comfortable with it. :)
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@yogthos@mas.to I feel Russia (or, former USSR, rather) has a different relationship with China vs. the rest of the world.
Chinese is really difficult to learn! I applaud you learning! @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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@yogthos@mas.to You are in Russia right now? Or where? @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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@adiz @AgreeableLandscape My family ended up moving from Russia after the collapse, and eventually ended up in Canada, so that's where I've been living for around 20 years now.
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@yogthos@mas.to Yeah, it can be difficult now for Canadians and Americans to get to China. It's not impossible, but it's a lot more difficult than it used to be. China utilized COVID as a means of essentially liquidating foreigners from the country. They simply refused to renew visas and so when people's visas were due for expiration they were forced to exit the country or face detainment and forced ejection. It's still quite easy for Russians and other Eastern Europeans to enter China, though. I know many Russians who are living in China. There is actually a fairly robust sub-culture of former-USSR-nationality individuals living and working in China. @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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@adiz @AgreeableLandscape good analogy, and I know exactly what you mean. I really would like to move to somewhere like China one day, but it's pretty difficult to do at the moment.
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@adiz @AgreeableLandscape I also find the isolation is the worst part, it's so depressing to live in such an atomized society
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@yogthos@mas.to I miss China a great deal, but not really China exclusively, per-say, or China for merit of being China. I just miss not America. I miss living in a society that is alive, that has life. Even though I live in a city and am surrounded by people, the way the society and the people within it are structured and live, it feels more akin to a sort of giant house arrest. I feel like these wealthy criminals who are locked away on lavish compounds. All the enjoyments of life, but without the life. @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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@yogthos@mas.to I would say that American society is much more dangerous, far more expensive.. but, more than anything, exceptionally lonely. I'm so lonely. I feel so isolated. @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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@yogthos@mas.to While I support the CPC and I agree with the general theory of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" (it's actually Orthodox Marxism).. I also think they're using it as a convenient excuse to embrace orthodox theory while simultaneously furthering state capitalism (or, state socialism?) with ulterior motive. I think Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin had good intentions. Hu Jintao was a safe autopilot. I don't know how I feel about Xi Jinping---I agree with a lot of his policies while simultaneously disagreeing with a lot of other policies. At any rate, China is ostensibly following Marx's concepts of civilizational evolution towards Communism vs. the unorthodox revolutionary Communist trajectory within undeveloped, agrarian civilizations. @AgreeableLandscape@mastodon.social
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