I wish we could still explore

I want to romanticize my neighborhood. I want to go for long walks and see culture, diversity, filth, beauty. I wish marks of humanity where reflected on my neighborhood walks. But most of our modern cities and developments are lifeless, dull. 

I just watched a film called "Fallen Angels." It was about beautiful lonely people in Hong Kong. It was a bit of a dirty city, but it felt so full of life and culture! I'd love to go for a long walk at 1AM along those streets. Even the businesses were arranged in a more interesting way! Trains run overhead, burger joints are below the street. Trains stop and go late into the night. The city was a living, breathing organism inseparable from humanity.

I love nature, but getting lost in an urban environment is something different entirely. Everything is built with purpose, thousands of man hours are reflected on every street. 

American cities especially are so sanitized. The big cities are better, but a lot of our more suburban environments are simply not human. Ribbons of asphalt and concrete with no interesting architecture. Familiar and copy/pasted franchises are packed together like anchovies, only ventilated by massive parking lots. Walking these streets make me feel like an alien, or a denizen of a forgotten history. I don't feel made for this world. And I'm not. These environments are made for cars. Humans get small little parks to play in, but most of our land is devoted to cars and industry. 

I just want to walk around, get lost, make mistakes, create memories. But any attempt to connect with the physical world around me is hard fought. It's like trying to dig for treasure in a parking lot. I can shovel all I want but there's no feedback!

I suppose that's why online spaces are so important. We still crave these interactions, we still yearn for discovery, culture, community, worldliness. Of course, as many of you are familiar, our online spaces are befalling the same fate too. 

This sounds pessimistic, but I'm not. I'm glad that I know how valuable these ideas are. I can pass what I've learned on to other people. I don't think most people know what they're missing out on. Many of us are angry, upset, LONELY. We blame things that we can see: our job, our connections, ourselves. But there's more systemic problems. It's our world, our society. If we had a society and culture that emphasized living and humanity, then we would be happier.