up up wth people. people move around more these days, as compared to fifty years ago when the inefficiency and costs of transportation were prohibitive. this has changed the way we are as a society. this little nugget i gleaned from my haphazard skimming of this month's book: "the rise of the creative class." basically what is being noted here, among many other things, is that people move around more and this causes us to create weaker social ties, as opposed to stronger permanent ties that result from staying in one place over a period of many years. with all this moving about, there is a need and a want for people to make friends and acquaintances easily. the book also says that when people move around, some of them are inclined to live "quasi-anonymous lives."

how's this apply to us/me?

well, i find that from my experiences with moving around, and from my friends' experiences, most of us move to new places and then immediately set off on the task of re-creating their comfort zones. i have very limited experience with moving to a new place and then settling down -- in fact, i have none. most of my major moves have been toward friends or back to friends. i've not tackled the awesome task of uprooting my life and re-planting in a random locale. college doesn't count because college is made for meeting people and everybody is more or less transplanted.

one ancillary benefit of being able to move around so much, aside from the accruement of worldy experience, is that you can re-invent yourself when you get to a new place. nobody knows you, nobody has any (mis)conceptions of you, you get to start over. i'm very much a proponent of the "you can only grow when faced with new things and new surroundings, nothing grows in stagnation" line of thought.

sometimes people just want to get away from what they know and who they know. what better time than now? when moving to a new city is only a hop and a skip away? but functionally, unless you are one of those people looking to escape, or are just have a wanderlust-type personality, most people are hesitant to go somewhere completely new. what inhibits them is just the thing that should provide absolute freedom. now that we can stay in touch with our family and friends from any location, we are able to constantly compare our new friends to our old friends. and we tend to overlook the fact that it took months/years to gather our current crop of friends. and if you move to a new city, you'll be desperately lonely for an unbearable amount of time until you can find your stride. that's totally not fun.

i guess what i'm trying to say here is that even though it seems like we have more tools than ever to move around and explore, it seems like most people are trying to find stability in their lives instead of embracing the unknown. but that's human nature i suppose. we want to terraform the environment to suit what we know and can survive in, instead of adapting to what's at hand -- and running the risk of failing. humans shape the world around them, not the other way around. so maybe there's this innate need for us to resist constant change.

then again, i'm not one to speak knowingly on this topic since i'm hesitant to even leave the house without one or two friends by my side. i need to talk to people who get the itch to move every once in awhile, so that i can get a different perspective on this issue.