@cinerion @hidden Now I'm sure we're saying the same thing from opposite angels. In a city, you can survive indefinitely with no accountability to anyone except the system and your job (and even then, people evade taxes and slack at work). I was thinking that this way of life means that you don't have to trust others. You're pointing out that it also means that others have no reason to trust you (from just meeting you and not having heard anything bad about you).

The way you describe a small town makes it almost sound like an extended family. I'm not close with my own family, for various reasons, and the few times I've seen someone else's extended family of hundreds of people, all gathered for a wedding or a holiday, for example, I've been mindblown at how different life can be.