I was in London during the summer of 2000, and one of the expats I met there described the inhabitants as “Each person is their own country”. This was their way of describing how the inhabitants of London (didn’t) interact with each other.

My experience there then was similar, with the only friends I made were other travelers, people from small towns, expats, and a most excellent MSF gentleman from Germany. I also had an experience I regret at the Church of Scientology, but we will speak no more of that.

More relevantly, we were talking at lunch today about large agglomerations of people vs. small towns, and wondering if there is something inherent to large cities that makes people colder or more distant.

AM suggested that it the interactions you would expect in a small town, acknowledging each other as you walk down the street simply become impractical when you encounter thousands of people each day. It’s also possible that people become more and more indistinguishable once there are so many of them, that it becomes a blur, and your mind automatically groups them or filters them out, as they’re too close to the average of ‘how much do I need to pay attention to this person today’. People whom you have befriended, family, co-workers all fall outside this category, but you can even see some of the effects of this if you’re working in a large organization of tens of thousands of people. Your brain will automatically take shortcuts, and group people, whether you want to or not; you have to actively fight this if you want to think of all of them as individuals.

Other possibilities include concerns for safety, concerns that the only reason people approach you on the street is to ask for money or to save your immortal soul, or just that the brain is set up to see 100-200 people as ‘your tribe’, and all others become NPCs*. Once again, this is something you have to fight against, or train your brain out of doing.

Finding “The conversation I can only have with you” can be non-trivial when your brain is full.

But still worth it. 😀

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-player_character