Germ of an Idea

 

 

Infectious diseases were a real problem back in the day when we had a primitive understanding of how germs work. By instinct and observation, folks learned cities were trouble whereas wide open spaces held the most hope for avoidance and recovery. It was once thought diseases spread through "bad air," so it felt easier to breathe in the countryside than in cities packed with people and industry.

We carry that same hunch to the present, even though we now know much better how one sick person can make other people sick. I won't speak to whether we layer on additional anti-city biases, as if to label certain people or places as inherently "dirtier." Here I'm just talking about how the transmission of disease happens more easily when you have more people close together than when you have fewer people spread out.

The point I want to make is that other things get transmitted when you have density of population. Spirit, ideas, and innovation happen in lots of different places. But the proliferation of them tends to occur in places where lots of different people congregate. Just as disease spreads through constant contact, so does culture and tolerance and discovery. (Including the concentrations of research, health care, and wellness that help us beat epidemics.)

I understand the impulse to think of cities as dirty, even if I don't excuse some of the conclusions people draw from that impulse. But I also want people to understand that the in the same way that germs spread faster in cities, so too do germs of ideas spread in those same places.