I’ve realized recently that I interact with people on an almost purely “transactional” basis, and therefore fully identified with Philip Greenspun’s comparison of city and village life from Travels with Samantha:
A fundamental difference between village life and city life is that primary relationships are replaced with functional relationships. In the village you buy your food from Bob, whom you’ve known since childhood, who happens to be working in the supermarket. In the city you buy your food from a supermarket clerk whom you could see every day and never learn his name. Minneapolitans haven’t understood this. When you walk into a store or a restaurant, people say hello to you, unlike in Boston, where they’d wait for you to approach them and attempt to transact business. Here you relate as people first, as consumer and vendor second.
