Urban survival

The City, by Lightman Qian

Urban survival |
Friday – January 16, 2026

In my post "Life in the city", I explained why I dislike cities and urban life, which I regard as completely unnatural and something that really promotes disease and mental confusion; if you want to find out more about such topics then read that post first. Also, when it comes to the subject of security, you may read more about them here and here. This post will not endeavour to go into any great details in what can only amount to an exercise in repeating already stated facts and/or opinions.

    Most people in the modern world, or really at least that can claim to live in a "modern civilization" do indeed live within, or at least around, an urban environment, a milieu that can only be described as completely unnatural and really an expression of the monstrous nature of the material order. Within the urban landscape you will find all sorts of things, ranging from public transportation, to certain quarters that tend to favor the more outwardly and expressive, sometimes even expansive, qualities of Latin culture, and it seems that these "hotspots" for all sorts of illegal and criminal activity, tend to grow with time, despite all that talk of the greatness and success of cosmopolitanism, another confusion almost entirely western in character. Really, when all the efforts of this material civilization comes together, you get the modern urban landscape, and it's best described as a "concrete jungle", something completely foreign and abhorrent in the history of man, but one could at least admit this about the urban landscape, and that is that all it's high rises, large and colorful signs, meandering motorways, and its dirty homeless population, all come together in this confluence of materialism and really stand as a testament to the material greatness of materialism; something that should seem quite self-evident and surely is, but also goes to prove the lack of a real foundation that this beast is built upon, really nothing but temporal assertions that tend to be replaced by another faster than they've been conceived, and therefore the transient and ever changing nature and landscape of modern civilization. Indeed, change and commotion, those are the characteristic features of the modern world, and they are, as stated above, most expressed in the urban landscape, with it's wild individualism, where might is right, where the rule of the largest purse—always expressed in extravagant and ever more fantastical mechanical contraptions that are reminiscent of some beastly creature in the deep primordial past, usually of travel—prevails and where life is sustained, for the vast majority of people who are mobilized into soldiers of "professionals", in working a meaningless and empty mechanical job, for the perpetuation of the mechanical nature of their world, or really the only world that they know of. Yes, I could go on with more descriptions about this monstrosity, but I feel that these words should be enough; at any rate I don't have time to go on about the offensive and beastly character of urban life. But lastly, I do wish to also say this: apart from the empty and meaningless character of urban life, just another expression really of the quantitative assumptions made by modern men, it seems that as I stated above, urban life does something with the mental character of men, and this is expressed less in the rigid and lifeless form of mechanical contraptions and more in the seemingly boundless increase in mental illness, especially in cities; yes, life in the city, as I've stated before, is a promoter of confusion and disarray, really perhaps a way for mental confusions to grow into real demons, and this can also be seen almost anywhere today within a large metropolitan area. Indeed, the entire concept of being continually surrounded by large amounts of strange persons, strangers as modern men refer to them, is indeed a very new idea, and goes to prove the hollowness and materialism of the completely bankrupt notion that is the modern nation-state; where again egalitarianism is also expressed in that ugly notion of individual sameness, which further goes to prove the duopoly of individualism and this supposed collectivism so espoused by certain even more corrosive elements.

    The question of "Urban survival" must then be raised; if you intend to live in an urban setting, which you almost have to do in the modern world: then how are you supposed to survive within this "concrete jungle"? Well, you could decide to just completely retire from the world altogether, which you can read more about here. In lieu of that option, I am going to provide just some advice as to how you could survive and at least temporarily keep your ground against the ever encroaching mental attitude of westerners. To begin with, you should read these posts, here and here, that describe basic survival techniques in the physical realm, without reducing them to nonsensical streams of athletic Neanderthalism, so common in modern times, especially with the progressive crowd, with all their fantasies about "working out" and "exercising" for fitness and the "general health" of the body, yet another confused expression of individualism and the stone age mentality of might is right.

    To survive in the urban landscape you need these abilities or you are going to lose, and really the best description is this: you will be lost to the city. These abilities include: the ability to read the room and to profile, really to be "street smart"; they include an ability to defend yourself in an emergency, but they also include skillful means, that is to say, the ability to understand when to leave the room or even when to run; and finally, they include the ability to always remain aloof and above the worries and troubles of ordinary men, indeed to embrace without duping yourself – an alter ego. If you are able to sustain this patter of living, you may at least for the moment stay safe within the urban landscape, but in the end you may never be able to avert the final outcome, the beast and yourself taking on that form, and this is why I only regard these strategies as being temporary, and always know that they will change, evolve, and become just in the same way that the material domain lives for change; you may never be secure enough, always remain circumspect.

Reginald Drax – January 16, 2026.