The Great Towns

I would like to comment on a passage from Friedrich Engels’ “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" on page 502 by stating “The more Londoners are packed into a tiny space, the more repulsive and disgraceful becomes the brutal indifference with which ignore neighbours and selfishly concentrate upon their private affairs (502).” It does seem that this statement and the rest of the paragraph that follow it have several good points. During the time that this was written, many people where moving from the country to the city to find work. There is more money that can be made by people when they are in the city because of the opportunities that are available. Because of such the widespread move of people from the rural areas to the city, I believe that Engels is pointing out how this has affected the ways of old. Since people came to the city for financial reasons, they would not be allowed to focus on other people’s need because if they did, they would be the ones struggling. I do not think that Engels meant that people did not care about other people with this passage, but I believe he was trying to show what happens when everybody is trying to do better for themselves so only focuses on that. This subject is relevant today because the same is happening. When I moved from a rural area to a bigger city, I noticed how nobody really spoke or seemed to acknowledge that other people existed. People change based on the environment that they are in, and this is one way in which they are doing this. I believe that people viewed this point of view as evil because people seemed detached from everybody else. However, I do not believe that this is necessarily a bad thing. I believe that it is just another way that shows that people are very adaptive to every situation and act differently in different environments.