I have lived in villages and cities in different continents. This abstraction you speak of isn’t limited to the US. Asian and European cities are the same. People don’t tend to socialize a lot with their neighbors in the cities as much as they did and still do in the villages.

Is this capitalism? Is it technology (I’m not talking about computers) induced narcissism? Is it because we reduce ourselves and others to metrics and then use yardsticks to incessantly measure ourselves on a broken scale?

Don't live like its your last day

I think that's how Putin is living right now.