'The Countryside and the City' from Islam Between East and West

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A country man has the opportunity to watch the starry skies, fields, flowers, rivers, plants, and animals. He is living in touch with nature and its elements. The rich folklore, the wedding customs, the folk songs, and dances offer a kind of cultural and aesthetic experience almost entirely unknown to a man of the city. In most cases, the urban man is living in the barracks of a big town, crammed with passive knowledge of the mass media and surrounded by ugly objects of mass production. Has not the sense of rhythm, possessed by all primitive peoples, almost died out with modern man? The opinion that an urban dweller has more opportunities for the artistic or aesthetic experience is one of the most grotesque mistakes of our day. As if the concerts, museums, and exhibitions frequented by a very small percentage of the city inhabitants could be a compensation for the everyday perhaps unconscious but very strong aesthetic excitement of the countryman who witnesses the wonderful sight of the sunrise or the awakening of life after winter! Most of the urbanites experience their strongest excitement in the naturalistic setting of a football or boxing match. Overall, a country man is alive and genuine; overall, an urban industrial worker is dead and mechanical.

-Islam Between East and West by 'Alija 'Ali Izetbegovic, pg. 57