Which leads to the second opportunity: increasing empathy. If community leaders, politicians, and leaders of institutions can again find ways to cultivate greater openness among wealthy and powerful residents—an openness that the ultra-wealthy likely did not have to the same degree in their less romantic urban or suburban areas from which they came—and to harness their peculiar desires for intimate connection to rural and Western culture, it may also increase the empathy they feel for neighbors, employees, and “friends” who are struggling nearby.
