The shift to urban strangerhood exacts a lasting emotional loss that resists reversal

Evidence

It is quite another thing to talk about these changes in terms of their emotional meaning for, and effect on, the day-to-day lives of human beings. The tribalist does not easily become a cosmopolitan, and the cosmopolitan, having been transformed, looks back wistfully to a life that will not come again. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1038

Categorization

• XREF: The cosmopolitan’s wistful backward gaze parallels the reader’s reading of Julius as an ‘unmoored, unreliable actor’ — the acquisition of categorical detachment is remembered as a loss.