“I have no clue how people are surviving in centralized shitholes.” It’s truly bizarre to observe from the outside. Surviving is the key term. In a haze they can’t see and that’s a big part of it. People are suffering but can’t see connections to the strings pulling them this way and that, to realise they have no agency and that’s part of why they and everything feels so shit, they lost their agency and maybe never had it so don’t even realise.