Unlike the rural setting where the rhythm of life and sensory imagery flow more slowly, habitually and evenly, the city bombards the individual with an enormous kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and smells. To avoid being overwhelmed by such stimulation, the individual learns to discriminate carefully. This type of response is due to over-stimulation — there is intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli. The pace and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life create the need for developing a protective organ. But what is this protection for?
It is for protecting oneself against the fluctuations and discontinuities of the external milieu. This attitude produces an incapacity to react to a new stimulation with the required enthusiasm and it is most noticeable among the children of large cities.  

Money, as discussed earlier, also lends support to this blasé attitude. Since money homogenizes dissimilar things it gives the feeling that there is no reason why a particular thing should be preferred over another. Money erases all qualitative distinctions between manifold things and expresses all qualitative distinction as distinction of how much? Money, says Simmel, is the ultimate leveller.

The blasé attitude also extends to what Simmel says ‘the privilege of suspicion’ which makes us oblivious of our neighbours. It is not only indifference but also aversion. In this context the aversion-indifference attitude gives a sense of freedom to the individual. The freedom that the metropolitan human being enjoys is marked by bodily closeness and mental distance. It is a ‘Lonely Crowd’ where freedom is not necessarily a pleasant experience. One needs to overcome that sense of alienation to feel at home.