"...makes sense that cramming into cities with unnatural lights and disrupting biological rhythm would make them go haywire"
Then what does this suggest? Why does "unnatural light" (ignoring that humans have built "unnatural light" fires for ~1.7 million years) make a brain go haywire, but not, say, clipping one's toenails? Or reading books, or sitting on chairs, or being blasted by radio waves, or running on treadmills, or traveling over 15mph, or wearing clothes, or flying in airplanes, etc. What are you saying?
As far as I know, rural and suburban dwellers do have lightbulbs, computers, televisions, cell phones, and this time of year, brightly lit christmas trees. Is your position that there are more light bulbs in cities than the countryside? Do you have any evidence that that's meaningful? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me, that the external lights—easily blocked by window curtains—have any meaningful impact on health beyond the artificial light sources we all deliberately use.
I made no implication that contemporary rural life is superior or in any way comparable to historical rural life.
Edit: I guess I'm being pedantic at this point. My personal position is industrial agriculture is failing rapidly and that the modern world will reconcile with the fact that either we will all starve, or learn how to farm again. I spend half the year working on an organic farm, and my life is immeasurably better than when I'm in the city (which is of course, only my personal subjective datum which and I realize how much HN hates anecdote as evidence)
