There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which is so unconditionally reserved to the city as the blasé outlook. It is at first the consequence of those rapidly shifting stimulations of the nerves which are thrown together in all their contrasts and from which it seems to us the intensification of metropolitan intellectuality seems to be derived. On that account it is not likely that stupid persons who have been hitherto intellectually dead will be blasé.

DEFINE: Defines the blasé outlook as a specifically metropolitan phenomenon, distinguishing it from rural experience. XREF: Connects to Simmel's broader theory of urban life and modern subjectivity, as well as later critiques of urban alienation.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 752