Many, many times I have had to hold myself back from writing negative things about New England, North Dakota. Stopping to think about it, I have asked myself the question, “Are the majority of people in New England bad, or is it just a few people?” The answer is, it’s only about 10% of the people in New England who are responsible for most of the negative events and experiences.

The majority of the people in New England attend to their own lives, their own families, their work, children, homes, projects, hobbies, tasks, and their own problems. These people come and go each day without much notice, interaction, or conflict. Overall, New England is a quiet, peaceful, slow-paced, low-crime, uneventful place to live.

However, because New England is such a small town, there are some unique factors, circumstances, and mechanisms present that cause minor things to become Amplified and Magnified, often resulting in negative experiences. Some of these effects are described by the expressions “…living in a fish-bowl…” and “…living under a microscope…”. Here are some of the main causes, which act in combination:

1. Because life here is relatively uneventful, there is an eagerness to share news that may be interesting, but at times this news amounts to gossip. Not all gossip is bad or harmful, but it can be, especially if there are bad intentions when telling it, and deliberate omissions and embellishments are made in order to achieve a nefarious result.
2. There are people here who do not have a great deal to do, and their hobby or occupation has become collecting news or gossip, making omissions & embellishments, seeking out not only individuals who will be entertained, but people who they can wind-up, incite, cause to stew.
3. Because New England is so small, it seems like you can’t even be outside your house, leave your yard, or drive anywhere without seeing someone you would rather not see at all, because of a past negative interaction, or they are the town gossip.
4. Historically there has been a lack of opportunity in all of the small agricultural towns in North Dakota. The families engaged in farming had every family member working and performing chores every day of the week, usually for no pay, just in order for the family to survive. There were none, or very, very few good paying jobs. Observing what other people did, how they behaved, what they had, was not just a matter of curiosity, there was resentment, jealousy, anger, and hatred, because they themselves had so little, yet worked every day. In other words, the people here do have some genetic built-in jealousy and hatred for other people when observing what they do or have.

Rather than trying to explain this further as a theory, I will give some real-life examples. The first example, happened to a friend of mine in New England in the 1980s:

Shortly after graduating from high school in New England, my friend and his brothers started an auto-repair business. They rented a garage/warehouse and began doing vehicle repairs, body-work, and painting. My friend told me that he frequently had to talk to his younger brothers about agreeing to perform repairs, body-work, painting too cheap, to where they weren’t going to make any profit on the work.

An older family member overheard some of these discussions about “…We’re not making any money on this work…”, and he began repeating this around New England, and adding just a little embellishments to it, such as “…they’re losing money…”. Other people around town began repeating this, and adding to it, “… they’re going out of business…”.

Soon, a loan-officer/bank-manager from a local bank came to my friend’s family home and was angrily banging his fists on their front-door, yelling through the door, “I want my money!” When they opened the door the bank-manger was frantically cursing at them about how they weren’t going to get away with cheating, swindling, and stealing from him!

It took my friend several minutes to get the bank-manager calmed down, and then he began asking the bank-manager to explain what was this all about, how did he come to believe that they were trying to cheat him?

It was discovered that all over New England, the rumors had spread and grown to where everyone was talking about how their auto-repair business was losing money, deep in debt, and the bank was never going to get any of its money back.

My friend had never missed a loan payment to the bank, and their auto-repair business was not in debt. But it was troubling to my friend and his brothers to learn that their own family member had initiated the rumor that “…they weren’t making any money…”, probably with the intent of undermining their business, and that other people were so eager to repeat this gossip and added to it with “…the bank is never going to get its money back…”

In order to wrap this up, I will just tell a little of my own personal experience living in New England. Whenever I have experienced something unusually negative or hostile in New England that comes seemingly out of nowhere, upon review, each time it is traceable back to just a few of the same individuals.

This involves people in New England being so bored or starved for entertainment, that they are attentive listeners to the gossip spreaders that reveal the details, problems, dealings, business, finances, activities, personal relationships, plans, and aspirations of other people. Sometimes, even the first-time telling of this information is inaccurate, incorrect, untrue, and maybe told with the intention of undermining, sabotaging, harming someone else.

One more example regarding this. I know families living in New England, that NEVER go to the local gas station, convenience store, grocery store, Dollar General, hardware store, bank, clinic, pharmacy, bars, restaurant, street festivals, community events, or interact with their neighbors, NEVER. Instead, they do EVERYTHING in Dickinson, a much larger town 25 miles to the north.

I observe these families, and I think to myself, there has got to be a reason why they don’t ever hop in their car and drive three to four city-blocks to grab some milk, bread, ice-cream, soda, a bag of ice, versus driving 25 miles to Dickinson. I think that it’s because they want to keep their privacy and don’t want anyone knowing their business.