I happen to prefer city dwelling to rural dwelling. Some people prefer the reverse. But the problem with your analysis is that you are hosting up rural dwelling food producers as somehow superior to everybody else. Even more, you posit a pre modern agrarian lifestyle as a 'natural one'. That makes no more sense than calling my home a 'natural' society. Your understanding of 'nature' and 'natural' are just a variant on old Enlightenment constructs, no more, and no less, than the concept of 'Progress' that you deride.
my family goes back on both sides to peasant and yeoman farmers and fishers, sorry, no courtiers (at least not with paternity acknowledged). the closest we get to aristocracy is a Thane, a kind or rural Big Man or squire, way way back on the paternal side. the other side is "peasants all the way down." I suppose family history (oral and written) may explain some of my political thought processes and sympathies.
somehow the experiments I've done in sustainable living -- like using a manual composting loo for 18 months, living without a car, conserving water and heating gas, vegetable gardening, eating local food in season etc -- don't strike me as quite equivalent to dressing up in shepherd costume and frolicking at the Petit Trianon or the Spanish equivalent :-) but ymmv. The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
