I empathized maybe a little too much with this post. Thank you for writing it.

Sometimes I'll read something written by a person from a different area of the world and be utterly baffled- these people are WALKING to the store? I mean, there's a Braum's about half a mile away, but if you're actually buying things that can be pretty impractical. I live pretty close to the metro in my state, but even still, everything's pretty far away.

Something I've noticed about Europeans in particular- what to us is the next big town over, is the next country over to many of them. "Hey, there's a meetup in Austin! That's only about 300 miles away!" is like "Well, there's a meeting in France, but no way I'm driving 300 miles just for that." America is BIG. If you take a major highway, there can be a hundred miles between one town and the next.

The whole, "well, why don't you just move somewhere better?" is particularly crazy when you think about this. Movers cost hundreds of dollars a day. Moving any great distance takes days. Getting a new residence is RIDICULOUSLY expensive in the "nice" places. Rent for a 1000sqft apartment in New York is more than I've made in the last six months. Then there's downpayments, utilities, setting up new accounts for phones and internet, etc. You'll probably need a new license. College costs TRIPLE if you move out of state, because there's this awful thing they do where if you haven't been a state resident for X period of time, they get to charge you triple tuition. Heaven forbid you have to move with another person- a kid, say. I'd have to save for YEARS to be able to afford the first three months of a new residence.

In a conservative society/culture why do people live on their own? Why not in their extended family?

To be fair, being in love with living in nuclear families is a standard feature of Anglo cultures, some even proposed they actually caused them becoming richer than others. There are 13th century records of English villagers moving to other villages to work and then buying land and settling down and hardly ever seeing their relatives again in the old village. I find this mind-boggling.

Still, even in an individualist Anglo culture, I would expect its more conservative subsets would be in favor of blood relatives living under one roof. Which is an excellent idea for people poor and ill.

For example, in Eastern Europe (both poor and conservative) the idea of every adult child gluing another wing to the parents house, big enough to marry and have a child or two, is very popular. It is cheap, no mortgage, just buy materials and DIY with friends. And the generic conservatism of the region supports this, because it puts family and relations and community before the individual.

The last time you posted something like this, I fretted for a whole day, trying to figure out how to respond. I found I could not do so without a mindkillxplosion at how offensive it is

Of course suggestions to make radical changes can offend.

Here I have basically two choices: (A) Don't try to address the issue on a deep level (B) Say "I see this triggers your pattern of learned helplessness". "It needs a certain amount of pain for a person to decide that their suffering is enough and that they stop to suffer."

Unfortunately text isn't a good medium for doing (B) and even Skype isn't.

In your specific case being blind also adds additional issues that don't exist for most people.

expresses bafflement that you don't just move to a nice city like theirs

"Expressing bafflement" isn't a good description of what I'm doing when I'm asking for "Why do you do X?". I ask that question because I feel that the other person benefits from answering the question and getting clear about "why they do X". If you actually make a decision that it's for you the right choice to stay where you are at the moment, you feel more agentship.