“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The rich and well-to-do felt threatened, for they had changed the status quo by their insistence upon modernity and progress, thus releasing the energy of the needy. There was movement of the middle class from the city proper into the suburbs, with a change in the tax balance, and the city merchants began to suffer. The locality had no great sense of unity as a region, or overall pride in itself as a cultural or natural identity.

Culturally the region did not have its own identity, though it has always striven for some kind of characteristic expression. It saw government funds go past it to other sectors more economically depressed. The people had individual dreams and hopes, and en masse these represented a regional vision of improvement at many levels. At the same time feelings of discouragement grew. The young and the old, the conventional and the unconventional, had small skirmishes, where some of the city fathers objected to the long-haired youths in a city park — quite trivial incidents, and yet indicative of splits of values and misunderstandings between the generations.