I read several years ago about a woman living in Northern Virginia who was considered a mild "success" story because she was able to get on a bus and ride about 2 miles to her job at McDonald's. She and her family had lived in the same neighborhood for a few generations within walking distance of schools, church, clinic, shopping, social services building, etc. None of them had ever left the neighborhood for anything, let alone a job. Learning that leaving the neighborhood as she did was a significant accomplishment for her - given her history/background - was a real jolt to my worldview.
Provincialism is like a massive invisible wall. The people on either side of it generally can't even fathom what it's like to be on the other side of that wall, but they don't even know it's there.
I spent several years growing up in small-town Wisconsin. The idea of moving to another place is just unfathomable to a lot of people who live in a place like that. Not just hard, like, oh, that would cost a lot of money and be a lot of work, but unfathomable, the way buying a house on Mars would be.
So much of our outlook is driven by our experience and we don't even realize it unless we encounter the right circumstances. If you grew up in one little area and that's all you know and that's all anybody you know has ever known, then leaving it is a big deal. Some people will pull it off, but many others simply won't be capable.
