It has been observed that in the past, the populace of a typical town represented a broad spectrum of intelligence and that people found occupations to best serve needed roles in the village. The smart rubbed shoulders with the not-so-smart on a daily basis, and while this had issues, it also fostered a familiarity that helped to smooth the differences and soften the otherwise stark contrasts. But today, in a mobile society, whole communities can be categorized by intellectual considerations more than any other. How much is this form of segregation contributing to a disharmonious civilization, and what are the long-term implications and dangers?

What you describe is a quite real situation. When people care more about their personal achievements and their cultural trappings gained through their experience and doings and feel they are above others, this is a prescription for creating separation and then a potential division leading to mistrust, dislike, hatred, and even violent reprisals between the haves and the have nots. This again is seen to by the workings of the darkness who are constantly out and about looking for ways to drive a wedge between differing factions of human beings, to pit them against one another for all manner of purposes and causes that may seem to have a lofty ideal but end up causing pain, suffering, judgment, and harm to come. That is a high price to pay for believing in a cause and trying to force it on others simply because it is believed to be right. Your portrait of the idyllic small-town existence is a very real component of history and still exists in locales today where people mind their own business, see to the needs of their own family groups, and have a generous spirit and want others to prosper and be happy, and are willing to give of themselves to help if they see a need. This was always the case in history, that the people of a community rallied to help the disadvantaged among them. If someone’s barn caught on fire and burned down, the whole town would come together and hold a barn raising to restore that family to a functional level once again simply out of the goodness of their hearts, to give of themselves, their time, and even materially to obtain the building materials needed—each contributing something to the whole but all gaining from the satisfaction of doing good and knowing they are among good-hearted people who will have their back, so to speak, should misfortune befall them. Today there is a cold, dispassionate world where one is expected to have insurance, so you are relying on a self-serving institution that thrives by limiting benefits to the extent it can through loopholes, careful management, and extracting a high-priced premium payment on a regular basis from its members so not only can they restore someone in need, but derive extra money as a benefit for themselves. This works on paper and it works in actual practice, but it is an uneven tool and often working in ways not in divine alignment. This is the case of all human solutions applied via technology that are derived from actuarial and economic considerations alone and not coming from the heart, with the need for love in the equation somewhere as a driving force, as a goal, and as a purpose, both in the implementation and in the outcome—that will craft a quite different kind of contract for human interchange.