The new article — subtitled — "It turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best" — is by the philosopher Agnes Callard.
A few of my old efforts:
• "What if Americans stopped believing the travel propaganda?"
• "'Travel isn’t just framed as a cure-all for what ails us...'"
• "Of course, I'm reading 'If Seeing the World Helps Ruin It, Should We Stay Home?'"
• "The philosophy of travel... the psychology of travel..."
• "'I learned about post-tourism, which is just research jargon for traveling hipsters...'"
• "What do you think the difference is between a tourist and a traveler?"
I'll take a few excerpts from Callard, and certainly some of this is new (and all of it is well expressed):
But the greatest hater of travel, ever, was the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, whose wonderful “Book of Disquiet” crackles with outrage:
I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places. . . . The idea of travelling nauseates me. . . . Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel....
Pessoa, Emerson, and Chesterton believed that travel, far from putting us in touch with humanity, divorced us from it. Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. Call this the traveller’s delusion....
[T]ouristic travel exists for the sake of change. But what, exactly, gets changed?... We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others....
Pessoa said that he knew only one “real traveller with soul”: an office boy who obsessively collected brochures, tore maps out of newspapers, and memorized train schedules between far-flung destinations. The boy could recount sailing routes around the world, but he had never left Lisbon.
Chesterton also approved of such stationary travellers. He wrote that there was “something touching and even tragic” about “the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen,* and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like.”...
Chesterton believed that loving what is distant in the proper fashion—namely, from a distance—enabled a more universal connection....
______________________
* Credit to the New Yorker for not bowdlerizing Chesterton. I can't remember if we're supposed to hold Chesterton at arm's length. I'm opening a tab for "The Back of the World/The troubling genius of G. K. Chesterton," a 2008 New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik, which I'll read when I get around to it.
Posts
95 comments:
Why even leave your house? You can surely use Google Street View to see any part of Madison, and Amazon will delivery anything you need to survive.
I’ll believe the anti-travel propaganda when I stop hearing about forums and summits in various countries around the world that our elites must attend, while we should enjoy our staycations.
Nobody's forcing you to travel.
A slow assault on the peasants ability to move about.
The Green Nude Eel nods its approval.
Travel is fun!
Friday I golfed with 3 other lawyers at the Dismal River Club. Beautiful weather. Great day!
The golf club is about 20 miles west of the highway. On the way home, in the dark, I made a wrong turn and went west instead of east.
Now understand it is pitch black in the Sandhills of Nebraska. I ended up driving about 25 miles west and then 25 miles north to get to Highway 2. The road is unpaved; fine sand. I nearly hit a giant bull at one point.
I was treated to a fabulous lightening show. Also a big windstorm. Thankfully, not too much rain. But there was rain in low spots in the road from the night before. I drove around some of them.
Next day I floated down the Middle Loup River. A lab followed me the entire way.
The outfitter, of course, knew who owned the dog. Daisy's owner was in the hospital. The dog had gotten into a fight with a beaver earlier and he took the dog to the vet.
The outfitter runs the grocery store in Thedford. I bought some nice meat from him. He knows one of the sons of the Governor. I know the Governor and one of his daughters. This is all typical Nebraska; two or three degrees of separation. Thomas County has a population of 673 people.
I also cranked the BMW up over 120 mph on the way there and back. It runs best over 90 mph.
Glad I didn't stay home!
I just love all these people who don't travel theorizing and sermonizing on how terrible travel is. I tell you with great authority that they are clueless and that the bug up there asses about travel is absolutely mystifying.
You notice that in the proffered quotes in the OP there are no convincing arguments for their point of view. They're like five year olds, having never tasted it, simply screaming that they don't like broccoli.
We recently went from New England to northern New Mexico. We had no intention of being better or worse people. We were getting away from my wife's job which, though she usually loves it, had recently left her frazzled and sleep-deprived. We were getting away from a crazy friend who we had enabled for more than four months but now we couldn't because we weren't there. We were getting some time alone with only chosen things to do, which felt like a second honeymoon (our 42nd anniversary fell within it). And we were seeing some amazing stuff that we really liked. We ended it happier, and with a new appreciation of our togetherness. As far as I am concerned, it was two weeks well spent.
I've been all over the world, but there are definitely some trips that should not have been taken. As I've gotten older, travel has become much more pragmatic. I ask myself seriously what the objective of the trip is...what am I or my family getting out of it that couldn't be better served by letting my in-laws just see the babies virtually over the computer instead of taking the 11 hour flight into Guarulhos.
It's just like the oceangate debacle, what are you getting for your significantly reduced real experience over the objectively better virtual visit (which includes high-res sidescanned sonar images) other than bragging rights?
If you're over 30, it pays to be more practical. If you're under 30, sure get yourself into crazy adventures.
AA, I've been on your side of this since I first read your post about this some years ago. I've traveled a bit when I was younger and was not enraptured by it, especially the actual process of getting there. Ugh.
Funny how some people get so offended by someone having a different view about this than they do.
And Dave Begley, what'd you shoot? Or did you play a match? Wilbur highly prefers match play.
"We had no intention of being better or worse people."
Ditto. This need to justify travel is perplexing and never would have occurred to me if it weren't for the posts I read here about the press articles. We travel and enjoy it. End of story.
So, travel makes us think we're the best version of ourselves whereas we are actually being the worst...
I think this is true for some people, and we all know who they are. But can't we also see this statement - this allegation - as a challenge actually to be our best selves? To examine what we do and how we think about the people and places we encounter, and to work to be more patient, more understanding, less provincial, less set in our ways?
Or, we could also take this allegation as more than just battlespace preparation for the coming day when They make us Show Our Papers on demand and when we have to earn our travel through social credit. We could take it, also, as one more way in which our putative betters believe that they get to define everything about us. What is our "best self"? What is our worst? The New Yorker knows, and doesn't hesitate to tell us.
Either way, I'm going to Mexico in July and Switzerland in August and India next year (or such is the plan - otherwise the year after), and you can pry my passport from my cold, dead hands.
If all the proletariat stop traveling though, what will happen to all the journalists that need something to sniff at, and disdain? They might find they have no other choice than take their nose out of the air. They might have to go to the grocery and Walmart, just for the people-watching material.
Hard Times.
Plainly, once size does not fit all. Preach if you must but recognize that it works best when it comes in the form of actions, not words.
"Travel broadens the mind" assumes a mind, and some minds mind being broadened.
Somewhere long ago I read something to the effect that one person can sail the seven seas and have adventures on every continent and learn nothing, while another can sit at home in their armchair and read books and understand much.
Personally I would feel much diminished had I not traveled even the little that I have in pursuit of my own interests and obsessions.
By coinkydink, my wife and I were reminiscing about our '78 Eurail venture last night and I have unboxed our journal and collected documents along with all 600+ photos/slides.
I'll post them all soon!
Kidding.
What constitutes travel?
Visiting the next town over, or a town two thousand miles away?
Visiting 'just because' or to participate in a specific celebration?
To 'see' a thing? Aren't a lot of things built or presented 'to be seen'?
Hasn't everyone 'seen' the Grand Canyon? It's on the internet, of course.
Does everything one travels to see make you a tourist?
Though I couldn't read this (behind the paywall), I suspect one could write a similar diatribe against almost any activity people do for enjoyment: Why read? Why see plays or movies? Why go to concerts, or even listen to music? Or go to the beach? Well here's one: Why engage in philosophizing?
Thanks for reminding me that I need to finish the plans for our fall trip. Since the end of June last year we 1) spent two weeks in Germany introducing two of our grandsons to our German relatives and giving them a snap shot of Eastern Germany from Bavaria to Belin, 2) took an eleven day cruise of the Western Caribbean from Tampa to Cartagena in December, stopping in Grand Cayman, Panama, Costa Rica and Cozumel and 3) took a 14 day trans Atlantic cruise in April/May via Malaga, Valencia, Palma, Marseille, the Cinque Terre and ending in Rome, then finishing up with two weeks on the Amalfi Coast (Sorrento, Positano and Capri,) Florence, Lake Como and Milan. Three great trips, but we're thinking about skipping Europe in the Fall and flying to South America in the fall, which is their Spring, probably Chile and Argentina.
We certainly appreciate the never ending anti-travel articles trumpeted by Althouse. It helps to keep the AGW freaks home and frees up some airline travel and hotel options. Plus, we get to see the Al Gores, Gretas, and other hypocrites who feel compelled to sneak out of the country by the back door in their native environment, i.e., UN climate conferences. Happy trails!
There are things you can not do sitting at home reading. Like observing the southern hemisphere night sky. Can't do it at home.
I enjoy seeing new things in person. It is a very fine experience that brings me great satisfaction. I know not everyone is like that. If only the writer of this article would remember, or perhaps realize for the first time, the same.
So, is there a difference between a traveler and a pilgrim in this anti-travel worldview?
Sometimes, the point of going to see the thing in person is to feel it and to know it is 'really real' with your senses as opposed to your mind. Is there a kind of knowledge of a thing or a place or a person that can't be gained from a book or a video?
One of the more annoying aspects of people who are well to the left of center is their pathological, not to mention pathetic, efforts to justify their personal preferences as somehow marking them as being superior to the great unwashed masses — especially those deplorable masses.
@Althouse, we get it. You’re a curmudgeon who hates travel. Fine. It’s a free country. But if you think you can understand the genius of Renaissance art without visiting Florence, Rome, or other Italian cities, well, bless your heart.
I mostly travel in the US, but I'm in Rome, just returned from Florence, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. The cities are magnificent as are the people and the food.
Coincidentally, this morning I am backing up the photos taken on our 2 months in Australia this last winter. I am struck by how viewing them takes me back to being there. Something that doesn't happen with generic pictures of a place. Not that there are pictures of many of the places we went.
A couple of business trips across the Pacific in a DC-6 will cure you of travel.
Motels of the world.
Discussing the role of travel in life certainly makes for some interesting conversations and contemplations, don't it?
Can we agree on some underlying truths? Here are some suggestions: Assuming that you are interested in reading and otherwise learning about the world through hearing stories from others, or seeing photos and videos, there will be a more visceral understanding of the locales if you visit other places and climes. Would someone who never traveled outside of their rural area really fully picture what it's like to be in a big city without visiting one, even briefly? Can you replicate the bombardment of senses from standing barefoot at the edge of an ocean just by seeing pictures?
How about smell, how about the way that the air feels, or the way that the light falls? I didn't have the ability to appreciate the experience of the tropics until I left Pennsylvania for Miami and the Caribbean, or the almost transcendental reaction I had when I finally spent some time in the true mountain country of Colorado. I learned that I don't like the tropics but that I deeply yearn to spend more time in the mountains.
Or how about touch? It means something to me that I was able to actually touch the stone walls of the Coliseum, and the simple flat marble marker of Ben Franklin's grave. I'd like to walk where Jesus did someday.
"that travel, far from putting us in touch with humanity, divorced us from it"
As a generalization, that is such obvious BS, you have to wonder if this was trolling. Traveling with or to see family and friends puts you in touch with the most reelvant subset of "humanity" and traveling on a cruise that much more.
"Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best."
Huh? How many travelers think of traveling as "convincing us" of one thing or another? How would you measure its effect on turning "us" into "the worst version" of ourselves?
"Call this the traveller’s delusion"
Call this the phony philosopher's phony attribution
"[T]ouristic travel exists for the sake of change."
Huh? It exists for the sake of enjoyment.
"We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting change on others"
Who dat we? Does supporting jobs and giving money count as "inflicting change"?
The argument against travel is like the argument against having children: If it makes sense to you, I wouldn’t dream of trying to persuade you otherwise. I have five children and travel frequently, but you do you and we’ll both be happy.
Swift's Gulliver's Travels gives a superficial appearance of exploring oceans and continents, even more in a way than Crusoe's Robinson Crusoe which was roughly contemporary. Crusoe mostly goes back and forth between Africa and the middle Americas; he has something to do with, er, the slave trade.
Gulliver's adventures have to do with reading and deepening one's understanding of things in a way that may not require travel. In his depiction of the most despicable human beings, the Yahoos, Swift has been accused of giving a derogatory presention of sub-Saharan Africans, indigenous people of Australia and the Americas, the Irish,and the Jews. He is much more concerned to criticize modern Europeans than to praise them in comparison to someone else--I believe he is warning about what the Europeans could easily come to.
British imperialism was getting underway, and Britain acquired the "right" to the slave trade across the Atlantic by the Treaty of Utrecht, in Swift's lifetime. What did he think of all this? In about one sentence, he says the Europeans are likely to be indifferent or cruel to foreigners, and it would be better to stay home and leave them alone.
Swift himself hardly travelled beyond the Dublin to London trip. When he was young and poor he would walk from the ferry dock on the English side to London, probably stopping at an inn. There could be a fair bit of variety on the Dublin to London trip.
lovely article
I'm working on a trip for this December and next year, as I read your column. I guess my answer would be my actions. Curious thing to write about. And now...back to life.
All of the anti-travelers moaning about traveling reminds me of Pilgrims who couldn't bear the thought of someone having a good time somewhere. I wish they would kindly STFU and leave the rest of us alone. Their efforts will have no result other than annoying people. Perhaps I'm wrong but it appears to me only Left minded people seem to be bothered by the thought of ordinary people traveling for fun. But then again the Left, especially the far Left has always been puritanical. I'm glad Greta Thunberg is no longer a thing. She was such an insufferable child.
Lately all my travel involved going to see family members: Siblings, or children. I'd rather do that than travel someplace to sight-see.
As other commenters have noted, but worth saying even more explicitly: the anti-travel propaganda is battle space prep for the prog offensive against mobility in general, against the free use of cars, ships, and airplanes, and against the ordinary choices of ordinary people who are living the "worst version" of their already deplorable selves.
But given the very strong preferences of those ordinary people, some progs included, to move about, as currently reflected in high demand for air travel, it could become a trans-like problem for progs as they push a little too hard and provoke a backlash. For now, at least, even most lefties are happy to live the contradiction of climate alarmism and international travel.
Because there's a new New Yorker article : "The Case Against Travel." The New Yorker should publish an article titled "The Case Against The New Yorker". It would be far more compelling than the case against travel. New Yorkers are really so provincial.
We've done three road trips across the USA from California to New York and back. 2015, 2021, and 2022. Been to every state. The only part that is bad is driving past the biggest cities. We stop to see people we know all over the country, and do some of the less-visited national parks and museums. 45+ mpg in the Honda Accord Hybrid, and gas is much cheaper outside of California. Been to all 50 states.
Some of our local friends warn us about those "red states" - it's good to get away from insular urban perspectives and realize there are nice people and places in every single state.
Plus driving is so much less stressful than flying. No hard timetables, go where you like, when you like.
if (IF!) you're only going to be looking through a window at your destination..
Virtual Reality my be for YOU!
Why spend HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of dollars, to sit in a stinking tube; peering through a porthole
(waiting for an implosive death)?
when you can NOW watch the Titanic from the comfort (and Safety!) of home!
Going to Paris? And you're going to see the Mona Lisa? Save Money! avoid crowds! Use VR!
Also! Why buy an expensive vacation home? Use Virtual Realty* !
Virtual Realty* not a real company (i hope!)
Once again, as the lady from Budapest by way of Chicago recounts her visits to Abu Dhabi and Paris, we see an anti-travel person who sure does seem to have done a whole hell of a lot of traveling.
Do as I say, not as I do. Gets old.
I'm sitting in Tipperary in a house my parents lived in for 30 years that I now enjoy. For me, this is travel. I took a short holiday to Porto with my sons earlier this summer, that was tourism. Tourism is very tiring, but often worth it. I find these writer's high-minded dismissals of travel to be very elitist and best ignored. Do what makes you happy. It may take you the better part of a lifetime to figure out what that is. Other people's might be worth reading, but don't take them too seriously.
Also, I can't catch giant pike or 15 pound trout at home in the desert. That is no illusion.
Original Mike said...
Nobody's forcing you to travel.
Succinct as usual...
Dave Begley said...
The road is unpaved; fine sand. I nearly hit a giant bull at one point.
this raises a Serious Question:
Is Nebraska "fence in"? like MOST of the world?
Or "fence out"? like Wyoming?
to wit: Who would have been liable if you'd hit the bull (assuming bull In roadway)??
i know the answer for iowa.. I've found out the answer for wyoming.. don't Know for Nebraska
I will add: The greatest anti-travel screed in my opinion is Daniel Boorstin’s “From Traveler to Tourist: The Lost Art of Travel” in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1962).
I'm sorta on the Althouse side of this. I don't like to travel unless I can get there by car and make as many stops as I want. Or need. I hate air travel. Most of the times I've traveled overseas by air there was no fly fishing at the end or no bird hunting and the people I met didn't seem interested in doing their jobs. With rare exceptions. So why bother. I'm not a good tourist. I don't buy stuff and I'm a lousy photographer. Their food usually isn't very good unless you go to France where bad food is the exception.
As ever, the anti=travel left is only too happy to deny ordinary people living near tourist destinations in poor countries an opportunity to live better.
So it's "EFF your poverty! EFF your hopes for prosperity! WE rich people want YOU to go back to being hand-to-mouth farmers and day laborers, because WE need to restrict travel to "People Like Us"".
I like it if it's to see specific things I want to see. I don't try to be anything other than a tourist. I am a tourist. I don't see the problem. I can't think of a reason that I would want to somehow blend in and appear local. What is the point of the deception?
Plus, appearing to be a tourist can help local people appreciate where they live in a new way. I know that has been true for me when I've seen people visit my area. It has motivated me to go out and see local places I'd never bothered to stop by before.
And yes to some of the comments- this is preparation for coercing people to stop flying and driving far from their homes. It is only a matter of time before you have to justify any airline flight before being allowed to purchase a ticket.
For example, people who visit the area where I live are usually very into our woods and hiking. If you live here, you're so used to the woods and waterfalls and whatnot that it's easy to sort of forget about them and how neat they are. Then some tourist gives you an excited account of a local place they visited, and your own appreciation is rekindled.
Callard has shown in her prior comments about her romantic life that she is surprisingly bad at imagining the internal lives of people who aren’t her. Here, she doesn’t seem to fathom that other people might experience travel in ways she cannot.
>Blogger Big Mike said...
@Althouse, we get it. You’re a curmudgeon who hates travel. Fine. It’s a free country. But if you think you can understand the genius of Renaissance art without visiting Florence, Rome, or other Italian cities, well, bless your heart.<
What Big Mike said. Like standing so close to the Pieta that you could reach and touch it (pre Laszlo Toth) and shedding tears as you are overwhelmed by its beauty and magnificence, and feeling your connection to it and Leonardo. Try that with your freaking picture book and imagination. And that's just the best part; then go out and wander among his descendants and find out what they're all about. A close second.
Then, the world...
"What do you think the difference is between a tourist and a traveler?"
Easily done. Ask any business traveler, particularly one who travels regularly, such as a salesman or a consulting civil engineer, what he (or she for you obsessive types who reject the time-honored non-specific he) thinks of airports, airlines, airline passengers (good gawd!), hotels, and eating out. Travel to the traveler is a stage in a larger, more complex, and hopefully profitable endeavor, whether that's traveling to Edina, Minnesota to terminate the staff of a functionally superfluous systems programming shop in 2023 or traveling to Virginia City by Conestoga wagon on the Bozeman Trail to homestead in the Tahoe Valley in 1866. It's something to endure rather than appreciate. Dramatic scenery, curious native culture, and local cuisine are of interest only as probable impediments to that hopefully profitable endeavor. Those are some rugged-looking mountains ahead. I hope the passes are clear of snow and my wagon holds up. Who are those distant riders following us? Cavalry or Comanches? This plate of alleged food looks dubious, smells rancid, and will probably give me the bloody flux if it doesn't kill me outright.
Compare those attitudes to the reactions of the tourist to similar stimuli: Ah, the magnificent Rockies. They're infinitely more beautiful in reality than any photograph. I'm so happy to see them in the flesh! Ha-ha! Smile. Em, give little Chet a good sharp swat! He's making rude gestures again. I certainly hope the resort we're booked in has at least ten feet of base and fresh powder. Look, Henry, Native Americans! How much would they charge for an authentic Shoshone war dance? Where's the best place for some good ol' Colorado barbeque?
Oh, and so many other memories, like getting up at 4:30am in Amritsar and being invited in the Golden Temple of the Sikhs. They even gave me a prayer book in English. And on the way we stopped for a bathroom break and we were invited into an Indian wedding celebration!
Is there anything normal, sane or moral that the NYT is for? The should change their motto to "Burn It All Down."
"Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade"
I went to Oklahoma last month to visit Army buddies I hadn't seen in 30 years. In 2 weeks we are headed to Hilton Head to vacation with our in-laws (in their Eighties), then in August we are going to Cape Cod to visit my side of the family. It's not about the "travel" for me, it's the destination. Many people don't want to deal with the expense/hassle of travel so they just refuse to do it. I don't get that. Worthwhile things aren't always simple.
...you may be found guilty of fencing Chesterton to your unsuspecting readers, Althouse.
Thanks for this. Not feeling the need to throw myself around the world. I can sit here and walk the streets of whatever, and the opportunity cost of tourism looms large.
Better to stay home and read Chesterton.
"The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world."
Taking the argument of these grumpy old men (they are men, aren't they?) to its logical conclusion, they would be better off "not experiencing" the world from a jail cell. It wouldn't even need a lock -- just a stack of books, magazines and an internet connection.
It's kind of hard to swim in the Mediterranean Sea, or take a cruise on the Nile River, from your home. I suppose I could fill up the bathtub and pretend, but it just wouldn't be be the same.
I don’t knit. But I don’t waste time trying to convince knitters to stop knitting.
"Blogger Original Mike said...
Nobody's forcing you to travel."
Not yet anyway.
I would be really pleased if American women simply decided to stay home. Don't need to see them on the planes, don't need to see them in the hotels, don't need to hear them speak. Oh, and they could quit writing about it as well.
You're sick of hangin' around and you'd like to travel
Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down
I guess they can't revoke your soul for tryin'
Get out of the door and light out and look all around
- The Grateful Dead
Santa Fe next month. Scotland in August. Vancouver in August. Italy in Sept. England in Oct.Dallas in Nov. Phoenix n Dec.
So my case for travel is that I enjoy it. Those afraid to fly. Those too cheap or too poor to fly. Miss. Out. On a lot of fun, scenery, history, architecture, food.
Why travel to Picnic point? Get a treadmill for your basement and engage your imagination.
Unfortunately we cannot all live in a place as beautiful as Madison.
Chesterton is Catholic and will always be regarded with suspicion at places like the NYT. GKC was not always right but he was very interesting in seeing new angles in just this way: by turning the telescope around to see if it told us more that way. Often, it does.
I love planning travel, and next year we are all going to Tromso for a wedding. But the actuality is less exciting. I traveled best when I had to go for some reason other than entertainment. Remember that VR will not only allow us to travel to Paris, but Paris 1927 soon. Why get in a plane? You can't go there.
Juat returned from our Alaska cruise. Glad we went. My second cruise, first one for tje missus.
I had been on a South American cruise with my Dad because he had often declared that he wanted to see the gauchos in Argentina. He was in early stages pf dementia so I was there to keep him safe and to translate if needed. After a few days in Buenos Aires we cruised south, saw the Falklands (not the Malvinas), Cape Horn, the Chilean fjords and finally a few days in Santiago. Two weeks on the ship was a bit long for my tastes, but it was enjoyable anyway.
The scenery in Alaska, and the ports, did not disappoint. We weren't able to cruise to the Dawes Glacier as planned, because too much ice had broken off and we had no desire to add our ship's name to the list of iceberg casualties. Met interesting people at dinner and in the lounges, and a few characters in town at meals. Skagway felt the most like how I envisioned Alaska to be. We returned to Seattle with more bags than when we left port.
We had flown out to Seattle from Dulles but I knew we'd have much more in tow on the return trip so we rented a car and drove back to PA. Went to CA, then I-80 to the Quad Cities and eventually by I-70 which got us within 30 miles from home.
Not only did we check off an item from our bucket list and one more state out of the fifty, we had a blast together and got experiences we couldn't have had by staying home.
My family is far-flung across the country. Most of my travel has been to meet up with family members, either in their hometowns or another location to spend some time together. In 2018, we went to New York City (where one brother lives) to celebrate my Dad's 80th birthday. In 2019, it was crashing my uncle's 70th birthday party in Hawaii, then visiting Texas the next week for a family reunion. In 2021, it was a trip to Michigan and a road trip up to the Upper Peninsula, then another family reunion in Texas a few months later. Last year, it was a road trip from Florida to Gettysburg, stopping off at interesting family-related sites on the drive up and back, and spending some time with my family touring the Gettysburg battlefield and environs while there. And soon, I'm going on vacation again, to hang out with my Mom for a week in Holland, Michigan. All of these trips were either to new places that I had never been to or else to places that I had not seen in decades. The common link is family, seeing Mom, my brothers, cousins, nieces, etc. I don't regret any of the trips that I've taken.
On July 5 we leave for Scotland. We will return on September 28. We go there for the cool summers and also the glorious highland scenery. We have an apartment that puts me 32 yards from the first tee of a great little golf course. We are about one hundred yards from the North Sea. We have done this about five times now and will continue to do so as long as we have the means and the health.
In Scotland because of the cool temperatures I can throw a bag on a trolley or over my shoulder and play eighteen holes in 3 and a half hours or less. Over here in the summer time I have to play cart golf because my seventy five year old body can't take the humidity and the heat. Maybe I'll drop dead over there. If I do I hope someone arranges to ship my body home at great cost so I can keep my carbon footprint large after death.
Years ago I had a fellow worker whom I had considered well balanced up until he propagated his theory that the rich people don't want the common man to travel and that's why they beat us down. It's not the rich people, it's the government types, the activists. The goddamned busybodies who think they know what's best for everyone. These are miserable excuses for human beings.
And let me reiterate what someone asked Dave Begley before, "What did you shoot at Dismal River? And which course did you play, or did you play both?"
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
It didn’t take long for the author to make his point by describing a visit to Abu Dhabi where he did something he did not want to do and had no interest in but did anyway because there wasn’t much to do in Abu Dhabi. At which point one recognizes him as a fool. He describes his Paris experience as walking all day. So he didn’t bother to stick his head in a shop or have a drink in a bar. In Abu Dhabi the thing he didn’t want to do was with falcons. Left him cold. I am not particularly interested In falconry but were I in Abu Dhabi I might seek out the place where one buys a falcon to see how it’s done and the various values placed on the birds. The people of this region love falconry and often buy them first class seats when traveling. So they really really like them. But then I am an extremely curious person. Curiosity is not an attribute of the anti travel bunch
I won’t complain if a lot of other people stop traveling. It would make my travel a lot easier and cheaper, as airports and destinations would be less crowded. I’ll even send non-travelers pictures of my travels so they can vicariously experience traveling. The truth is that there is a scold denouncing every pleasure under heaven.
Visited Da Vinci's Last Supper a few years ago. A young woman wth a PhD in Art History spent a couple of hours on the painting, each figure and the building.
One of the best experienses of my life.
At 65 I was in the Running of the Bulls in Pamploma. Exciting few minutes when I ran. Best week long party ever.
Rode the Pacific Coast Highway on motorcycles with dear friends.
Many other adventures. Don't think reading about them would be the same.
But YMMV.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Genitals are the cause of all of humanity's problems. Lautreamont
Travel is a luxury good for most people. The world (or at least large swaths of it) are relatively safe to go wandering about in for now. I suppose if they enjoy it, they ought to do as much as they can before it is made illegal by our globalist overlords. Highly wasteful of natural resources best kept in reserve for the Davos crowd, after all.
Myself, I've done a little, some overseas, and didn't much care for it. I think I went to sleep every night thinking about how I would get home if the apocalypse came while I was on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
I tend to few countries other than my own as places I would rather not go, without the backing of a Marine Expeditionary Brigade accompanying, and a nuclear aircraft carrier just off the coast providing support.
If I want to travel, I'll get in a car and drive to some part of the US that I haven't yet been. That satisfies my itch.
Just invested in some serious travel rods from St Croix and TFC. I have jobs coming in Texas, Arizona and California. I’m fishing Venice, Galveston, San Diego, Long Beach, Oxnard, San Luis Opisbo, Monterey and somewhere around Fort Bragg (CA). It’s pretty much what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life. I‘ve always been a wandering kind.
Another aspect of travel, or being a tourist: Paris Syndrome. Things are not always what you expect them to be.
Gilbar
I don’t know the Nebraska law, but I’m guessing it favors the rancher. One of my fellow Law Reviewer buddies wrote a case note on that issue but I can’t remember the holding.
I was driving very slow; about 20-23 mph.
The last 20 odd years, I've traveled with my own pillow and an all cotton sheet, since hotels and even my own family have cotton-poly blend, which won't let me sleep.
Like standing so close to the Pieta that you could reach and touch it (pre Laszlo Toth) and shedding tears as you are overwhelmed by its beauty and magnificence, and feeling your connection to it and Leonardo.
Leo must have made a big impression on you. Concussion?
You! Pascal! STFU.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, a Frenchman who stayed in France.
"All of humanity's triumphs stem from man's ability to get out and roam."
― Rocco, a Franco-American who has two great-great grandmothers that left France for America (one's granddaughter married the other's grandson)
> Ralph L said...
Leo must have made a big impression on you. Concussion?<
Heh. I meant Michelangelo, of course. Leonardo, yeah, doesn't he make a big impression on everyone?
Sitting here, housebound for reasons of health and wealth, I dream of being neither tourist nor traveler but a wanderer. Retired, leaving behind the need to stay in place, I yearn to pick up and go, to start anew, and then start out again.
Long ago riding from Innsbruck to the Munich airport we passed by all these towns with their own ski lifts. I started then to dream of coming back and taking my time checking out all the little ski hills and towns around. I'd be up for taking a ride to space. Perhaps even a submersible. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. A certain elegance to a wanderer having no final resting place. ( I regret to note I've been visiting my own grave site since I was 5.)
I offer up Tennyson's Ulysses and particularly these words, "I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly...
for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die."
There's tourism, then there's business travel. And the two are very much different. My daughter told my granddaughter that "Daddy travelled all over the world in his career".
That's an exaggeration, but I did travel to some very unpleasant and at times dangerous places in an international law career. Try standing in a long immigration line at Lagos Nigeria at 0330 on a hot sweaty summer night. The Border Officer demands you show a return ticket. You stifle the appropriate response, "My mother didn't raise any idiots" and show him your ticket.
Or go some place (Jakarta) where the phone in your hotel room is bugged---or meet Uruguayan businessmen in Buenos Aires because it's open kidnapping season on American businessmen in Montevideo.
Travel to Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo, is all very fine. But Caracas, Mexico City and Rio De Janeiro are all part of the mix as well.
A lot of generalizations here.
Is traveling to learn about the past? This is valuable.
Stay at a posh resort to relax your mind? That is fine. Helps the local economy while it lets you renew your soul.
Learning about cultures? Not so much: it takes at least six months for this.
How about ecotourism: We can show you how we grow our organic rice and you can stay at our B&B.
How about spending two weeks helping vaccinate refugees after an earthquake, or filling in for a doc on a remote Indian reservation?
and the final lesson from travel is coming home with a different point of view.
I think Chesterton was exaggerating his point. One of his repeated themes was that we do not properly appreciate what amazing things are before us every day--his book Manalive is about just that.
Given a choice between reading Chesterton and the New Yorker, I'd pick the former every time.
Two vignettes from a visit to Spain some 40 years ago.
* A British woman in Madrid's Atocha train station loudly braying about her porter not following her instructions: "This poor BEAST doesn't understand a word I'm saying!"
* A middle-age Yankee woman waving dollar bills in a local deli and shouting : "But this is good American money!"
Some people really should stay home.
A friend sent me an email that included a photo of him and his wife on camels. I knew they traveled a lot--even to hot places that I'd avoid even without dealing with Muslims--and asked him where they had been.
Western Morocco. He said they also took a long round trip bus ride to spend a night under the desert stars--which turned out not to be much more visible there than in eastern Arkansas.
If you like to travel, do it. If you don't, don't.
Seems pretty simple to me.
But then again, I don't think it's necessary that everybody like the same things I do. Reminds me of a joke...
"Like my grandpa used to say, if everybody liked the same things, they'd all want to go upstairs and fuck your grandma."
I much preferred this essay to Dr Callard's philosophical effusions about her partners in marriage.
I much preferred this essay to Dr Callard's philosophical effusions about her partners in marriage.
Neither travel, nor taking pleasure in traveling, requires any justification. Those who suggest otherwise are simply wrong. This should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temperature.
Like many articles seemingly designed just to get clicks, this one uses quotes in a disingenuous way. The G.K. Chesterton quote is taken out of context and he much more to say about the positive effects of travel and "travel" vs. tourism. just do a google search and you'll see.
I would love to travel to the time when I had just discovered Chesterton and discover him again.
In addition to his great Catholic apologetics, he is deemed unacceptable because of false presentist accusations of anti-semitism based on a few statements taken entirely out of context. False because he was not a typical man of his time, and also false because of the way he engaged the debates around and with European Jews in his time. He was a Zionist just as he was a Catholic, and he was also one of if not the earliest influential writer who warned of the racist and eugenicist evils of Hitler, though he died on the eve of WWII. He was more anti-Calvinist. His now infamous suggestion that Jews wear distinctive clothes was not merely directed at Jews, but also at people of different faiths and nations. He was honored after WWII by Jewish leaders worldwide who knew what he had done to warn the world -- and, had he only lived longer, might have influenced it. The Society of G.K. Chesterton has essays addressing the subject.
But it takes more than five minutes to figure out his understanding of Europe, Britain, Catholics, Jews, the World Wars, and many other things, so, ironically, academicians today would condemn him both of anti-semitism and of pro-Zionism.
I only fly in a plane twice a year. I fly to visit my mom. It's a short flight from LAX to Medford but it would destroy her if I didn't do it every year. Plus, driving would be even worse for the environment and the train system in Los Angeles is not safe. (Homeless people, with mental issues, are constantly stabbing people on the trains.)
Personally, I don't feel a need to fly around the world and see famous, historical and exotic sites. That's just me. I've got the internet for that. Plus, there is enough to see in Southern California to keep me occupied for decades.
Post a Comment