The Case Against Travel

Looks interesting, I do enjoy reading different perspectives. Unfortunately it's behind paywall (for me) so I'll see if I can access it at the library. Thanks for the tip!

Let's turn that around. Can you make a case for never traveling, i.e., for staying at home, or a case against just staying at home? I would say that the case against staying at home, i.e., against "never seeing what the rest of the world is like", is compelling.

I grew up on the West Coast, in Southern California, then in the Pacific NW (Seattle area). I guess I tended to believe that the rest of the country was just like the West Coast. Four years after I graduated from college, in 1970, I took a job in suburban Pittsburgh, PA. I was appalled at what the living conditions, particularly the air quality and the road conditions, were like there. I'd seen Seattle repave a road that was in better condition before being repaved than what roads in Pittsburgh were like after being repaved.

Back then, Pittsburgh, particularly in blue-collar neighborhoods, was the epitome of "don't travel". A friend told me he was talking to a man in a bar in Homestead, PA, and the man bragged that he had never been out of Homestead in his life. A secretary where I worked told me that she was eighteen when she went to downtown Pittsburgh, a 12 mile drive from her home in McKeesport, for the first time.

A few years later I was having dinner at the home of a girl I was dating, whose father was a steelworker in Duquesne. I remarked that the reason people in Pittsburgh tolerated the poor air and roads was that they had never been anywhere else and didn't know it could be different. To which her mother said, "People are the same everywhere (point, set, and match!).

My apologies to anyone from Pittsburgh. I know it has changed a lot in fifty years. This is just what it was like when I first moved there.

So, no, travel is important, if only to allow you to judge your own environment against what it could be. If I hadn't traveled, I wouldn't have known, for instance, that windows can open more than one way or that toilets can have "small flushes" to save water, or that not everyone in Europe speaks many languages, or that (please note, Ramaswamy) not everyone in the world has air conditioning.

That is why only the deserving should be allowed to travel.

Define only those deserving Mister E and who decides?

I wish the authors and proponents of that perspective luck.

Meanwhile, after you've finished digesting The Case Against Travel, please consider my soon-to-be published article, The Case Against Sex. (Next up: The Case Against Having Any Money At All, and The Case Against Red Wine, Pasta, and Gelato, all part of my epic series, Happiness Is Overrated, You Really Shouldn't Bother).

And, just to keep it all on the up-and-up, a book recommendation: Against Everything, Essays by Mark Grief (an author whose name seems to have prepared him well for all of life's little disappointments).

Don't forget, you can donate all your Frequent Flyer miles here.

I'll see you in the Departure Lounge - Cheers!

Wow, that was a glass half empty article. The author's example regarding Falconry and just going because that's what one does while visiting, could easily be me talking about the Vatican on my first trip to Rome. We did go because it is designated a must-see in Rome, and that was the only reason. However, while I'm still no lover of art, it was an enriching experience that set me down the path of other topics that I didn't know I had an interest in such as religious history.

Has anyone watched Eugene Levy's travel show on Apple TV? It is so well done. He is a self identified travel hater but he admitted the experiences were worth it even if he never does them again.

Claudia, it's obvious, isn't it? It's why I travel now, cause I wouldn't make the deserving list.

Me thinks Ms. Collard tries to think too deeply in her categorization of others. I travel simply because I enjoy seeing different places, because I find even enhanced pictures do not do the original, whatever it is, justice. I do not travel because I’m trying to “transform” myself.

I might add that what did “transform” me was having two college classes in Humanities with an enthusiastic professor. Who encouraged us, if possible, to seek out our interests because none of her slides could accurately capture the brush strokes of Van Gogh or size of the Roman Colosseum. And she was right…

An article to make one think. I also liked the replies above. Maybe travel is like a religion. Practiced but never perfected. All aglow in promise, but still a bit out of reach. It is the elusiveness of it that we do it. Adhered to as a lifestyle because what else would you do?
Life is boring in its repetitiveness. If you travel, you mitigate that in some fashion if only in your mind. And the differences you see in the most mundane things done a different way by others gives you pause on your own mundaneness. And if you do not travel, well you have your substitutes. Maybe you shop, go fishing, chat with neighbors, church, race motor cars, woodworking. Are these not forms of travel outside our repetitive and boring lives? Otherwise we might as well work in the mines for 12 hours, go home, get up and do it again. Get up and do it again. Again.
Even Socrates whilst deriding travel went his way to the forums and conversed with the youth.
For isn’t philosophy a travel of the mind to the world of new ideas?
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Another provocative title with nothing new to say. Travel brings out the best and the worst in people. I think it's obvious that some people shouldn't travel: those that go without curiosity or imagination or the "here we are now; entertain us" attitude. But if they do, then I'll give them all the attention that they are due.

Not everything the old philosophers had to say is gold.

If you think that this doesn’t apply to you—that your own travels are magical and profound, with effects that deepen your values, expand your horizons, render you a true citizen of the globe, and so on—note that this phenomenon can’t be assessed first-personally. Pessoa, Chesterton, Percy, and Emerson were all aware that travellers tell themselves they’ve changed, but you can’t rely on introspection to detect a delusion

So apparently we're deluded if we believe that travel can be a transformative experience. I viewed and entered the Colosseum for the first time a few months ago, and I'm still processing the experience, with a new appreciation for what humans were able to achieve almost two thousand years ago. Not to mention the realization that the great Roman Empire eventually suffered a precipitous decline - a message which should still resonate today.

Hi Lane, it is an interesting article. Do we have something we’re trying to prove to others and ourselves by traveling? His traveller’s delusion?

”And, although people like to talk about their travels, few of us like to listen to them. Such talk resembles academic writing and reports of dreams: forms of communication driven more by the needs of the producer than the consumer.”

Our local RS travel group in Coeur d’Alene/Spokane have joked that the normal person wouldn’t want to hear much of our conversation! We love to gather over coffee and treats & hear about each other’s travels & ideas. Hopefully we are equally interested in the “producer” & “consumer” roles.

”Travel gets branded as an achievement: see interesting places, have interesting experiences, become interesting people. Is that what it really is? … Travel turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best. Call this the traveller’s delusion.”

”When you travel, you suspend your usual standards for what counts as a valuable use of time. You suspend other standards as well, unwilling to be constrained by your taste in food, art, or recreational activities. After all, you say to yourself, the whole point of travelling is to break out of the confines of everyday life. But, if you usually avoid museums, and suddenly seek them out for the purpose of experiencing a change, what are you going to make of the paintings?”

This is certainly a strong case for taking a RS tour for initial exposure to countries! My husband & I learned so much about Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, France, Slovenia & Croatia because the RS tours exposed us to knowledgeable local guides in history & art, etc. as well as cultural differences.

Jean, I too love to hear about other people’s travel experiences. Heck, I will even look at your pictures, no problem. Besides being intriguing and interesting, I pick up ideas for my travels. Good and bad.
I got my love of travel from my mother and grandmother. I have 7 siblings and only one other likes to travel, go figure. Less crowds for us.

That's a load of ©rap.

I'm glad the writer took the time to meet all travelers to conclude we are all the worst version of ourselves.
And the falconry hospital example exposes HER shortcomings.
She asked "what is there to do in Abu Dhabi?" and got an answer, then followed that path.

That's much like posters to these forum pages asking "what are the must sees?"

Nobody can answer that for you, as their likes and yours might differ. Your tastes and theirs don't jibe. You LOVED it, but they hated it and then hated the place because of it (like some people who take a daytrip to Venice and then hate the place because it was crowded. Walking around Venice after dark is one of my travel pleasures)

When somebody here announces they've booked a trip somewhere then ask "What should we do there?" my answer is always what do you want to do there and why did you choose there to visit if you don't already have an inkling.

I choose places to travel they hold my interest, not somebody else's, although there can be - and is - overlap.
When in Greece, I went to the Acropolis of Athens because I was interested in it, not because it was somebody's "must see." I don't enjoy crowds, but even tolerating those was worth it to me to be there.
I've been to Paris twice and have not yet been to the Louvre. I might not go the next time, either, if there are others things that interest me.
Marci- You said you were not trying to transform yourself by traveling.

Whether you were trying or not, you were transformed just by going some place different and experiencing something different.
Travel helps us better understand the world around us.
The world could use more of that understanding.

I don’t care for articles like this one. It reminds me of college writing assignments.
I do believe that tourist can change things in touristy areas of the world and not always for the good. One example is when I went from cafe to cafe in Paris to find something other than a burger and fries on the menu.

“Travel splits this expanse of time into the chunk that happens before the trip, and the chunk that happens after it, obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation.”

So we travel to avoid thinking about our inevitable death? What a strange viewpoint.

I thought this article was a bit of BS, but perhaps she was just reacting to Rick’s preaching about the benefits of travel. I’ve always thought his claims were over the top. Can’t we just travel because it’s fun and makes us happy without having to analyze it to death? That’s how I feel, but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Also wanted to say — David, hahahaha!!

Ribaholic, I’m sorry if you misunderstood the intent of my post. I was responding to the article discussed and the author’s claims that tourists travel with the purpose of transforming themselves into something, that she claimed, was unattainable. That’s not why I travel…….

"Stop doing things that I don't like to do"

Go jump in a lake.

Hmmm, that got me thinking...

Lake Erie, Lake Louise, Lake, Lake Como, Lake Bled, Lake Biwa, Lake Kawaguchi....

Love this thread. Gail, your post reminded me of the Saturday Night Live sketch about Perillo Tours, reminding customers that "if you're unhappy at home, you'll be unhappy in Italy".

Gail, exactly! The same sad you as before, but in a new place. And Romano, not Perillo, I stand corrrected. Thanks for the link.

Such an article merely serves to reinforce my view that I am so glad I made my first trip to Europe solo, 12 weeks in the lovely but heat- wave dominated summer of 1971, as well as the second trip exactly two years later in the summer of 1973 later again going solo.

The author quotes I. Kant, then why not Goethe, fear of the argument against travel being vitiated? Why not Montaigne on travel?

I found the article good fun too. Seems to be poking at those who
claim to be better people due to their extensive traveling.

That's the way I took it too, Gail!
And that SNL sketch is ROFLMAO priceless !!! 🤣

I agree with Carroll and Ribaholic, vandrabrud, et al, how they feel about this article.

There are some people who are not happy unless they are "pouring cold water" on what other people like. We see it all the time on this forum. There are some people who just have to show what knowledgeable travelers they are by bad-mouthing places others like, for instance by pointing out that the eastern edge of Rothenburg is not original because it was bombed in WWII or that Neuschwanstein was not built in the middle ages, but is a nineteenth century fantasy. I've long known those facts about both places, but doesn't keep me from enjoying them, and I've gone back repeatedly. I also enjoy the un-bombed town of Nördlingen and the original castles at Harburg (Schwaben) and Burghausen.

Put me with the few who think this article is: BS, crap, or biologic waste (choose your terminology). If the author was poking fun at self important travelers (as opposed to tourists) it was much to subtle to be effective as sarcasm. I believe it was more likely just spouting nonsense to get a rise out of those with opposite viewpoints - and not very well done at that.

And, does anybody enjoying travel in the 21st century really care what a few long dead philosophers/writers felt about travel? I know I don't - as much as I respect those great minds of the past. I'll just keep on traveling for the reasons I do and know it won't make me the 'worst version of myself' and know that it will enlighten and improve me, even if that is only my 'first person' assessment.

hahah, Gail! promocode:SameSadYou 😄

That article left me laughing. Its focus seemed to be that we travelers were just distracting ourselves because "life is hard and then you die." Yep. We're all gonna die. And while we're alive we distract ourselves by living life: school, family, work, kids. You could make a case for any of those things being just distractions, filling in the time before we die. It cracked me up.

Why do I travel? And especially, why travel with RS (and similar) tour groups? Because I enjoy spending time with a curious and lively group of people who are interested in learning history in the actual place it happened, eating new foods, and interacting with people who make their lives in those places. So, I guess I agree with Epicurus who said, "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die."

If I as a traveler am only distracting myself, my question then is , do you have a problem with that? As Fats Domino sang, "Ain't that a shame."