Colonialism disguised as travel
I was looking up indigenous cultures from New Guinea and stumbled on this video. It looks like it’s showing a lovely, diverse place to expand your horizons if you’re a wealthy American or European.
Every bit of of it destroys the cultures and environment it purports to celebrate. It’s the insouciance I described in colonial cultures in Insouciance, colonialism, and sustainability. The travel the woman in the video presents is just going to the zoo. It isn’t even travel. The part where she says she’d pick a short flight over a bumpy car ride . . . that’s not travel, that’s effortless. It’s the opposite of “it’s the journey, not the destination.” It’s Refusing the journey in favor of the destination, while wrecking both.
The end of the video shows off the people performing for her, the colonizer, wrecking their culture, bringing in hotels, mega cruise ships, and incentive for them to form lovely little cafes and markets for them. She probably thinks she’s helping “developing” an “undeveloped” economy. Those cultures existed before Adam Smith and absent our meddling, could survive much longer. Instead we’ll addict them as we’re addicted . . . unless we stop ourselves.
One of the video’s commenters says he or she loves preserving cultures, may this one be preserved. Well, flying and cruising around in giant luxury boats is how to destroy them.
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