The more I see flying from the outside, the more I see it as the opposite of travel, or of achieving what people want in travel.

First, if you walk somewhere, or bike or even ride a horse or sail a boat, you are traveling. That is, you are actively causing yourself to move from one place to another. When you get in a vehicle like a plane, train, or car, you aren’t really doing anything.

People talk about the magic of getting into a plane and then you appear on the other side of the world. Then you aren’t doing anything. You’re passively being transported.

Second, it may have once been the case that the remote place you visited differed culturally from where you live, but that situation is no longer the case. Any place with an airport is at most a slightly different part of the culture you started from. The people at the airport, hotel, restaurants, museums, and other sites are trained and planned to meet you, help you, and craft your visit to meet your and their expectations.

You may visit Thailand, but you’ve already eaten enough Thai food and seen pictures of Thai sites that you aren’t getting much new. You’re likely to eat at a French restaurant there. You can see pictures of all the sites, artwork, and people. When you’re there seeing the actual thing, it’s surrounded by other tourists. Meanwhile, you don’t see the things near your home that others come to see.

If you want cultural exchange, try this: whatever your political views, immerse yourself in a nearby opposite, not to criticize but to learn with humility. If you love Trump, go to a diversity training or local university talk by a liberal on a progressive topic. After the talk, meet some attendees just to learn from them. If you loathe Trump, go to a Trump rally, not to look down on them but to learn from them as you’d learn from Thai people. The diversity at the rally will be greater than you expect, for example not just straight white men, and as different from you as most people you’ll interact with in Thailand.

Oh yeah, back to the remote place where everyone you interact with is prepared to cater your experience, meaning it is no more different a culture than Disneyland, or hardly so even if in past generations it might have been, let’s say you work hard to go farther from the airport. If you actually do reach some place meaningfully remote, you are homogenizing them. Congratulations, you’re ruining the diversity you purport to value.

Bonus points for readers who identify the image below and its connection to this post.

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