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.
I’ve been thinking more and more about how bad flying is over the last few years. Once you think it, it’s hard to un-think it. Then, when I see the “fabulous” vacations that friends take to Argentina, Peru, Japan, Thailand, Denmark, South Africa … I am less impressed. I am planning a *fabulous* 30th anniversary trip this year (to make up for my canceled 50th birthday trip to Hawaii in 2020). It will involve taking trains and a ferry to Catalina.
Thanks for sharing.
Your friends’ values are their own and I don’t impose mine on others (I posted about my relevant ones here, and I recognize that they conflict with most Americans’ practices today, at least where they affect others through the environment), but do you think they considered the people affected by their actions without their consent?
People are displaced from their land to access fuel and minerals for our “fabulous” lifestyles, made homeless, their families torn apart. Then, they and others are harmed by pollution.
Personally, I was pleasantly surprised that I found I like my life more without the “fabulous” trips but with the inner conflict of violating my values, instead with the inner peace and connection with my neighbors around the world but without the “fabulous” trips.
Now write a column about having children, which is something that I can happily do without. You have a kid, that kid is not very different from the 8 billion other people on earth. If you want to parent, there are ways of doing that without creating a new human being.
If you did write such a column, I bet a lot of people would be very critical of it. To them, bearing children is a profound experience that cannot be substituted.
I am like them with travel. Going to Thailand is not at all like eating Thai food in the US. I remember being astonished by the beauty of Porto, Portugal, even though I had seen many photos and videos of the place. Saying I don’t need to be there in person is like saying that virtual sex is just as good as “the real thing” (it isn’t). I stay almost exclusively in hostels or with friends and can do without packaged tours and superficial experiences.
However, I do want to limit my use of fossil fuels. So as a compromise, I’m looking to move to Mexico where I can enjoy nice weather and visit many interesting locations using bus or train only. I wonder how much less energy I use by not heating my home in Minnesota during the winter.
You’ve touched on two live wires in sustainability: population and travel. I love people and want to maintain a healthy, sustainable population so yes to kids but not to overpopulation. My favorite food is Thai food in Thailand. The pollution and depletion necessary for flying or a fossil-fuel-powered ship violate values I think we all share (as well as the Constitution, which says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, which polluting and depleting does, even if the government doesn’t enforce it), so I’ve learned to sail. I may never make it across the Pacific, but if I do, I know that one trip across will bring me more life value than all the trips I could have taken if I didn’t mind violating my values and the Constitution.
My experience not flying has brought me, and those I know who stopped flying based on their values found the same results, more overall life value. To use your analogy, not flying is like learning to love someone I actually spend time with in person. Flying to other people and places feels like a prostitute, someone I don’t have a meaningful relationship but just pay to use. I’m not sure the analogy works completely, but just exploring the direction you went.