I joined a group trying to find ways to fly less.

One of the themes of the group was to show that “taking the train is just as good as flying.” I found this approach counterproductive. It set flying as the norm and other ways of traveling as alternatives. I think some people saw flying as the best and other ways of traveling as trying to measure up as best they could though they could never measure up. Does anything tear family and communities apart more than flying?

What meaning and value we think flying gives us, it takes away. Sure, it tends to take us farther distance, but does distance traveled deliver meaning and value? Many five-year-olds today have traveled more distance than Marco Polo or the apostle Paul did in their lifetimes. Whose travel delivered more meaning and value, though? Abraham Lincoln never went overseas yet accomplished a fair amount. Maybe flying isn’t that necessary.

From another perspective, anyone can attain all the meaning and value that flying delivers easier without it, with less cost in time, pollution, depletion, money, and other resources. That meaning and value may be for family, adventure, nature, cultural exchange, relaxation, and so on. For that matter, you can attain many of these things without deliberately “traveling” at all. In a sense, you travel every time you walk. You experience nature with every living thing you see or interact with, or anything. Running water and rocks are part of nature. A simple way to view the choice to live sustainably: Think of others more than yourself

I’m not saying don’t travel or fly (though I support government preventing people from taking or destroying other people’s life, liberty, and property, or taking from nature without “enough as good left in common for others,” in John Locke’s words), but everything you could want, our ancestors got on foot. You don’t have new emotions that flying excites. You have the emotional system all our ancestors did up to when flying began 100 years ago. Our dependence on flying just requires that we increase the dosage for the effect they got. We’re also destroying untouched nature near us and homogenizing culture globally. If things closer lack the vitality and diversity of times past, restoring those things by staying closer rewards us too.

Meanwhile, flying kills. It homogenizes, addicts, destroys, and trivializes nature and culture. I propose considering flying not the standard, but a distraction from what we want from it. It leads us to miss what’s under our noses.

If you want to fly less, I recommend not comparing other forms of transportation to flying. Think of the value and meaning you want and get them directly, as our ancestors did, experiencing more, not less.

Here’s a bike-camping picture:

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