The Case Against Travel
newyorker.com
The Case Against Travel
1–10 of 161 posts
Re: The Case Against Travel
#2Re: The Case Against Travel
#3I also find travel mostly unfulfilling, but one difference from the article is that I like doing things while traveling that I would also do in my hometown. For instance, I will go to museums, and I have gone to museums at home before, including being a member at a particular one I visited monthly until I moved.
But overall, traveling is a fun activity with centuries of marketing around adventure that doesn't tend to change people in any manner. It is just very expensive fun, and I can have about as much fun doing things at home. I just can't take photos of it to prove how much disposable income I have.
Re: The Case Against Travel
#4This has a certain “You will stay in the pod and you will eat the bugs” vibe to it.
Re: The Case Against Travel
#5This is a very enjoyable and well-written article, and it makes a good point - The nature of travel, and everything you do while you're travelling, is so ephemeral that it really does nothing for establishing or communicating your identity. The people you spend your time with, the sights you see, the food you eat... you are doing all of it because of novelty, not because you've made a deliberate choice. Doing something once on a trip is easy. Doing something as part of your regular routine at home... That's different, and that's who you really are.
That being said, the idea that people don't change when they travel is, I think, wrong. Someone changing fundamentally on a 2 week summer holiday? Unlikely. But I've had friends go off on long solo trips and they almost always come back having learned some pretty significant things about themselves.
Re: The Case Against Travel
#6I agree with the main point of the article. I just disliked some of the specific examples. "You would t spend the entire day walking where you live" - some times I do! "You don't go to museums where you live" - I didn't until I moved to a city with amazing museums, and now I do!
Re: The Case Against Travel
#7I also find travel mostly unfulfilling, but one difference from the article is that I like doing things while traveling that I would also do in my hometown. For instance, I will go to museums, and I have gone to museums at home before, including being a member at a particular one I visited monthly until I moved. But overall, traveling is a fun activity with centuries of marketing around adventure that doesn't tend to…
While you’re not completely wrong, one of my main reasons for travel is exploring and understanding other cultures. That requires immersion, granted, and concerted effort to avoid the “TripAdvisor lists” unless you have no other ideas at present, but the opportunity for spontaneous interaction with someone wholly different from yourself is something that is harder to get at home.
That and the feeling of scale; every time I visit Iceland, I find it difficult to describe to others just what about it is so beautiful. The problem is that pictures can’t capture the feeling of scale, and feeling like a small speck on the planet when standing in front of a massive waterfall or inside or on a glacier, etc. That feeling is hard to capture.
Re: The Case Against Travel
#8A long article about essentially nothing. Maybe it's just my circles but I don't know anyone who thinks going on a vacation is some transformative experience, so I don't totally understand why this article needed to have been written.
Re: The Case Against Travel
#9I also find travel mostly unfulfilling, but one difference from the article is that I like doing things while traveling that I would also do in my hometown. For instance, I will go to museums, and I have gone to museums at home before, including being a member at a particular one I visited monthly until I moved. But overall, traveling is a fun activity with centuries of marketing around adventure that doesn't tend to…
That is my problem with so-called wanderlusters and how traveling is sold this days as a type of "solution" or "therapy" - people just assume traveling is a decision everyone can make, but not what it actually is - a possibility a few can take.
And it's not that it actually does wonders.
Re: The Case Against Travel
#10After reading how the author views and handles her relationships ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/13/agnes-callard-... ), it's hard for me to take her thought seriously despite her credentials.