The Hope of Travel, Part II: Does Travel Have the Power to Piece the World Together?
Travel enthusiasts feel compelled to promote travel with hopes that it can bring about peace and understanding, but is that idealism speaking or an underlying truth about the world?
“When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.”
-Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
Traveling is a kind of gamble. We wrestle with a lot of uncertainty when we venture out into the world. Despite how much we may plan, things rarely go the way we want and so the idea of hope is always a subtly embedded feature of travel. Hoping our flight isn’t delayed. Hoping we can make the most of our time while in a new place. Hoping we don’t forget anything when we leave. And hoping we make it home swiftly and safely. However, there remains a deeper, more philosophical side of hope in its relation to travel and adventure.
The essential question Those Who Wander has been grappling with is: What is the meaning behind travel and adventure and what purpose can it serve society? In Part I of this philosophical dive, The Hope of Travel and All We Say About It, I left the conversation open by ending with this set of reflections,
“There are many hopes to travel but perhaps my greatest hope is that it will always serve as a reminder that we live in a vast universe of the unknown with limited minds, that we should always be humbled by our ignorance, and that travel will always possess the capacity to restore us and nudge us to be less presumptuous and more generous and kind to others. If more of us were granted more opportunities to wander, might we all reach that conclusion? Who knows, maybe it would even lead us to “wonderfully mend the world.” Is that idealism and romanticism speaking or perhaps a law of the universe or cosmic truth we either do or do not recognize in consciousness?”
Hope comes to us in uncertain times, and it is more akin to a prayer or a wish, and that is because we are powerless or limited to bring about the change we want to see in the world. I’m still left pondering over a lot of the previous posts I’ve written so far: Whether I should remain confident in the benefits of wandering or whether adventure has become a thing of the past. While I am confident travel and adventure have changed me in both dramatic and subtle ways, I wonder if these experiences can have this effect on all of us. Can travel and adventure do all the remarkable and noble things I believe it can, like alleviate our fears, vanquish prejudice, improve our empathy, and enlighten us? Does it possess the power to piece the world together?
Why do those of us who are so enthusiastic about travel want others to do it? Why can’t we simply keep our wanderlust to ourselves and venture on our merry way without the need to poke and prod others to do the same? The motivation to promote travel and adventure stems, I suspect, from a similar compulsion the famed astronomer Carl Sagan once mused about science, stating “When you’re in love, you want to tell the world.” Likewise, when you see the hope embedded in travel and adventure, you are compelled to tell the world.
I believe the inherent goal of any travel enthusiast is to encourage more people to see a wider array of environments, cultures, and ideas. This isn’t for purely self-interested reasons but more so because there is a deep sense of hope that by exposing more people to the larger picture of our world, we may eventually be able to extinguish all the ugly sides of our nature and finally recognize our shared humanity.
The hope is that travel will become more valued as a form of education as Anthony Bourdain once endorsed the idea that,
“Travel is not reward for working, it’s education for living.”
This idea seems quaint and perhaps out of touch as we witness much of our world seeming to unravel day by day. However, it will always be the case that we need our minds to become activated and enthralled by the pursuit of wondering and wandering in diverse settings to acquire humility and understanding. We cannot all succumb to isolating ourselves away from the larger world because there is too great a cost in doing so. As Mark Twain famously stated,
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Thus, once we can reach a critical mass of people who see human nature and our world for what it is, then we will have reached a new plane of collective consciousness, so to speak. Under the best and most meaningful circumstances, these are the kind of wholesome things travel and adventure have to offer society.
Human progress doesn’t come exclusively from technological advancements, but from changes in how we see and experience our world. We face a long-running list of deep anthropological problems on how to course-correct our bad habits and bad ideas. However, I suspect cultural exchange is part of the solution to these problems of xenophobia, racism, sexism, etc. As I’ve written previously,
“Knowledge is existential. The more we learn to understand our reality better, the less we will be deceived by frauds, conmen, ideologues, dogma, propaganda, superstition, and tribalistic thinking.”
The hope is that by being in other parts of the world with all our senses present and engaged with other cultures and other ways of living in the world, our minds will better understand the complexities of human life–that the way we do things in one corner of the world isn’t necessarily the only way and that we have a lot to gain from other areas of the world. A deep reading of anthropology will demonstrate that systems of exchange and reciprocity are the bulwark to human flourishing, cooperation, and stable relationships.
In Greek mythology, it was once believed that the sexes were two halves of a whole and that by their unification a symbiosis and order was brought into equilibrium. As described by Plato in The Symposium,
“[H]umans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
I view the potential in long term travel and adventure in a similar light. No nation, culture, religion, or set of philosophies has a monopoly on truth. The truth of our humanity rests in disembodied parts and pieces. Perhaps this is more akin to the collection of puzzle pieces that have been cast and scattered about the globe for us to discover. Some are hidden in books and foreign languages. Others in mountains and forests. Some are stowed away in ancient cities and some pieces are located in the experiences and memories we form in our relationships. Our task as travelers and travel enthusiasts is to remain hopeful that, in encouraging others to travel, we continue to strive to put the world together.
For consideration:
What are your thoughts on the hopes behind travel? Does travel and adventure have the ability to do all these great things like make us less fearful, more empathetic, and see the world more clearly?
Thanks for being a fellow traveler with me through this read. Please consider subscribing, sharing, and supporting this project—much more to follow.
Cheers!
-JSB
As an Army brat, there is no question in my mind that travel as a child expanded my knowledge, empathy and horizons. It also made me more flexible when it comes to managing change and uncertainty. And made me understand the way we do things in the U.S. is just one way of doing things. I think I opted the life of a full-time traveler as a result of my “third culture kid” roots. But, big picture, I’m afraid the changes are more micro—more personal, than macro. I can only hope that decision makers in the areas of national economic policies and diplomacy of all countries share a background which prioritizes the human perspective in this way. As opposed to prioritizing nationalism above all.
Can travel and adventure...alleviate our fears, vanquish prejudice, improve our empathy, and enlighten us? Yes, but I think it can also do the opposite. So much depends on the openness and curiosity of the traveller. Someone entrenched in their own right ways of being and doing, especially when faced with discomfort or dissonance can return more prejudiced and less empathetic. Sometimes traveling with a perceptive guide can help promote the outcomes you reference, but travel in itself might not be enough to open a closed mind.