It’s time to rethink the purpose of travel
brightthemag.com
brightthemag.com
So I spent my early 20s traveling and doing just that. Seeing everything there was to see. Doing all the things I ever dreamed of as a 16 year old kid stuck in the midwest. Being a hobo, I guess you could say, and having all of these "experiences" that I was sure would add up to a life of meaning. The result was a profound lack of satisfaction, and a severe existential dread at perhaps never finding any actual purpose.
I was lucky to settle down, go back to school, and find a passion in programming and science which drives me toward working on bigger problems than myself, that might help humanity in some way. But I fear that the vast majority of people my age are still stuck in that mindset, having never got it out of their systems. Hoping and praying that this next trip to Bali will finally give them that satisfaction beyond filling 3 minutes in passing cocktail party conversation.
Hopping from place to place and seeing tourist sites can be fun and relaxing, but it's ultimately also pretty meaningless. This was drawn in sharp contrast for me because I was living in a famous tourist area (Kyoto), and I routinely saw the vast differences between the way tourists experience the area, and the way locals do. There's a very established tourist route, and it has almost no overlap (other than commercial) with the authentic life of the city. Tourists arrive, see the station, visit a few of the "mass-market" temples and shrines, then they leave. Even the folks who have "authentic experiences" are more-or-less following well-trodden pathways.
It's hard, because I now find it difficult to travel to places where I don't have a deeper purpose for being there. Simply seeing something pretty is no longer enough. But I also recognize that this is, almost by definition, impossible for everyone to do. I like travel too, but I'm quite conflicted now.
Most forms of mass-market tourism are essentially no different from Disney World, but with worse environmental impact. They're cancerous, and unless tightly regulated, will destroy the very places they promote. At least Disney World was built in a swamp!
As for environmental impact, I think there is certainly an unfortunate factor of social perception making people fly half way around the world to Bali and destroy the local ecology in the process because Bali is supposed to be this enviable getaway place. But there's such a thing as a place being overrated, and if you arrive with high expectations, there's surely going to be a disappointment (even if you don't want to admit it). At some point, a beach is a beach. Coronado beach - just a hop away for me - is just as relaxing to me as Frasier island in middle-of-nowhere Australia.
If you're looking for unusual travel experiences with minimal ecological footprint, something that I've found nice (at least for major hubs in north america) is the atlas obscura city guides. Many spots there aren't even on maps (let alone touristic ones), and can't possibly take your whole day, so they're a great excuse to really go off the beaten path.
Sounds like you just weren’t adventurous and opened minded enough on your travels and didn’t find worthwhile experiences.
This is exactly why everyone should travel. The thing that you find out is that the rest of the world isn't so different from wherever you're from. Perhaps the colors and shapes of the architecture and food is different, but people are pretty much people. There are some cultural differences that are helpful to learn too, but learning that the world is big and also that it isn't is extremely valuable.
My lessons from traveling (I still like doing it though): You cannot run away from yourself, taking pictures of things doesn't make you more interesting, people like to party, people are mostly good, you get to decide what matters
Maybe some people could learn the lesson without having to personally experience it. A lacture plan that involves flying people around the globe seems environmentally problematic.
Ironically, Europe is also effectively inaccessible without planes for tourists from elsewhere (either because of geography or sheer distance)
If you want to relax there is no place like home, or maybe drive to nearest lake/ocean/...
If you want to learn other cultures jump on Netflix, YouTube, the internet.
If you want to do something meaningful: study; get a job; volunteer; help people in your local community; donate to charity; build something; contribute to an open source project; join/do a start-up; get into politics or have kids.
It used to be the best way to fulfill on the promise of education and become worldly. It was never meant to be how you found your purpose. It was supposed to create empathy and understanding of our culture.
I'm skipping over a lot of detail, of course, and Bali is far from a grand tour destination. I'm pretty sure people go to Bali because the beaches are nice and it offers a certain kind of experience. I don't think they're going there looking for the meaning of life.
Ironically, if everyone were an itinerant traveler, there would be no local cultures to visit. Everyone you meet would be another generic gap year traveler and every place would be a youth hostel. There would be no real locality to sample.
I think only a small percentage of pleasure travelers are really looking for the cultural enrichment romanticized in travel stories. Even then, this is shallow experience-seeking as compared to a field anthropologist who methodically studies and compares cultures. And, neither of these compare to the immigrant who transplants themself permanently into a new, adopted culture.
A peculiar kind of travel you see in immigrants, even multigenerationally, is heritage tourism. It's almost a reversal of escape and novelty-seeking. They seek some return to a faint memory or myth of the old country.
> ... would make me a more interesting, worthwhile human being worthy of adoration.
That is, you didn't seem to travel for your enlightenment, rather to look "better" before others, whatever this better could mean for you.
So I spent my early 20s programming and doing just that. Programming everything there was to program. Doing all the things I ever dreamed of as a 16 year old kid stuck in generative meta-circular recursion. Being a hacker, I guess you could say, and having all of these "polymorphic insights" that I was sure would add up to a life of meaning. The result was a profound lack of satisfaction, and a severe existential dread at perhaps never delivering anything of practical use.
I was lucky to settle up, quit work, and find a passion in traveling and touring which drives me toward working on bigger problems than myself, that might help humanity in some way. But I fear that the vast majority of people my age are still stuck in that mindset, having never to unplug and leave their systems. Hoping and praying that this next version of a program will finally give them that satisfaction beyond filling 3 minutes in posting an update on a chat conversation.
So I went travelling for some time, quit the IT industry and I've never felt that good.
We are all different, one's experience doesn't apply to others I guess.
The cruise companies are incorporated in low tax foreign jurisdictions, outside the political reach of the citizens of places they visit. Sometimes the city pushes back a bit. The last time I went home they seemed to have eased off of the megaphones, and I heard a head tax was proposed at some point to help clean up after the tourists and maintain the public parks, but I don’t know if it passed. The city and state are both small enough that the cruise companies can out-lobby locals interests quite handily. They promise jobs, but import labor. They have PR campaigns that brag about their public service efforts, omitting that these are court ordered, etc. It seems to me that the ability to shop for jurisdiction creates great opportunity for legal arbitrage. I have no idea what to do about this, but I think it’s interesting. Maybe there’s a metaphor here… something something Panama papers. :)
How many of those people would not be living there if not for the revenue brought in by tourism?
Reading the article, my immediate thought was: of course the Balinese hate tourists, when the ill effects are so obvious, and the benefits more subtle; easy to take for granted. But where would they be economically if all the tourists just stopped coming? I would bet the resulting recession would make people yearn for what they once despised.
It's the state capital, and there are also various industries. Also, tourism jobs tend to be temporary/seasonal, and people often come from out of town to do them for a few months and then leave. We get a hundred inches of rain a year, and in the winter it's dark a lot so there is no tourism in the winter.
EDIT: Population has grown about 15% since 1990, but dock space has roughly trippled, and per ship passenger capacity has substantially increased.
I haven't heard anyone suggest that tourism should be banned, just that it would be nice for it occur at a scale similar to a few decades ago, and to externalize costs less; e.g. refrain from illegal dumping, contribute to the upkeep of public goods that are exploited, and only increase the population of the town by, let's say, %20 on a given day.
But as with anything we humans touch, if we aren't careful we inadvertently destroy it. So I wonder if there's a good solution here? The lazy one is to make everything incredibly expensive, but why should the world be limited to the rich (more than it already is, comparatively speaking)?
If AirBnB is displacing local residents then ban the service, many cities have started to do so.
If the mangroves are being destroyed then disallow tourism to that area.
Easier said than done of course since tourism is often driving the economy and everyone wants to make a quick buck.
I hike frequently, so simply by going to a national park I harm the environment there. But I also pay for park passes which help fund those parks, and I refrain from littering and wandering off the track.
If the local culture is to carry your trash with you, the "right" thing to do is to adapt yourself to that culture, not the other way around. You're a guest. But yes, you're factually correct: if cities don't do this, far too many tourists will just toss their trash anywhere they please.
I'm certain a big part of the issue are the services that tourism creates a demand for, and their waste for which there are no easy solutions when the infrastructure is not there. Setting up proper infra in place is really the local administration's job.
Nobody said anything about a "garbage crisis". The comment that started this thread was that if you're in a foreign country, you shouldn't litter and you should learn how to say please and thank you in the local tongue.
The fact that people are arguing about this subject is telling. Never in my life have I said "oh, there are no trash cans here. I guess I can just toss my litter anywhere because the local officials didn't plan properly for my presence."
But if hotel prices, etc goes up too much and regulation becomes too strong there is a risk the travel agencies will send tourists somewhere cheaper.
Just saying the consumer is already traveling, they could travel somewhere else. That said, small efforts would probably go far.
That's hard to swallow, for me. Do people have no moral obligations, in your view? Is life only about the power to push back against something one doesn't like, rather than some deeper commitment to what is right and good?
Doesn't responsibility for a rising teen birthrate lie with the teens? Doesn't responsibility for an opioid epidemic lie with users and traffickers? Doesn't responsibility for gridlock lie with drivers?
In a sense, yes, but realistically, this kind of collective action problem can only be solved at scale by governments. Telling Americans "STOP TRAVELING" will be about as effective as telling drug lords "STOP TRAFFICKING".
Especially if the problem would be even worse when we stop trying to reinforce each other's good actions, then throwing up your hands and saying "well, it's the government's problem" isn't good enough.
As in the UK, those that don't travel correlate with low education and populism.
The difference between harmful and safe activities often come down to the caretakers of the place you are visiting and what they've done to setup safe visits.
Personally, I think pre-approved tourist visas will be the most efficient way of controlling how many people can travel to a country and then regions of a country. So, the solution already exists in part. Understandably, a few cities and areas of a country receive most tourists. You could therefore regulate the amount of visitors in each area by issuing location-depdendent visas. For example: "On the chosen dates you can come to the United States, but cannot visit New York or Florida. You may visit California, Nevada, Georgia etc etc."
It's terrifying and limiting, but realistically it's the only pro-active solution I can think of to improve the sustainability of a place, especially for the locals. Flight prices are likely to continue to drop and more people will have means to travel internationally. You cannot count on people's consciousness to address this issue.
I would think just limiting the number of tourist visas a particular destination airport can accept would be fine. Sure, you can drive from an airport in Tampa to go to Disney World, but it would massively reduce the number of people.
(That being said, Disney is probably a bad example since it's not built on a world heritage site you need to limit foot traffic to, it replaced a bunch of orange groves in the middle of nowhere)
That way, if a location is overwhelmed by tourists, it can raise a levy to discourage the flow.
The trick would be designing a good system.
Nobody minds that only rich people can stay at fancy hotels. But if, hypothetically, only rich people can set foot in New Zealand? That offends people.
Yes, scarce resources need allocating. Market dynamics are not the only way, see lottery permits in the NPS.
Of course there are many other parks that don't have this problem in Colorado.
Couple this with an authoritarian monarchy that does things like enforce local dress code by law, and you get most of the benefits of tourism without many of the downsides.
Of course, it's debatable how well this model would adapt to tourist destinations that aren't obscure mountainous hermit kingdoms...
Sounds absurd but some years ago people would think twice about travelling just because of the fear of getting lost.
It does sound like tourism has the potential to be exploitative. Maybe they can find a way to charge more only to tourists borrowing tricks like "resort fees" from Las Vegas. Or doubling prices and giving only residents discounts somehow.
[1]: https://nomadlist.com/ubud-bali-indonesia
[2]: https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/50033/any-fast-in...
Others I know see travel as therapy, as an escape. They photoshop the people out of their photos to keep the place pure and go back to it by looking at albums. They enjoy the experience of being in the warm water of a favorite beach, and would do anything to go back there as often as possible.
Travel should not be limited, but there needs to be an international protocol of conservationist behavior that we all abide by whenever leave home. More people have the means to travel every year, and likely a safe thing to do would be to print a protocol brochure/terms of travel if you will, and request agreement from everyone as a part of the ticket purchasing or customs process.
Nonetheless I still agree with the idea that you really don't need to go. Going and seeing some amazing thing is usually not that amazing. Especially when everyone else on this crowded-ass planet has the same idea. But sometimes you have to go do it, just to figure that out.
Travel is the kind of thing where there's almost an inverse relationship between the amount you spend and the level of "meaning" you get out of it. At least in my experience. The trips I took "deluxe" style were pretty bland, while the ones where I had to problem-solve, use my wits, suffer a little, even dodge law enforcement (thinking of freight-hopping trips there) stand out more in memory.
The world has gotten significantly richer since 1945, and a result of that is that more and more of the world's population has the ability to travel to the most beautiful and popular places in the world. However, this explosion in wealth hasn't been matched by an explosion in the number of truly beautiful and popular places in the world. The ones we do have just get more crowded.
"Ultimately, there’s only one surefire way to avoid contributing to the problems of tourism: don’t go."
Hello clickbait, my old friend... I've come to talk with you again... Can you please stop over-generalizing? About the cause and effect of everything? Like the sweat from my balls causing avalanches in Nepal? That's a little far. I think it's time.... to flag this.
So, really if we want to tax CO2 we should tax all forms of CO2 equally in addition to current taxes.
So for instance if you can show that car co2 use more drastically helps the most vulnerable amongst us while air co2 is largely a subsidy to rockstars then you can compellingly argue taxing air travel more on a per co2 basis is fine.
Note: I don’t know enough to have an opinion.
Aviation emissions at elevation "have a climate impact that is commonly estimated to be 2.7 higher than the same emissions if made at ground-level" [1].
The last thing you want to incentivize is a 737 worth of people all driving their own cars from LA to SF for the weekend instead of taking the flight.
This is totally bogus. The amount of time people spend traveling has been relatively constant since 1950 [1]. Generally speaking, people will simply travel shorter distances by slower methods (car, train) if travel by air is unavailable, having roughly the same available time budget to work with.
The introduction of commercial air travel has substantially amplified the impact of time spent traveling. People travel further and using more fuel in the same unit of time than before. The emergence of air travel has not conserved fuel, and to imply such a thing is to be a shill for the air industry. It created a new class of travel that is a bulk consumer of fossil fuels enabling travel to farther distances than ever with the time available, period.
Pollution from 1kw of fuel in an ICE is far higher than that in a power station too.
Most of the world has been trying to capture the externalities of carbon emissions. It's not perfect, but we are admitting that our economy is reliant on spending our environmental resources. Effectively borrowing to be repaid later.
The US is pulling out of that agreement though because reasons.
Not nessisarily automotive fuel contains both Carbon and Hydrogen. So you're producing both CO2 and H20. Coal power plants often have higher thermal efficiency, but that's not nessisarily enough to make up for the difference in fuel. Further, the highest car engine is 50% fuel efficient and in cold weather can boost a little further by using waste heat for passenger comfort. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1115473_mercedes-created... The vast majority of automotive engines are far lower, but many coal power plants are sub 40% where many hybrids are over 40%.
Granted the extraction, refinement, and transportation of automotive fuel produces CO2. But those stages can and should be taxed separately.