Perhaps you'd like to elaborate? I find the experience enormously enriching: learning new languages, making friends, gaining a new perspective. It's very valuable to me and I'd be curious to understand your position more, because right now it just comes across as sour grapes.
You don’t read a book by reading the first 10 pages. You don’t learn a culture by visiting a place for a week. You don’t make real friends in a weekend. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 4 years and I still feel like I don’t quite understand the culture here, feel like I haven’t quite experienced the city. I don’t understand how anyone could visit here on a vacation and think they’ve really “experienced” LA. This is even more true for foreign countries. There’s also something weird to me about going to a place with lots of poor people, “helping” them for a weekend, taking a picture, posting it on Instagram, leaving, and somehow getting a warm feeling from that. The common denominator is a shallowness- none of these experiences are as deep or meaningful as the people who do it claim to themselves and others.
I don't mean to come across as rude, but maybe the LA influencer culture has you jaded? I can guarantee that not everyone wants to travel the world just for some instagram photos.
I do agree with some of your main points. You can't learn a culture in a week, and "helping" poor people for an instagram post is definitely problematic.
However being exposed to the different types of cultures around the world can be extremely valuable and eye opening. The world is a beautiful place with lots of interesting places to explore.
LA is not influencer culture. It’s first and second gen Latino immigrants. It’s Armenians. It’s white Protestants from OC. It’s a major industrial port. It’s a real estate scam. And yes, the entertainment business is here. Thinking that LA is it’s influencer culture is SO SHALLOW.
Yes, that’s fair. My only exposure to LA culture is the entertainment industry and the large amount of influencers that are based in LA. So I’ll be the first to admit my understanding is shallow. I was just curious why you are so jaded to travelling.
My point still stands that travelling the world is not a completely shallow endeavour. However you seem obsessed with labelling people as shallow, which ironically comes across as pretty shallow in itself.
Some books you learn 80% of the new-to-you concepts in the first 2 chapters. For sure living some place for 10 years you will know different things from someone that stayed for a few months, but travel is an incredibly efficient way to get new stuff you wouldn't have thought of in front of you to pay attention to. It's not to master all the variety in the world, it's to bring your experience outside of the little ruts that you can fall into. You have to travel with a certain attitude of openness, curiosity and respect. And the knowledge that your own ways aren't special, but just your own ways.
You know that when people say they want to travel the world, that doesn't always mean they want to to pose briefly in instagram-hot tourist spots, right?
One could make a case for breadth or depth when it comes to world travel, but so far you're not doing that, you're just sniffing dismissively at a stereotype.
I'm a fan of spending weeks or months in a place, rather than days, but spending years in any one place necessarily means seeing far fewer places. Breadth vs depth.
haha - I've visited LA and also thought it was a shallow experience ;) Also, sounds like you haven't traveled much.
And yes, I do read a books first 10 pages and stop reading it. Sometimes i read the first couple pages of each chapter and stop reading it. I never claim i read the whole book, or understand every nook and cranny of the rhetoric, but that book will still shape my subconscious going forward.
I feel travel is the same. As you go around the world you learn that no one has the answers, each place is entirely based on your experience of that city and everyone has different philosophies in life. It provides a sense of empathy to ideas. Meeting people who worked at hostels or people who bought a sailing boat, some fishing poles and some rice and traveled vastly changed the way i look at the world. Life is really easy in actuality, we as a species seem to complicate it.
Travel has brought me a vast amount of serenity and peacefulness in my normal life, because normal life can never be as hard as traveling.
Unlike the books, traveling has a clear curve of diminishing returns. Sure, you don't understand the culture by spending a week in Japan, but get a glimpse of it. It's a good ROI.
Since you have a contrarian view I'd be curious to hear your take on some reasons I like to travel:
- Get a feel for life in a place. How do people live? Where do people eat? How do people move around? Where do people congregate? How does life ebb and flow throughout the day and week? Obviously each one can be expanded to more questions, but I like to experience these things and then compare and contrast. What do I like? Is this better or worse or just different?
- Try new cuisines. It can be really hard to get an "authentic" experience outside of a country for a variety of reasons
- Activities. Skiing can't be done everywhere
- Natural wonders. I find viewing certain nature scenes in person very satisfying
You read a well-written, multi-paragraph comment with an astute, on-topic point, and decided the best thing you could bring to the conversation was a vacuous put-down. All things considered, you're not making a good case for yourself as an expert on what's "deep."
