Totally agree with you . Travel (especially with a group) entails setting up the alarm, rushing for breakfast to be on time for the waiting bus, the mandatory clicks , ticking your boxes , and for me - the ritual of summing it all up in my diary before retiring to bed with a weary yet seemingly relieved sigh .
Yes, it seems worthwhile to occasionally evaluate our reasons for travel as honestly as possible. But we should do this with our non-travel holidays too. Many travels are also times spent with loved ones. If we're visiting those loved ones at home, how much time are we really engaging with them? Are we actually spending most of that time staring at our phones? Travel can sometimes help catalyze emotionally satisfying (both fun and not fun) experiences with loved ones.
Good points, I agree that the point of travel is to engage with the culture in a way where you actually absorb some of the country's values or ways of seeing the world, not just taking selfies at landmarks or next to works of art just to cross it off some externally imposed checklist. If Veblen wrote a follow up to "Theory of the Leisure Class," he'd definitely include travel as a modern day form of conspicuous consumption, and conspicuous leisure! This was probably always the case with travel, but it's also exacerbated by social media's replacing of our natural drive to share meaningful experiences with a desire for instant, shallow validation.
How do you feel about travel simply to experience a geography or climate different from one's home country? Should Germans just looking for some warm weather and sand in Thailand always have to engage with the culture? It would probably be good if more of them did, but I don't know if it's necessary for all of them.
Ah, dead eyes! Nothing says, "I'm enjoying my trip" more than that all too familiar caliginous gaze; in fact, the deader the better! For in those hollow orbs lies the deepest lesson a bold traveler can learn, the same one Dorothy desperately proclaims between the clicking of ruby heels, "There's no place like home!" Of course, it's only a matter of time before weariness of home prompts the desire for another daring adventure abroad! But as you point out, it's really Man's endless search for meaning that should take a vacation, especially when we're on holiday!
Yes I think there are "leisure vacations" and "novelty vacations" (probably among other types).
I used to prefer the latter when I was younger, mostly for signaling purposes or perhaps because I genuinely thought I may have enjoyed the novelty, but now I only pursue the novelty if it is embedded in healthy handfuls of leisure and rest.
Totally agree with you . Travel (especially with a group) entails setting up the alarm, rushing for breakfast to be on time for the waiting bus, the mandatory clicks , ticking your boxes , and for me - the ritual of summing it all up in my diary before retiring to bed with a weary yet seemingly relieved sigh .
Yes, it seems worthwhile to occasionally evaluate our reasons for travel as honestly as possible. But we should do this with our non-travel holidays too. Many travels are also times spent with loved ones. If we're visiting those loved ones at home, how much time are we really engaging with them? Are we actually spending most of that time staring at our phones? Travel can sometimes help catalyze emotionally satisfying (both fun and not fun) experiences with loved ones.
Good points, I agree that the point of travel is to engage with the culture in a way where you actually absorb some of the country's values or ways of seeing the world, not just taking selfies at landmarks or next to works of art just to cross it off some externally imposed checklist. If Veblen wrote a follow up to "Theory of the Leisure Class," he'd definitely include travel as a modern day form of conspicuous consumption, and conspicuous leisure! This was probably always the case with travel, but it's also exacerbated by social media's replacing of our natural drive to share meaningful experiences with a desire for instant, shallow validation.
How do you feel about travel simply to experience a geography or climate different from one's home country? Should Germans just looking for some warm weather and sand in Thailand always have to engage with the culture? It would probably be good if more of them did, but I don't know if it's necessary for all of them.
That's fine, as long as they're actually enjoying it!
Ah, dead eyes! Nothing says, "I'm enjoying my trip" more than that all too familiar caliginous gaze; in fact, the deader the better! For in those hollow orbs lies the deepest lesson a bold traveler can learn, the same one Dorothy desperately proclaims between the clicking of ruby heels, "There's no place like home!" Of course, it's only a matter of time before weariness of home prompts the desire for another daring adventure abroad! But as you point out, it's really Man's endless search for meaning that should take a vacation, especially when we're on holiday!
Yes I think there are "leisure vacations" and "novelty vacations" (probably among other types).
I used to prefer the latter when I was younger, mostly for signaling purposes or perhaps because I genuinely thought I may have enjoyed the novelty, but now I only pursue the novelty if it is embedded in healthy handfuls of leisure and rest.