Does travel make people less politically insular?

[madd0ct0r]

That's such a head up the ass huffing your own farts thing as I have ever read. God.

This modern travel fetishism is jus another sick consumer culture concept.

And it really just reeks of bigotry, people who travel who think they are better than others, are infact the worst people.

So, rather than actually contributing anything worthwhile, or address the well-known link between exposure to other places and cultures and more tolerant worldviews, you make a bunch of assumptions about me, my values, my attitudes, my experiences, and my motives, launch a deluge of personal abuse, and basically post 100% ad hominems. Par for the course, I see, though this is pathetic even by the standards of this board's faux Leftist fascist apologist contingent.

So, let me get this straight- experiencing the world outside your home town is "consumer culture", so we should all stay isolated and hate and fear the Other- for Socialism!

Oh, and of course I'm the REAL bigot- I've never heard a xenophobic racist scream that they're the ones really being persecuted when someone calls them out before, nosiree.

I know you're trying to paint me as a Rich Privileged Liberal Elitist in order to strawman me (also rhetoric right out of the Alt. Reich's playbook for stoking white male resentment, surprise surprise), but fun fact- I just got laid off from my minimum wage job due to COVID-19, and I haven't traveled more than a couple hours' drive in over seven years. So why don't you kiss my ass, you faux-Leftist crypto-fascist piece of fucking shit?

But hey, thanks for providing an object example of the kind of tools I was talking about- the people who call themselves Leftists but who's opposition to capitalism is really just an excuse for isolationism and hating the Other, and who will happily sell us all to rich privileged capitalist white men like Trump, Boris Johnson, and Putin to spite the "establishment" (by which its pretty obvious you really mean globalism and multiculturalism, not capitalism).

https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1948550613514456

Does Travel Broaden the Mind? Breadth of Foreign Experiences Increases Generalized Trust
Jiyin Cao, Adam D. Galinsky, William W. MadduxFirst Published December 5, 2013 Research Article
https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550613514456

Abstract
Five studies examined the effect of breadth and depth of foreign experiences on generalized trust. Study 1 found that the breadth (number of countries traveled) but not the depth (amount of time spent traveling) of foreign travel experiences predicted trust behavior in a decision-making game. Studies 2 and 3 established a causal effect on generalized trust by experimentally manipulating a focus on the breadth versus depth of foreign experiences. Study 4 used a longitudinal design to establish that broad foreign travel experiences increased generalized trust. Study 5 explored the underlying processes and found that a focus on the differences rather than the similarities among the countries visited was critical in producing greater generalized trust. Across five studies, using various methods (correlational, lab experiment, and longitudinal), samples (United States and Chinese) and operationalizations (trust game and generalized trust scale), we found a robust relationship between the breadth of foreign travel experiences and generalized trust.

Now I'm sure we agreed that people who are xenophobic/close minded ect are unlikely to be cosmopolitan travellers, but that this applies to all people, wether it's a rural village, a shire vicars daughter deriding 'citizens of nowhere', or inner London families who have never traveled beyond zone 2 tube stops and assume the rest of the world is like theirs, or unimportant.

BUT there will be other people who do not travel for other reasons and they might resent being lumped in with the above. And that feeds into a perceptual fault line, where hds assumes that 'city dwellers' assume things about him and dislikes them for it.
At the same time, travel in the 'gap yah' sense or the 'going to Bali to do a meditation course to find myself sense' is a modern rich consumer flag (always has been really). And it can be used as a signal to other a group to be envied/disliked/befriended.

What about travel for work? What about travel for education? Where does that fit in this worldview clash?

[mr friendly guy]

How much is the other way round? If you're not bigoted you would be more likely to travel, all other things being equal. Obviously with HDS he mentioned before he doesn't want to travel far because of environmental concerns which is perfectly legitimate and hence the above statement obviously won't apply to him.

[loomer]

I don't travel anywhere I can't reach by bus or train for ethical reasons (the only exception is for work purposes) which I think constitutes a special category of non-travelling, since it's not based on lack of availability, funds, or interest. I also reject the notion that rejecting travel means we have to automatically prefer to hate other cultures and peoples. One need not travel to be a citizen of the world, as much as I despise that term, even if it may be beneficial to people's horizons to do so.

On a note about individual experience, I may simply be unusual in that I haven't needed to travel to be exposed to new ideas and people. I grew up surrounded by multicultural anarchists, cultists, and hippies with artistic and academic backgrounds in a country university town with a strong cultural exchange program. This may mean my position is not broadly translatable.

[Ace Pace]

I can only bring anecdotal experience. Much of western tourism is centered on cultural sightseeing. When most people travel to other countries they seem to have their attitudes somewhat pre defined from prior research whether pop media, travel books or serious research.

This can be beneficial if you're truly open or it can be worse than nothing if you're just going to propaganda trips to see the natives in Nepal. Unfortunately, as this tourism is becoming more commercialized by locals, the opportunities of real education are reduced.

[loomer]

One element of travel fetishism I don't care for is that it often comes at the neglect of the local. People don't fully understand their own backyards but want to go and understand someone else's. I mentioned, in the parent thread, that I'm a fan of bioregionalism (not, I should stress, in its anprim/ecofash forms) so this doubly troubles me.

[Ralin]

Anecdote is not the singular of data and all, but as an American living in China I'm used to being cautious about other foreigners until I know why they couldn't get a job back home. Plenty of of them are good, liberal people, but you get a non-negligible number of shitheads. Just at my current school the foreign teachers include a pro-Brexit channer from the UK, an often-tolerable American born-again Christian who hasn't adjusted yet to the fact that people don't have to pretend to respect his 'beliefs' here and a particularly obnoxious, racist, homophobic shithead from Australia who is married to a Chinese woman, performs ironic Nazi salutes in the office and is probably third or fourth on the list of reasons why I will not be working at this school much longer. I've also met long-term residents from the UK who told me within five minutes of meeting them that they wish they could vote for Trump and went on anti-Muslim diatribes and this annoying ex-military guy in a couple local Wechat groups who flies off the handle about anything non-hetereonormative or insulting to his Lord and Savior Christ Jesus and demands that anyone who replies in kind come to his metro station to fight him..

MY IMPRESSION is that living abroad and by extension travel tends to encourage people to be more open-minded and accepting, but that when it doesn't hooboy do they double down.

Also that doesn't happen evenly, since at least two of the aforementioned examples are married to Chinese woman and one has multiple kids.

I can only bring anecdotal experience. Much of western tourism is centered on cultural sightseeing. When most people travel to other countries they seem to have their attitudes somewhat pre defined from prior research whether pop media, travel books or serious research.

This can be beneficial if you're truly open or it can be worse than nothing if you're just going to propaganda trips to see the natives in Nepal. Unfortunately, as this tourism is becoming more commercialized by locals, the opportunities of real education are reduced.

This is also true of a lot of Chinese tourism. Including internal tourism.

[madd0ct0r]

I had to wiki Bioregionalism, and I've got to say I'm pretty skeptical of its use as a concept.

Ecosystems are fractals. My house sits on a plot 5m by 20m and it has 4 separate ecosystem zones in the garden. Should travel between these be limited? Of course, not, that'd be silly. Maybe the Gwent Levels, should be split from the Cardiff Basin and both should be treated differently to the mountainous Valleys? But the east/west side of a welsh Valley has a rain shadow and a winter shadow spilt, and a resulting different growing season. And on the other side of the Border Mountains we have a lush plain up to the Pennine range and beyond that another, drier plain, the north sea and the marshy Fens to the south. All really different environments and managed very differently (and in far more detail) by the different environmental boards. In terms of transport of food and trade, ironically the Valleys each connect more easily to Cardiff then to each other, so cross-bioregion trade can be easier then internal.

But perhaps I'm letting small Wales drive my thinking. When you look at the example of Casacadia (the wikipedian ur-example), we talking an area far larger than a million square kilometers, incorporating beaches, mountains, fault lines and permafrost.
It's like treating all of Northern Europe as a single Bioregion, it's not very exciting or meaningful. And even in the dark ages we were trading far further then that.


- I too try to limit myself to bus and train. But I can literally take the train from my closest station across eurasisa to Hong Kong, so again, I'm not really sure quite the line Loomer is taking with that.

[aerius]

Y'all looked at your businessmen and politicians lately?
That should dispel any notion that travel makes a person more open minded and less insular.

[His Divine Shadow]

What I took umbrage with is that

a) Traveling neccessairly cures bigotry (see british empire, most well traveled lot of their time)
b) the implication of what this says about others who don't travel
c) the ecological sustainability of dragging millions if not billions of carcasses around the world in order to not be assholes, also again B.

And today travelling is done by a majority of people, many of the biggest boomerific trump loving assholes I know go abroad multiple times a year. I've traveled too in my time, across the world and I have it on good authority I'm a racist xenophobe so I'm the best evidence against it.

[loomer]

I had to wiki Bioregionalism, and I've got to say I'm pretty skeptical of its use as a concept.

Ecosystems are fractals. My house sits on a plot 5m by 20m and it has 4 separate ecosystem zones in the garden. Should travel between these be limited? Of course, not, that'd be silly. Maybe the Gwent Levels, should be split from the Cardiff Basin and both should be treated differently to the mountainous Valleys? But the east/west side of a welsh Valley has a rain shadow and a winter shadow spilt, and a resulting different growing season. And on the other side of the Border Mountains we have a lush plain up to the Pennine range and beyond that another, drier plain, the north sea and the marshy Fens to the south. All really different environments and managed very differently (and in far more detail) by the different environmental boards. In terms of transport of food and trade, ironically the Valleys each connect more easily to Cardiff then to each other, so cross-bioregion trade can be easier then internal.

The point of bioregionalism is not to prohibit travel between regions, but to emphasize that the needs of each ecological region are entwined with the needs of the human community that inhabits them. You're correct that they're fractal, and that's also recognized by most modern proposals of bioregions - think of it somewhat like a nationstate is currently structured. You might have your specific valley as the shire equivalent, then the drainage area of the local river as a state, the entire river system as a nation, and so on. Membership in a bioregion isn't limited to a single citizenship, either - inhabitants of overlapping regions must be 'citizens' of all those regions. I don't know your geography well enough to comment further, but the divide in the valley would actually create two bioregions within a larger one, itself located within the broader complex of valleys and mountains, and so on.

I didn't raise bioregionalism to say don't travel - as I explain below, my reasons for limiting travel are actually seperate to my preference for bioregional politics, though spawned from similar environmental concerns - but quite specifically as a concern around a bigger issue globalism and travel fetishism has, which is that it tends to neglect the cultivation of intimate knowledge about the landscapes we inhabit to favour a genericized 'global community' (and indeed, a global 'humanity' that reproduces some hegemonic claims out of the Western liberal tradition, which also tends to be an issue in global human rights discourse.) My concern regarding travel specifically as it intersects with bioregionalism is that the prevailing language around it privileges the cultural knowledge of the exoticized other (ironically enough, often in an attempt to de-exoticize and de-otherize) over the environmental knowledge of the mundanized local, which is often severely lacking and which should form the basis of local consciousness. I should also note that by bioregionalism I refer largely to more recent incarnations of it driven by Cormac Cullinan's and Thomas Berry's works on ecological/earth jurisprudence, which approach the issue of the modern corporatized and industrialized state as essentially a failure and look towards ecocentric replacements.

But perhaps I'm letting small Wales drive my thinking. When you look at the example of Casacadia (the wikipedian ur-example), we talking an area far larger than a million square kilometers, incorporating beaches, mountains, fault lines and permafrost.
It's like treating all of Northern Europe as a single Bioregion, it's not very exciting or meaningful. And even in the dark ages we were trading far further then that.

Cascadia really is a recognizable bioregion, but it's on the national or even supranational level equivalent, containing within it (and being contained within) a chain of fractal bioregions. But again - bioregionalism doesn't really have much to do with trade in this context, except as part of a general critique of some of the absurdities of globalization and their intersection with the tragedy of the commons making it cheaper to ship produce twice around the world than to buy locally grown. Nothing about bioregionalism says you must not purchase goods from another continent - only that, wherever possible, the preference should lie with what is available locally without undue damage to the ecosystem we form a part of. This might actually require trade for some goods revert to international and intercontinental routes - for instance, damming a river to grow cotton in the middle of a desert would cease to be acceptable, requiring either local textiles to be developed or cotton traded for from places where it can be grown with less disproportionate environmental impact.

- I too try to limit myself to bus and train. But I can literally take the train from my closest station across eurasisa to Hong Kong, so again, I'm not really sure quite the line Loomer is taking with that.

I live in Australia, so I'm not exactly taking a train to Hong Kong any time soon, but the reason I only travel by those methods is seperate from the concern I link to bioregional politics. The former is to do with carbon cost (and I even factor that in for train and bus journeys - if I can minimize it or skip it, I do), while the latter is to do with certain epistemic assumptions of globalism and travel fetishism. I actually don't travel if I can avoid it at all due to the carbon cost, and pretty much all the exceptions are health related, compassionate trips, or work related. I reject, on a purely personal level, the idea that we ought to have an unfettered right to burn as much carbon as we like to travel with and act accordingly.

[madd0ct0r]

Y'all looked at your businessmen and politicians lately?
That should dispel any notion that travel makes a person more open minded and less insular.

You mean like Rory Stewart? Or populists appealing to their home crowd? Or are you waving cynical generalisations about rather than think?

What I took umbrage with is that

a) Traveling neccessairly cures bigotry (see british empire, most well traveled lot of their time)
b) the implication of what this says about others who don't travel
c) the ecological sustainability of dragging millions if not billions of carcasses around the world in order to not be assholes, also again B.

And today travelling is done by a majority of people, many of the biggest boomerific trump loving assholes I know go abroad multiple times a year. I've traveled too in my time, across the world and I have it on good authority I'm a racist xenophobe so I'm the best evidence against it.

A) forget british empire,( unless you genuinely want to go into detail on cultural exchange on that), what about the examples from present day? (Like the study I posted in op). "Today travelling is done by a majority of people, many of the biggest boomerific trump loving assholes I know go abroad multiple times a year" - but where to? Brits staying in a Brit resort in Spain will see nothing beyond a blackpool with heating turned up. Perhaps we should seperate concepts of travel and exploring?

B) I dont think anyone here has said if A ->X then 'not A' -> 'not x'. Why are you reading that implication?

C) what is the ecological cost of dragging millions of carcasses around the world compared to commuting? Is that the carcases weight or the aeroplane? Would you object to interailing across continents or is it a frivolous use of resources still? Where do you draw the line in barebone emission lifestyle?

[His Divine Shadow]

I did not know that a culturual exchange was a requirement for something to qualify, given most traveling IMO doesn't result in much of that but OK. As for the studies I have a hard time buying them entirely, I wonder if it's a cart before the horse thing, or an economic issue. I remember having read a study saying differently many years ago, cannot find it anymore though.

I am reading that implication as a result of my cumulative experiences in my life. I have no shortage of incidents with people saying nasty stuff about small town people who don't travel, usually off hand comments nobody reacted to or were ever mentioned again, both real life and online. And I have googled on this and found that it's infact a big enough issue in the "travel-o-sphere" that many traveling bloggers have felt the need to write about this phenonemon several times.

I don't see the relevance of comparing the costs when both are things we should do less off in order to keep climate change from growing worse. We should do as little of both as possible. I'm not trying to draw a line of what you should and should not do, but I don't think making people travel is something we should encourage any morr than commuting.

On a personal level, the times I've traveled it has been to other cities, and they all have a same-y feel to me. It's like you can be in almost any major city on the world and it's sorta the same, but with small variations here and there, but nowadays we're all part of the same global coca cola culture. I think it's pretty easy to feel open minded in these situations. I felt there was more difference between Helsinki and a small village in northern Finland, then there was between Helsinki and Rome.

[aerius]

Y'all looked at your businessmen and politicians lately?
That should dispel any notion that travel makes a person more open minded and less insular.

You mean like Rory Stewart? Or populists appealing to their home crowd? Or are you waving cynical generalisations about rather than think?

You asking me about Rory Stewart is like me asking you about Borys Wrzesnewskyj. Over the past 20 years of my life I've been heavily involved in conservation & environmental efforts in my province which means I had to work with more politicians & business organizations & leaders at the local & provincial level than I can remember. Some were Conservatives, some were Liberals, and some were Socialist Greenies. Many of these folks travel widely as either part of their jobs or to unwind from their work. With a few exceptions, I didn't find them to be that much different than the less travelled people they represent.

I'd say there was some truth to lack of travel = insular when I was a kid, but these days, not so much. Back in my youth there was a lot less mobility and exposure to different cultures & viewpoints than there is now. You had your family, your friends, and your classmates or co-workers and that was about it. If I wanted to know how the French people viewed their leaders, what were my options? We didn't have French newspapers in our bookstores so unless I actually visited the country or knew someone who lived or had family & friends there it would be quite hard for me to find out. I could stay up to date on the affairs in various Asian countries since I have family there, but what about mid-west or southern US? I got nothing. And I was in a better situation than most since I lived in a major city with many different cultural backgrounds, someone living 3-4 hours north of me would have far less exposure to different people, cultures, and viewpoints. Which was why get out and travel was kind of a big thing in my parents' generation and mine to a lesser extent.

These days? Got a high speed internet connection? Well plug right in and you can get a taste of pretty much everything from everywhere. I'm on forums which are mostly hippy peacenicks and others which are filled with gun toting rednecks. I interact with these people on regular basis and get to see & understand how they think and what makes them tick. And thanks to the net, I've met up with a bunch of folks in real life from all kinds of different backgrounds that I otherwise wouldn't meet. If I want to discuss First Nation affairs I can talk to an acquaintance who's from one of the tribes up north. If I want to know what hunters think of our gun laws I can do that too. And if I want to know what the French think of their leaders I talk to one of the guys I bike with. And I met all these folks thanks to the power of the 'net.

[His Divine Shadow]

I agree in that I believe the power of the internet is far bigger than that of travel for making people more open minded.

[The Romulan Republic]

First, thank you madd0ct0r for giving this topic its own thread.

Second, let's be clear: when I say that there is a correlation between more travel (not necessarily abroad, but even within ones' home country) and less conservative, bigoted views, this is of course an average, not an absolute. There is no simple one-step cure-all to xenophobia and authoritarianism (unfortunately), so no, I'm not saying that traveling will cure all prejudice, nor am I saying that anyone who doesn't (or can't) travel is automatically a bigot. Obviously.

This is not a concession or modification of my earlier posts- simply a clarification to try (and probably fail) to put the straw men to bed.

I'll also note that in the other thread HDS outright admitted that his primary political ideology/goal is not Leftist, but isolationist, which, combined with his use of typical Right-wing rhetoric (portraying predominantly white rural communities as the "real" victims of bigotry by "urban" elites, etc.), is why I characterized him as a faux Leftist using opposition to the capitalist/globalist "establishment" as a pretext for xenophobic isolationism. There are a lot of people like that on the Left today, either deliberately posing as Leftists to try to coopt or divide us, or unreliable supporters who run and vote Trump when Bernie isn't the nominee (to use a specifically American example). They also, in my experience, have a habit of trolling and attacking anyone on the Left who isn't an isolationist. But as a progressive and democratic socialist who sincerely believes in internationalism and condemns xenophobia and isolationism, I honestly feel that I have a duty to call out such people in our own ranks. The very last thing that I want to see is a political situation where both the Right and Left have been co-opted by isolationist authoritarian xenophobes.

That aside, there is certainly a well-known link between travel and less bigoted/conservative views- and that should not be a surprise to anyone. OF COURSE its harder to see other people and cultures as a vague, threatening Other if you've actually been exposed to them on a regular basis. If you want statistical corroboration, there's this, of the top of my head:

https://theatlantic.com/politics/archiv ... ns/503033/

How people plan to vote appears to correspond, albeit broadly, with whether they decided to move away from where they grew up. According to the just-released PRRI/The Atlantic poll, 40 percent of Donald Trump’s likely voters live in the community where they spent their youth, compared with just 29 percent of Hillary Clinton voters. And of the 71 percent of Clinton voters who have left their hometowns, most—almost 60 percent of that group—now live more than two hours away.*

The effect is even stronger among white voters, who already tend toward Trump. Even a bit of distance matters: Trump wins by 9 points among white likely voters who live within two hours of their childhood home, but by a whopping 26 percent among whites who live in their hometown proper.

“Whites who were born in their hometowns and never left are really strong Trump supporters,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s director of research. “If you’re raised in a more culturally conservative area and you never leave, chances are that you’re going to be a bit more insular. I think among those kind of folks, there’s an appeal that Trump is hearkening back.”

Note that "travel" does not have to mean "travel to other countries"- it can mean travel within different regions and cultures of your own country, especially one as large and diverse as the United States.

This is not "travel fetishism". It is simply a recognition of the fact that prejudice thrives where there is a lack of first-hand knowledge to counteract the assumptions and stereotypes. I will also note that my initial post argued that the state should actively encourage/fund travel abroad (even make it mandatory and state funded as part of every person's education), which while no doubt a controversial view, hardly fits with the idea of a privileged few looking down on those who can't afford to travel.

That said, there are some legitimate concerns and counterarguments raised here, and I like to try to address some of them in brief:

How much is the other way round? If you're not bigoted you would be more likely to travel, all other things being equal. Obviously with HDS he mentioned before he doesn't want to travel far because of environmental concerns which is perfectly legitimate and hence the above statement obviously won't apply to him.

Probably a bit of both. But yes, correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

I don't travel anywhere I can't reach by bus or train for ethical reasons (the only exception is for work purposes) which I think constitutes a special category of non-travelling, since it's not based on lack of availability, funds, or interest. I also reject the notion that rejecting travel means we have to automatically prefer to hate other cultures and peoples. One need not travel to be a citizen of the world, as much as I despise that term, even if it may be beneficial to people's horizons to do so.

I suspect we're coming at this from very different underlying world views, as (correct me if I'm wrong), you seem to lean towards a degree of isolationism and ethno-nationalism as a form of opposition to colonialism, whereas I take the view that a more united a world is not only likely inevitable in a high-tech. world, but a necessity for dealing with global issues which affect the entire world (pollution, climate change, the refugee crisis, and international terrorism being the most obvious examples). And that matters which effect the entire world should justly have the input of the entire world.

And no that does not mean that I want Western nations imposing their view on the rest of the planet- I am well-aware that in a world where all people had an equal voice in global affairs, my ethnicity and nationalities would be severely out-numbered by Chinese people and Indians, and I accept that.

But I would interested to see you elaborate on what you feel the "ethical" objections to travel are.

On a note about individual experience, I may simply be unusual in that I haven't needed to travel to be exposed to new ideas and people. I grew up surrounded by multicultural anarchists, cultists, and hippies with artistic and academic backgrounds in a country university town with a strong cultural exchange program. This may mean my position is not broadly translatable.

Probably not, no. Ones' exposure to other cultures will depend a great deal on various factors- and not just whether you live in a city vs a small town.

One element of travel fetishism I don't care for is that it often comes at the neglect of the local. People don't fully understand their own backyards but want to go and understand someone else's. I mentioned, in the parent thread, that I'm a fan of bioregionalism (not, I should stress, in its anprim/ecofash forms) so this doubly troubles me.

This is a legitimate concern, but one that I feel can be largely addressed by appropriate regulation.

MY IMPRESSION is that living abroad and by extension travel tends to encourage people to be more open-minded and accepting, but that when it doesn't hooboy do they double down.

Annectdotal, but I would not be surprised if you are correct. The ones who are actually exposed to the wider world and choose to reject it will be the hard core, committed bigots, those acting out of genuine conviction/hatred, not merely ignorance and bias.

What I took umbrage with is that

a) Traveling neccessairly cures bigotry (see british empire, most well traveled lot of their time)

A strawman/oversimplification of my argument, already addressed.

b) the implication of what this says about others who don't travel

Ditto.

c) the ecological sustainability of dragging millions if not billions of carcasses around the world in order to not be assholes, also again B.

The ecological impact is a valid concern, but one that can hopefully be mitigated by promoting development of more fuel-efficient forms of transportation. All human activity has a potential negative environmental impact, but I trust you will agree that the solution is not to cease all human activity.

And today travelling is done by a majority of people, many of the biggest boomerific trump loving assholes I know go abroad multiple times a year. I've traveled too in my time, across the world and I have it on good authority I'm a racist xenophobe so I'm the best evidence against it.

Annecdotal, but worth addressing anyway.

This is somewhat speculative, but I think that a lot probably depends on when people are exposed to other cultures, ethnicities and viewpoints. By the time someone is a rich retired Boomer traveling because they can afford to do so in their retirement, they're probably pretty set in their view of the world.

The reasons why one is traveling probably matter too- for example (and again, this is a generalization, not an absolute), I expect a soldier going abroad to fight the people he encounters is likely to come away with a very different view from someone who is traveling for business, or volunteering, or education, or pleasure.

I agree in that I believe the power of the internet is far bigger than that of travel for making people more open minded.

I used to place a lot of faith in the internet's ability to facilitiate cultural exchange and connect people, but not so much now. Its far too easy for online communities to become propagandistic echo-chambers that simply reinforce their members' prejudices. Especially with stuff like micro-targeted adds on social media, singling out people who are likely to be already receptive to their message.

[aerius]

I used to place a lot of faith in the internet's ability to facilitiate cultural exchange and connect people, but not so much now. Its far too easy for online communities to become propagandistic echo-chambers that simply reinforce their members' prejudices. Especially with stuff like micro-targeted adds on social media, singling out people who are likely to be already receptive to their message.

Speak for yourself. You ever logged in at say, ar15.com or Freepers and interacted with the members to understand their concerns & viewpoints? Or how about a muscle car forum that's populated mainly by Red State guys? I bet you haven't. This board is probably the most exposure you've ever had to conflicting viewpoints, and you spend all your time screaming abuse at everyone who disagrees with you instead of actually trying to understand WHY there's a disagreement.

[The Romulan Republic]

I used to place a lot of faith in the internet's ability to facilitiate cultural exchange and connect people, but not so much now. Its far too easy for online communities to become propagandistic echo-chambers that simply reinforce their members' prejudices. Especially with stuff like micro-targeted adds on social media, singling out people who are likely to be already receptive to their message.

Speak for yourself. You ever logged in at say, ar15.com or Freepers and interacted with the members to understand their concerns & viewpoints? Or how about a muscle car forum that's populated mainly by Red State guys? I bet you haven't. This board is probably the most exposure you've ever had to conflicting viewpoints, and you spend all your time screaming abuse at everyone who disagrees with you instead of actually trying to understand WHY there's a disagreement.

WHAT THE FUCK gives you the right to make these sorts of pronouncements about me? What the fuck makes you entitled to say what experiences are or who I interact with in the rest of my life? Besides a blatant attempt to derail YET ANOTHER thread into abusing the strawman of my character that posters like you have spent years crafting on this board, rather than actually addressing the fucking topic.


No, I don't hang out on Alt. Reich-dominated boards. This doesn't mean I refuse to interact with anyone who disagrees with me. Its means that my tolerance does not extend to white supremacists. Yours', evidently, does.

[loomer]

I don't travel anywhere I can't reach by bus or train for ethical reasons (the only exception is for work purposes) which I think constitutes a special category of non-travelling, since it's not based on lack of availability, funds, or interest. I also reject the notion that rejecting travel means we have to automatically prefer to hate other cultures and peoples. One need not travel to be a citizen of the world, as much as I despise that term, even if it may be beneficial to people's horizons to do so.

I suspect we're coming at this from very different underlying world views, as (correct me if I'm wrong), you seem to lean towards a degree of isolationism and ethno-nationalism as a form of opposition to colonialism,

You are pretty much entirely wrong. I oppose isolationism and ethnonationalism. You have confused decolonization and landbacks for something that they aren't, which is the establishment of ethnostates. What they are is simply recognizing that the extant power structures of colonial states are so fundamentally embedded that the only meaningful way to resolve them is to dissolve those states and start over from scratch by returning stolen lands to rightful owners and interrogating every facet of the political structures that facilitated those thefts and their continuation. This would only create 'ethnonational' states if we required that the emergent states be so through the forced exclusion of ethnic groups (or if there was an astonishingly effective process of assimilation of all the cultures involved into the inevitable birth of a new hybrid culture), and no decolonization proposals that I'm aware of call for that - and those that do do not have my support. Such proposals actually largely call for the deliberate protection of cosmopolitan populations and often call for a far more cosmopolitan citizenship regime than the states they would replace, with overlapping pluralities of citizenships being possible within broad confederations and federations of states (and sometimes even, unthinkably to the Westphalian model, territorial overlaps!)

Decolonization of this kind in no way entails isolationism, and neither does bioregionalism. My distaste for travel is not because I think it is bad, or exposure to other cultures is wrong, or from the isolationist perspective that each individual region should have total autonomy and stay out of each others business, but rather that the carbon cost of that travel is fundamentally unethical at this time in human history. It is a luxury that can be easily done without and which cannot, with rare exceptions, be achieved without extensive carbon expenditure. Once the climate shift has been stabilized and emissions reduced and appropriate technologies reintroduced, this objection will largely disappear.

I am, in fact, opposed to isolationism. Isolationism and bioregionalism are fundamentally at odds with one another, as all bioregions are embedded in larger bioregions and systems of exchange that necessitate relationships between communities be carried out protect the interests of those larger bioregions from actions by individual components that might damage the whole. This extends from small scale areas - e.g. individual creek areas - to large scale areas (the river they feed into) to the largest scale areas (the entire basin of that river and all that depends on it) and finally the global area, as the earth itself constitutes the ultimate bioregion of which all persons are members. In this sense, I am unfortunately a Diogenes-style 'citizen of the world' (unfortunately only in that I loathe that term due to the pretentious cunts who use it) - I have no choice but to be, as I am in the world, of the world, and among the world. Thus, I oppose political isolationism.

This is why I have taken pains to draw a line between the bioregionalism I endorse and that of ecofascists and anprims - I simply do not agree with ethnonationalism, with isolationism, or with unfettered primitivism.

whereas I take the view that a more united a world is not only likely inevitable in a high-tech. world, but a necessity for dealing with global issues which affect the entire world (pollution, climate change, the refugee crisis, and international terrorism being the most obvious examples). And that matters which effect the entire world should justly have the input of the entire world.

None of this is at odds with my perspective. A united world order, as I mentioned above, is in fact the end goal of my bioregionalism, as the ultimate bioregion is in fact the planetary bioregion. Matters that effect the entire world necessarily, under such a political mode, receive the attention and input of the entire world. Our central disagreement in this area is to do with decolonization rather than the necessity of a global community - you want (and feel it is possible) to move directly into a more unified global community, while I feel it is first necessary to dismantle the legacy of colonialism and then proceed on a more just and equitable footing towards that goal.

And no that does not mean that I want Western nations imposing their view on the rest of the planet- I am well-aware that in a world where all people had an equal voice in global affairs, my ethnicity and nationalities would be severely out-numbered by Chinese people and Indians, and I accept that.

Good.

But I would interested to see you elaborate on what you feel the "ethical" objections to travel are.

It is, bluntly, unethical to expend unnecessary carbon and other resources on travel for luxury at a time when carbon expenditure must be mitigated at all cost. If you were expecting something else, I think you may have confused my two objections in this thread for being essentially one and the same, when they are distinct. (I do have a personal ethico-spiritual issue as well, but I don't expect others to obey that one.)

The ethical objection to travel is that travel, in this context, almost always requires the use of fossil fuels to an extensive degree that I find unacceptable (give me the choice to travel via sail-powered clipper ship - appropriate technologies rear their head once again - and I might change my mind and jaunt over to New Zealand or South Africa on the regular to visit colleagues!) The other objection - that there is a tendency among those who fetishize travel as a solution to ignorance privilege the cultural knowledge of experiencing exoticized others over the mundane knowledge of intimate knowledge of the local bioregion - is not an ethical one but more of an epistemic one.

In and of itself, there is nothing harmful about travel from the perspective of either objection. In the ethical objection, it is the means of that travel that I find unacceptable, as it is both a significant carbon expenditure and a luxury that can be easily done without. In the epistemic objection, I am concerned that it keeps people from realizing the sheer complexity of the systems around them in which they are embedded by fixing their eyes and attention on places other than their own. This can be a good thing - for instance, I know a few people who came back from field work in Indonesia with a new desire to understand the local rainforest as well as their guide knew his - but it can also be a bad distraction.

The vast majority of travellers I have met do not carry any increased attentiveness to the systems of life and knowledge they are daily embedded with home with them, and continue to ignore the fact that their actions are part of an ecosystem with consequences in that ecosystem. They turn the desire for knowledge out beyond the borders, rather than knowing what's in their own back yard - sometimes literally here. I have introduced, directly and second hand, dozens of people to the history of our home region's plants and animals, and nearly all of those whom I directly introduced to it had previously travelled overseas. They were unaware of the history of the bunya pine and the pademelon, of the great cedar forests that once stood where I sit now, of the names of the plants we sat under. Some I introduced for the first time to the Gondwana rainforest remnants - some had never been, others had but didn't know any of the history at all - and even to the site of one of environmentalism's greatest victories. These are all places and parts of the world they live in, and they were contentedly ignorant of them even though they all possessed a general desire to know, well, things.

In their desire to know, they ignored these places and histories that are literally all around them in order to search for knowledge elsewhere - Germany is popular here, as are the usual South East Asia, India, and Japan tourism routes - and then return and pay no more attention to their home than before. But they do make the mistake of thinking they are now worldly and wise, and therefore do not need to know until they are snapped out of that folly by the revelation of the complexities of their own backyards. This is the source of my bioregional objection - a fixation on travel rarely coincides with the deliberate rootedness that is required to cultivate an awareness of the living systems (which include cultural ones) we are enmeshed within, even if it can provide temporary contrasts that could, properly applied, enhance that awareness. It instead often serves to occlude the complexities of home.

There can, of course, also be just outright unethical travelling - travelling that is innately exploitative or abusive (e.g. sex tourism that involves trafficked workers or children), fundamentally environmentally or culturally destructive, and so on - but that is another matter, and one I hope and expect we'd agree on. As I mentioned above, I also have a purely personal objection that could be categorized as ethico-spiritual to going on country without an invitation or a welcome. This basically means that I find it uncomfortable crossing various traditional borders (even within the Bundjalung nation, I am comfortable only in my own little corner and in two other clan territories that I have received personal invitations to freely visit from appropriate elders) without stopping and performing cleansing and apology rites to that country on entering and exiting it as dictated by my personal spiritual practices which makes longer journeys tricky. I don't expect other people to follow this particular course of action, though, any more than I expect them to also make the sacrificial offerings I give for various occasions.

One element of travel fetishism I don't care for is that it often comes at the neglect of the local. People don't fully understand their own backyards but want to go and understand someone else's. I mentioned, in the parent thread, that I'm a fan of bioregionalism (not, I should stress, in its anprim/ecofash forms) so this doubly troubles me.

This is a legitimate concern, but one that I feel can be largely addressed by appropriate regulation.

What would you suggest? A knowledge test required to leave one's area? I'm unsure if regulation is a suitable solution, speaking as a legal theorist. This is a cultural issue rather than a regulatory one, and using laws to resolve it might actually have the unintended effect of reinforcing the very isolationism you hope to reduce.

[aerius]

I agree in that I believe the power of the internet is far bigger than that of travel for making people more open minded.

Yup. Let's use loomer as an example. I could travel as much as I want but I doubt I'd ever meet someone with whom I can have an in-depth discussion on decolonization issues. Not gonna happen. This ain't something that's going to come up in conversation, and even then, I have to somehow run into that rare person who actually has a background and deep understanding of the subject.

I haven't replied in his threads because I just don't have the background or knowledge to make any meaningful contributions, but I do read all of them and have done some further reading & research of my own to try & better understand things.

[ray245]

As someone spending a fair amount of my life in a foreign university, I can say that simply being present amongst other people do not necessarily result in any meaningful interaction. It's the same with tourism, and it is compounded by language difficulties.

When most people travel, they do not interact with the locals on any meaningful social level. Living in a hotel, going to a restaurant, going to tourist sights do not result in people getting to know the locals beyond the mere surface level. In some case, all it does is to reinforce your sense of belonging to your country/place of origin even further.

Even for students on their year-abroad, there is a tendency to stick closer with the people they feel more familiar and by default more comfortable with.

[Zwinmar]

Anecdotally, absolutely. Comparing those of us in the family who joined the military to those cousins who have never left is astounding. Though, it must be pointed out, the ones who never left live in the same small towns and counties that our ancestors have lived in since the mid 1700's. They are closed minded to the extreme.

[loomer]

As someone spending a fair amount of my life in a foreign university, I can say that simply being present amongst other people do not necessarily result in any meaningful interaction. It's the same with tourism, and it is compounded by language difficulties.

When most people travel, they do not interact with the locals on any meaningful social level. Living in a hotel, going to a restaurant, going to tourist sights do not result in people getting to know the locals beyond the mere surface level. In some case, all it does is to reinforce your sense of belonging to your country/place of origin even further.

Even for students on their year-abroad, there is a tendency to stick closer with the people they feel more familiar and by default more comfortable with.

This is an important distinction. Most of the people I've known who've come back from travel having actually found knowledge of value (value here being knowledge that assists in actually reshaping beliefs) have travelled in a way that mandated close prolonged non-transactional engagement with either locals or a significantly different way of life - e.g. fieldwork in Indonesia, anthropological surveys in the Amazon, a six month stay on country in the Northern Territory. Travel that involves neither of these things is not something that, anecdotally, I've seen create a lasting difference. Especially not travel to America, Europe, or Japan.

[The Romulan Republic]

As someone spending a fair amount of my life in a foreign university, I can say that simply being present amongst other people do not necessarily result in any meaningful interaction. It's the same with tourism, and it is compounded by language difficulties.

When most people travel, they do not interact with the locals on any meaningful social level. Living in a hotel, going to a restaurant, going to tourist sights do not result in people getting to know the locals beyond the mere surface level. In some case, all it does is to reinforce your sense of belonging to your country/place of origin even further.

Even for students on their year-abroad, there is a tendency to stick closer with the people they feel more familiar and by default more comfortable with.

This is an important distinction. Most of the people I've known who've come back from travel having actually found knowledge of value (value here being knowledge that assists in actually reshaping beliefs) have travelled in a way that mandated close prolonged non-transactional engagement with either locals or a significantly different way of life - e.g. fieldwork in Indonesia, anthropological surveys in the Amazon, a six month stay on country in the Northern Territory. Travel that involves neither of these things is not something that, anecdotally, I've seen create a lasting difference. Especially not travel to America, Europe, or Japan.

Yeah, I think its safe to say, as I noted above, that the reasons you travel and the way you do it matter a lot.

Apologies, by the way, for not replying to your post sooner. I'm not trying to ignore it- I couldn't log on for a couple of days, and then today I got side tracked by stressing over my Employment Insurance application, with what free time I had online being mostly monopolized by the news of Bernie dropping out. I'll try and get a reply up tomorrow.

[Ralin]

Annectdotal, but I would not be surprised if you are correct. The ones who are actually exposed to the wider world and choose to reject it will be the hard core, committed bigots, those acting out of genuine conviction/hatred, not merely ignorance and bias.

I read an article (actual peer-reviewed published in a Poli Sci journal article) back in 2016 that had similar findings about social media. i.e., it tends to having a moderating effect on a global level, but the exceptions tend to go hardcore in a toxic direction.

[chimericoncogene]

From my own experience... not really.

People tend to see their own views reflected in other societies, and see what they want to see. That is, the majority of people look at the world filtered through their own lenses, and interpret it according to their own biases. Travel does not by any means encourage open-mindedness, a diversity of viewpoints, or encourage critical thinking in any way.

That is, if they see anything at all. People I'm familiar with in East Asia don't really go overseas to learn about places overseas. They go to have fun, see the sights, and post nice pictures on Instagram. I personally know people who were going to Iceland and had no idea what the Mid-Atlantic Ridge was, or its relevance to Iceland as a whole. Anecdotal, but it's the sort of thing that I expect.