35 | Thoughts on travel
Shortly after I started writing about our family trip to Alaska, I read Agnes Callard’s piece “The Case Against Travel.” (Callard is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago and someone I’ve quoted in a previous newsletter).
At the start of the piece, a lot resonated with me:
The rather contrived notion of liking to travel
The idea of avoiding “touristy” activities while actively touring a place
The commoditization of experiences (i.e., ticking off countries from your travel list)
I am guilty of all these actions.
Callard cuts to the core of travel being imbued with “an aura of virtue” and the mystery behind this framing, which is a fair point. Callard concludes that travel separates and obscures.
“Travel splits this expanse of time into the chunk that happens before the trip, and the chunk that happens after it, obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation. And it does so in the cleverest possible way: by giving you a foretaste of it. You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things: you are experiencing, you are connecting, you are being transformed, and you have the trinkets and photos to prove it.”
This presents travel as a distraction from death, which seems the opposite of my experience; travel is an engagement with life. And maybe my view demonstrates Callard’s point.
Earlier in the piece, Callard (who quotes a variety of thinkers/writers/philosophers) writes, “(Ralph Waldo) Emerson is explicit about steering his critique away from a person who travels when his ‘necessities’ or ‘duties’ demand it. He has no objection to traversing great distances ‘for the purpose of art, of study, and benevolence.’“
This sort of travel “with nothing to prove” seems to push back against the thesis of her piece or, at minimum, offers space where travel can be fine when it is less about distraction and obfuscation.
As a photographer, I think a lot about how to document a place when traveling. The camera and the images I make are something to prove. I put them in my portfolio or on my Instagram. For me, this seems necessary. Photography is an art that I participate in and an opportunity to study a place.
I am curious where this type of travel would fall for Callard.
In response to Callard’s article in The New Yorker, Jill Filipovic’s piece, “Summer’s here. Travel, for many of us, is not just wonderful but essential” in The Guardian,” pushes back on Callard’s piece.
“Travel isn’t a magical tool that by itself makes us happy and sophisticated, evolved and capable. Like anything else some people (even many people) find pleasurable, it’s not for everyone,” Filipovic writes. “But perhaps travel could be useful even for those who feel the most challenged by it.”
Without intention and vacant of challenges, being in a new place won’t make a difference, and it might be a net negative in some circumstances.
However, when we bring ourselves out of our comfort zone (travel generally does that rather immediately), we feel the world's friction. We are faced with opportunities to navigate uncertainty and, in these moments, see our actions and reactions in a new context.
These challenges offer chances for self-examination and growth.
The participant must be open and willing to acknowledge these challenges, but it is possible. Travel in this circumstance isn’t simply “preparation for death” but an opportunity to embrace life and feel its texture.
Filipovic concludes the piece by writing, “By leaving our comfortable places, little by little we – hopefully – see the world with more wonder and offer other people more patience, generosity and tolerance than we would if we simply stayed home.”
In this final line, the idea of wonder is put forth. This is something that I believe can be found every day or our neighborhoods and can impact how we live our lives. We don’t require travel for wonder, and we don’t need travel for self-examination or growth.
Like travel, Callard’s writing and her penchant for public philosophy benefit anyone willing to engage with it. It encourages us to reflect on aspects of our life/society that are promoted but left unexplored.
For a person who grew up in small-town surrounded by corn fields, a highway that signified the way past the town and also the end of the town, and a coal plant looming on the horizon, I have to say that a few days in Paris or a crawl in a glacier jams my brain full of wonder. Engaging with new cultures and languages humbles me and reminds me of how little I know. And for whatever reason, exploring a new location with my camera draws me closer to the rhythm of life.
These, for me, are reasons to travel.
But, like everything in life, it might not be for everyone.
Notes:
I am printing a short run of zines focused on my travels to Italy. You can find the presale link here.