The case against the case

It has been over a year since I last wrote an article, but I have been thinking about this quite a lot in the last couple of days so I have decided that it would be best if I just get it out of my system and be done about it.

It was about one week ago that Facebook presented me with an article from the American opinion magazine The New Yorker entitled "The case against travel". Knowing that I am terribly fond of traveling in spite of my limited financial and time resources, I did not pay any attention in the first place. Then, a few days later, I got a second advertisement so I decided to take a look at the comments. As one might expect, most were contrary to the thesis of the article because most travelers are not only ardent in their passion, but also quite verbal about it (i.e. in support of it).

Photo: Derek A Young

Under the premise that it is sometimes useful to consider opposite views in case they have some merit, I went ahead and read the article and, although there are a couple of points where I would be inclined to agree, I would contest the majority of opinions expressed in the article by Agnes Callard.

My first and most important point of resistance is the "normative" stance. I am primordially against anyone stating what someone else should or should not do, particularly when this applies to essentially everybody. I am OK with anyone explaining why they do what they do, and even advising everyone else to do the same, but trying to establish in an extremely wide context that nobody should travel for tourism ever seems to me as an unforgivable interference in our freedoms.

The second aspect that has irritated me is the assumption that she knows why all people travel, in particular since her idea is so far from my own. I do not claim the right to be representative of any larger group, but I also do not consider myself such an oddity as to believe myself unique, and I can assure you that most of the people I know do not travel "to do what they are supposed to do in a place" but instead always try to look behind the curtains. I do not hesitate to admit that I agree with the author in that point: travelling just for sake of checking boxes seems a disproportionate effort, but that is were our agreement ends.

I depart from her opinion the moment she starts to judge if the travels are justified, if the reasons for the trip are sufficient, if the rewards actually "pay off". In recent years I have experience a substantial mental evolution in the realization that the reasons of other people are largely invisible to us, to the point that we not only do not understand them, but we are not even aware that they do not exist. The author suggests that we consider our judgement on someone else's travel instead of our own in order to get a somewhat unbiased estimate of how it would be perceived; in exchange, I propose that we look at the reasons we have to do what we do and apply the generosity of thinking that the rest of the people are likely to have reasons of their own, even if we do not know them. Following this line of reasoning, if people are ready set aside both money and time to go on vacation, the only kind attitude is to assume that they do it for a reason, and if we do not see it, it is a failure of our own imagination and no fault of the traveler.

The final argument that I find misplace is the reliance on revered figures such as Socrates, Immanuel Kant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fernando Pessoa and G. K. Chesterton to argue her case. This is a very patent case of argumentum ad verecundiam: the fact that they are recognized writers and philosophers does not give them advantage in opinions outside their realm of expertise. (Incidentally, even in their areas of expertise, they are not exempt from being wrong, just see the example of John Dalton's disproved atomic theory.) In any sufficiently large group of people one is bound to find an introvert or a misanthrope that would prefer to stay at home rather than enjoying the benefits of open nature and the company of others, but that does not mean that their attitude shall be recommended to (or even worse, imposed on) everyone.

The wrap-up of the article is not less misguided from my point of view. I am running a bit long for today, so I will put together another article dismantling her punchline:

If a vacation is merely the pursuit of unchanging change, an embrace of nothing, why insist on its meaning?

I will, however, extend her the mercy of agreeing with her once more. Travel is fun, so it is not mysterious that we like it. And even if she fails to appreciate it, the beautiful aspect of life and human nature is that each one of us gets to like our travels in an individual and very specific way. If she does not like her own, I have nothing to oppose to her staying at home, but in the meantime I am browsing already for my next opportunity. Have a nice evening.