The adage that travel broadens the mind and can make you a more open-minded, tolerant person, IME is very true. For that reason, I especially like the etomology behind the Icelandic word "heimskur", which means "stupid", or ~"one who hasn't left home".
3 years ago 路 馃憤 figbert, thatsredadcted, mcoffin, neuropirate
@mc I started learning it years back, and would like to come back to it at some point, but sadly not! 路 3 years ago
@kevinsan @defunct I've always thought of "travel" to imply more of a desire to *be* in a place and learn about it, with "tourism" being more casual and short-lived. Those may just be my definitions, but in any case, I think it's true that those who go to a new place to learn and understand it (vs. just be in the sun some place else with no intention to learn about the place/people) tend to already be, or become, more open-minded. 路 3 years ago
Do you speak Icelandic, @martin ? 路 3 years ago
@kevinsan I would check out some of David Harvey's stuff on accumulation by dispossession of "tourism" as a concept. You're totally right that tourism itself is this collective fiction we've all bought into. That said, there's this horrifying story I read once of somebody liking countries at EPCOT rather than the actual country because "everything is already there at Disney." 路 3 years ago
@kevinsan travel does have its uses. 100 years ago some people had never seen an ocean. yet tourism in the sense that literally everyone has a picture of the eiffel tower on their phone is tough to justify... 路 3 years ago
@defunct it's a counterpoint. i've been thinking lately that tourism is just an extension of the fiction that's pervasive in society. Disneyland is at least honest about that, but e.g. Edinburgh tourism rarely considers Muirhouse junkies as part of the city. 路 3 years ago
@kevinsan oesn't that contradict what @martin has said? is that irony in the text? 路 3 years ago
" 'Tourist', Rincewind had come to understand, meant 'idiot' " 路 3 years ago