My, oh, my... I admit I wasn't sure what kind of responses I'd get when I posted this, so I can't say the results are expected or unexpected. I was hoping for some healthy discussion, and I'm glad to see that's occurred.

I want to reiterate what I really believe about this subject - I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" answer, so anyone here saying someone else's response is anything less than inspired isn't really fair. This was certainly about gross generalizations (I was a sociology major, I can't help but stereotype), and there will always be problems when dealing with vast groups of people in that way... That said, we won't learn anything if we don't ask the questions.

So, keep talking - and play nice in the sandbox, people.

Barukh – Well, I know quite a few travelers, and it seems to me that you are talking about cartoon characters, not real people. The problem isn’t just simple generalization (we all do that), but grotesque stereotyping. Real people are inevitably more complex than a six-panel cartoon strip.

Ask 100 travelers why they travel and you’ll probably get 100 answers. I’m sure it would be the same if you asked them about the benefits of traveling. But I don’t personally know anyone who travels just to name drop or look fashionable (as you suggest). And while I know a few people who romanticize the idea of helping the poor, I don’t know any who romanticize being poor (in fact, it’s quite the opposite – most of us appreciate traveling in poor countries because everything is so cheap).

I know plenty who travel cheaply, but none who do it out of desire to “live among the poor.” Going cheap is a way to extend your travels, and frankly, once you realize that you can have a great time without spending $100 or $200 or $300 a day, it’s hard to go back (and you are proud of the fact you realized this). And, yes, there is some authenticity in the fact that going cheap forces you to eat in local restaurants, shop at local markets for your picnic, walk to your destination, and avoid the sensory-numbing luxury of a five-star hotel.

I also know plenty who travel for authenticity, but that’s such a loaded word, and it’s hard to know what you mean. The kind of authenticity I’m talking about is what you get when you experience a place with all five senses – your five senses (as opposed to just seeing selectively-chosen snippets on TV). It’s the authenticity you get from meeting a real Arab/Chinese/French person (as opposed to forming your opinions about an entire ethnic group’s “national character” based on a 30-second news story). And yes, it might even be the authenticity of buying some random local product (because we’re all consumers deep down, aren’t we?).

Another legitimate benefit is the insight you gain into the motivations of fellow travelers. That appears to be the case for you, and I don’t necessarily disagree with all of your comments. I’ve met a few wankers out there too. But I wonder if your opinion is based on open-minded observation or preconceived notions. Your comments were pretty cynical, and as a cynic myself, I know our condition can be the product of despair and lost hope.

On name dropping...I guess I'm guilty about this to some extent, but I don't think it's fair to say we're just dropping names. Much as car people like to talk about their cars, and career people like to talk abou their jobs, travel people want to talk about travel, so we often try to steer the conversation in that direction so that we can.

Hey slip:

OK I retract that the "comments were rude and stupid" I guess that's too close to calling the poster rude and stupid. It's much better to drone on using literary refernces and exaggeration to imply what category of persons
he belongs to.

Point taken.
*bows*

In my posts, the whole point is that I don't care how people view the poor, or what their motives are. I thought I went on and on about that. Sorry for being unclear. I'll be more straightforward then:

View the poor through any lenses you want, but there are some decent organizations that you can contribute to.

Hope this helps.

I think that the whole "liberal white guilt" argument/point of view/thing is, to be blunt, stupid. Was the young Joe Liberman or young pre-big deal Bob Dylan suffering from "lwg" when they came south to MS and helped organize people to go out and claim what was thiers by right? I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that they helped change things, often at great risk to themselves. Let us not forget the people that were killed in Philidelphia, MS:One balck and two white. One of the white kids had literally JUST gotten to MS that day!!

I am liberal and white and maybe I feel a little guilt about what my ancestors did to others. However, I know that I can do nothing about itaccept work to help the people that are here and now. If I am partly motivated by guilt why is that wrong.

If the "Traveler" culture is so repulsive to you then why to choose to ba a part of it? Why force your self to listen to Marley and Enya and smell insece if you don't have to? What is your motivation if you ahte it so much?

I guess what it really comes down to is that while you don't want to have to fit into someone elses little bubble you want the world to fit into yours? Is that what you mean. Look inside and see if that is what you really mean.

In the meantime, I am going to watch family guy.


CM


(sorry if this is really catty. I had a seriously bad day at school today....Neitze...YUCK!!)

at the risk of sounding like a total bohemian travel guru wannabe, can't we all just travel together in peace?....its a cliche to use the word cliche...ahaha....just do what you love and make sure you're passionate about it.try not to concern yourself too much with the mentality of others and just make sure that your own is true to yourself. putting down other people for using insence or liking bob marley just shows your own insecurity and lack of sureness in your own motives.

on that note an excellent read for all is LETTERS TO MY SON BY KENT NERBURN.....theres a piece on travel.....i have a small exerpt which cuts off at the topic of convseration but ill post it anyway and reccomend you check it out at the bookstore.

i would never be the same again.

that is the magic of travel.
you leave your home secure in your knowledge and identity,
but as you travel the world in all its richness intervenes.
you meet people you could not invent, see scenes you could not imagine.
your world which was so large as to consume your whole life beocmes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in time and space,
you return a different person.

all you need to do is give yourself over to the unknown, it doenst ahve to be on a vast dreamlike arctic plain, it can be on a gentle stroll through a wisconsin forest. or on a street corner in nairobi. what matters is that you have left the comfort of the familiar and opened yourself to a world that is totally apart from your own.

slowly the memories of the familiar recede. and you find yourself adrift in the expereince of the world around you
your thoughts and concerns change.
your emotions focus on new people and events, the world makes it claim on your heart and mind and you are free, at least momentarily from the concerns of your everyday life.

many people dont want to be travelers. they would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other peopels lives, while never really leaving their own..........

sorry it cuts off there, its just a short piece pasted in the journals of sabrina ward harrison in her book BRAVE ON THE ROCKS which is another wonderful collection of feelings and stories of her first solo trip to italy. hope all check out both of these books, they ahve been a very big inspiration to me and maybe to you to!!!....

found another piece that appears to continue shortly after...

...to be a real traveller you must be willing to give yourself over to the moment and take yourself out of the center of the universe. you must belive totally in the lives of the people and the places that you find yourself, even if it causes you to lose faith in the life you left behind,

you need to share with them, participate with them. sit at their tables, go to their streets. tell them stories of your life, and hear stories of theirs. watch how they love eachother, how they fight eachother. see what they value and what they fear. feel the spaces they keep in their lives.

become part of the fabric of their everyday lives and you will get a sense of what it means to live in their world. give yourself over to them. embrace them rather than judge them, and you will find that the beauty in their lives and their world will become part of yours.

when you move on, you will have grown....

that is why we need to travel. if we dont offer ourselves to the unknown our senses dull. our world beocmes small and we lose our sense of wonder. our eyes dont lift to the horizon our ears dont hear the sounds around us. the edge is off our experience and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. we wake up one day to find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

dont let yourself become one of these people.

the fear of the unknown and lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances that the traveller needs to take. but if you take them, you will never regret your choice.

-lovely huh?

Personally, I feel that anyone who says, "I'm a traveler, not a tourist." deserves to rot not in hell, not to die, no, that is far too harsh. They're not bad people. But they do deserve to spend 800 years....god, what circle of hell do they deserve? Great question I pose to myself. Definitely the least circle of hell, if that's where they go. But they deserve to rot in a smoky-cigar-hell for at least 400 years, let's just leave it at that.

LISTEN. EVERYONE is a tourist until you know the local language fluently. At the very least. If you don't know it, shut your fucking mouth and prepare yourself for Dante's Rings.

There is a lot of research going on into Backpacking at the moment. While it is tourism, backpacking is hard to define .. people tend to label themselves ... as nomads, gappers, vagabonds, backpackers, travelers, tourists. For those with an academic interest .. have a look at a book called:

The global nomad : backpacker travel in theory and practice / edited by Greg Richards and Julie Wilson

There is a report at site called ATLAS where you can download a report (number 29) called Today's youth travellers: tomorrow's global nomads

Mike
www.irish-guy.com

quote:

There is a lot of research going on into Backpacking at the moment.

What rubbish! This is exactly how academics have made themselves absurd.

When social scientists study frivolous shit like TV sitcoms, rap music, game shows and back packer culture, they do the intellectual world a profound disservice. Academia has been in decline since the early 80's. 'Books' like these are the sad reminder of this trend.

Where is Thorstein Veblen now that we need him?

Barukh you are hilarious!! A better term is hiphop, not rap, and I got an A on the paper which might grow into a thesis thankyouverymuch.

I guess popular culture doesnt belong in the hallowed walls of hegemony eh? Altho it is true that academia does tend to suck the life out of its living subjects....

subaculture, thanks for that link, good stuff!

Well, when it's research for marketing purposes, then it gets a thumbs up from the same group that might thumb their noses. Just an observation.

quote:

I guess popular culture doesnt belong in the hallowed walls of hegemony eh?

quote:

I got an A on the paper which might grow into a thesis

Yes, so did I, and so did every other hipper then thou grad student that I have ever met. Mine was on Turkish hip-hop in Germany.

No, popular culture actually does not belong in academia. People pay huge sums of money to do what? 'Deconstruct' Eric B and Rakim albums? Nonsense.

Knowledge of the classics, history, philiosophy and literature among graduates and undergraduates alike is at an all time low. Courses in basic Latin, Greek or classical literature are being trashed for this..fucking..foolish shit. Queer studies, African-American studies, womens studies, and worst insult of all, 'cultural studies' (which has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with a antiquated radical leftist political agenda)..

The study of pop culture in the humanities is complicit with the crass politicization of Wstern intellectual culture. All one needs to do to recieve a degree is write a series of badly written, half baked papers 'examining how race power and gender is conceptualized in today's capitalist society.' Throw in heavy jargon (say hegemony 40 times), reference Foucault, Derrida and Lacan and presto! You are an intellectual now.

LMAO

ooh we're so far off topic I'm not sure I can give you the response you deserve or even fully express my feelings on wanna-be hip grad students who dont know the first thing about hiphop using it as academic fodder. Ah well.

You're siding with the dead white guys, player. What do you think Homer was back in his day? Popular culture. Time is moving on....

quote:

What do you think Homer was back in his day? Popular culture.

Well, to begin with, Homer was not 'popular culture' (nor was he even popular.). Homer was a person. He wrote books in a time and world that was largely illiterate and agricultural. His work was not popular at the time; very few of the Greek aristocracy could access what he was doing. Popular culture needs a medium of mass communication to make it relevant and important. Ancient Greeks had no such thing.

This is what I am talking about. This vast ignorance regarding history and the humanities. You think Homer is 'pop culture' because you went to a modern American university and no one had the intellectual individualism to tell you otherwise.

Does Biz Markie or Aceyalone manifest any of the genius that Homer displayed in his life? Does an 'underground' LP equal the universiality of a Greek epic? Is 2$hort some kind of modern day Byron? No, not in a million years.

This kind of 'study' is popular in Western universities because it is so easy, so very self-referential. Everyone knows about hiphop (at least where I grew up they did). The academic community comes along and says, 'well, can you discuss the symbolism of The Ghetto Boys in terms of African-American masculinity? We'll pay you 10 grand and give you tenure..' Who wouldn't say no? It's a fucking hustle and 'public intellectuals' like Cornel West and Eric Dyson and laughing all the way to the bank.

What we often do is assign false greatness to trivial things. In this world there is no scale to things; graffiti in Venice beach is catapulted to being equal to a Caravaggio sculpture. It's childish, pseudo-intellectual bullshit.

This is because this stuff comes from 'the street' and is (falsely) believed to be done primarily by black people.

American academics, like the rest of white America, are fascinated and intrigued by black folk. Hiphop, since the early 90's has been little more than a grotesque minstrel show (watch Bamboozled, Ms. Academic) where titillated white people watch black people murder each other with reckless abandon. Hiphop is bought by intregued young white boys and girls in the suburbs to piss off mom and dad. Hiphop has lost its power, its relevance and importance.

It's fucking disgraceful.

Get the drift, cuz?