Tourism–What Exactly Is The Point?

Tourism is big business, and Paris, Rome, and New York welcome millions of visitors each year.  The Eiffel Tower, the Tower of Pisa, and the Empire State Building are, despite their familiarity, perennial favorites.  Why, exactly?  The Eiffel Tower, other than an iconic image of Paris, is no more than a Victorian, early-Industrial Age construction, surprising and remarkable at the time, but only an architectural curiosity now.

The  leaning Tower of Pisa even less remarkable as a structure and insignificant as a historical moment with no particular iconic value is on most Italian tours.  The Empire State Building has historical interest as one of the important skyscrapers of the modern era, but it is of far less immediate significance and interest than the many contemporary glass towers surrounding it.



The Roman Coliseum does have an allure.  Place cannot be entirely minimized or disregarded; and there is something to be said for standing where gladiators, lions, and Christians  fought.  Yet most tourists give it  little more than a click on a checklist before the Uffizi and the Baths of Caracalla.

The Taj Mahal is grander than any visitor can imagine.   It is impressive and majestic, and the legendary story of Shah Jahan who built it in honor of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal  is romantic and appealing.  It evokes images of sumptuous Persian courts, courtesans, imperial power, high art and culture, and the serenity of a holy place.   Yet it too is a stop on the way before or after the Jaipur Palace of the Winds, Udaipur, Qutub Minar, or Khajuraho.



No expectation can prepare the visitor for the Grand Canyon. It is beyond imagination, on on unearthly scale, more powerful and spectacular in scope than anything natural or manmade.  For most, however, it too is a stop on the way.  A marker on a map.  A point of interest and American reference.

Why, then, do we configure our vacations around monuments, places of interest and historical significance?   Why do we not spend our valuable leave time on more intimate and modest expeditions.  Was a trip up the Eiffel Tower or the view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon worth more than a week on the Chesapeake or in the Shenandoahs?  What is the relative value of a random trip to San Francisco, New Orleans, or Vienna?  How relevant is the Golden Gate, the French Quarter, or the Opera House to our lives?

Travel, particularly solitary travel, has always been an almost spiritual journey.  Paul Theroux in his The Tao of Travel has reprinted the thoughts of many explorers who have found enlightenment or at least something profound in their voyages.

You go away for a long time and return a different person – you never come all the way back.

Travel is at its best a solitary enterprise: to see, to examine, to assess, you have to be all alone and unencumbered…..It is hard to see clearly or to think straight in the company of other people.  What is required is the lucidity of loneliness to capture that vision which, however banal, seems in your private mood to be special and worthy of interest.

Travel which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is in my opinion, just the opposite.  Nothing induces concentration or inspires memory like an alien landscape or foreign culture.  It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place.  Much more likely is an experience of intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage of your life….What makes the whole experience vivid and sometimes thrilling is the juxtaposition of the present and the past.

Travel and tourism are clearly two very different things; but expressions of the same enterprise.  Both the sophisticated traveler and the tour bus tourist sense the need for perspective, distance, and the other.   No matter how prosaic or planned, a trip outside of one’s familiarity, can enlighten if only to food, dress, and manners.

Vladimir Nabokov, a unique traveler and one who valued the inscription of events on memory and the importance of place and time said:

To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and the urge to go places: introversion, that is, interest directed within oneself toward one’s own inner live of vigorous thought and fancy; and extroversion, interest directed outward, toward the external world of people and tangible values

Theroux agrees, but adds:

Africa seemingly incomplete and so empty, is a place for travelers to create personal myths and indulge themselves in fantasies of atonement and redemption, melodramas of suffering, of strength – binding up wounds, feeding the hungry, looking after refugees, making long journeys in expensive Land Rovers, recreating stereotypes, even living out a whole cosmology of creation and destruction.  That’s why many travellers in Africa are determined to see it not as fifty-three countries but rather as a single, troubled, landscape

Those who can afford personalized, individualized travel to unfamiliar places in search of personal or philosophical perspective and insight can be intolerant and dismissive of those who travel without intent.  Class differentiated by education, upbringing, and a privileged worldview.

Some travel writers have noted that packaged tours are often the first step to more personalized travel.  A five-day, five-country European tour is simply an exploratory expedition, based on which the interested traveller can pick and choose places to consider in depth.

Yet it is more likely that the packaged tour traveller will simply sign up for ‘Turkey, Greece, and the Aegean’ or ‘The Land of the Incas’, ‘The Danube and Old Europe’.  Few people will follow in Theroux’s footsteps let alone those of Mungo Park, Paul du Chaillu, Wilfred Theisiger, Richard Burton, T.H. Lawrence, or Peter Mathiessen –explorer/adventurers/philosophers for whom travel was spiritual.

All such explorer/philosophers will at times wonder what they are doing and why they are where they are.

There are times when what is left behind is very hard to forget.  Sometimes it is the place that is not welcoming; perhaps the circumstance of leaving; but the sight of people going about their normal daily business often gives one the same nostalgia that Theroux mentions.  The longing to be back in the home routine.  Why am I so far away? they ask.

Travel holds the magical possibility of reinvention: that you might find a place you love, to begin a new life and never go home.

The desire to travel is function of age.  Most younger people see travel as an exciting adventure – new, unexplored places, the unexpected.  Welcome surprises, steps out of the ordinary.   Most older people have turned inward in an attempt to figure out what’s what before it is too late.  Death is the consummate journey, all the more frightening and compelling because of its unknowability.  Why on earth would one want to tour Ireland, Scotland, Italy, or Morocco facing that?

Those who have travelled unaccompanied and unencumbered; those who have had had chance encounters, close escapes, and unlikely romances have the least patience with tourism.  In their later years they have the least interest in ‘seeing’ things.  So many years of experience have enabled imagination in such a way that no unvisited place is unknown.  And a full life of adventure , risk, and romance, wants and needs no more.  The past is enough.

It is hard for us, then, to look dispassionately at tourism.  Travel is transformative and can be spiritual.  Peter Mathiessen’s The Snow Leopard was a book about Himalayan expedition, climbing the high mountains; but it was more about personal discovery.  Shelley while climbing Mt. Blanc had his own epiphany.

The wilderness has a mysterious tongue

Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,

So solemn, so serene, that man may be

But for such faith with nature reconciled;

Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal

Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood

By all, but which the wise, and great, and good

Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel…

Power dwells apart in its tranquility

Remote, serene, and inaccessible:

And this, the naked countenance of earth,

On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains

Teach the adverting mind...

 

How, given such possible transformation, can one be content to look at the Coliseum or the leaning Tower of Pisa? Or the Golden Gate, the Las Vegas strip, or Broadway? How can seasoned travelers not look dismissively at those who do?

Travel for the sake of travel is no more than an expensive diversion, a sidetrack from far more important intellectual and spiritual enterprises. Those who dismiss travel as inconvenient and unnecessary are relegated – old men set in their ways, timid and fearful, and so rooted in the past that they are unwilling to chance new encounters.

Wrong and ill-informed, say those who prefer reflection and intimacy.  Tourism is a complete waste of time.

Ageism Is A Good Idea–Make Way For The Young

No matter how much older American are convinced that their views are not only right but absolutely right, they are wrong.  All the stereotypes about elder calcified thinking, living in the past, nostalgia for ‘the good old days’, and reverence for just about anything that has come before are true.  We are antiquated in our thinking, supernumerary in a youthful world, and of marginal value to society.

Yes, we have the wisdom that comes from our long years.  Yet those valid insights about the ineluctability of human nature, the predictably cyclical nature of history, and the inevitability of war, violence, and family feuds usually come with a good dose of  intemperance.  It is not enough to see the world as it has always been; and satisfaction only comes with a mean spirit.  Those who do not feel the weight of history but deny it, believe instead in social progress, an end to conflict, and an eventual equitable world are ignorant according to the old. 

Wisdom becomes distorted.   The value of historical insights and reflections on long lives of endurance is lost in spite, resentment, and anger. 

Not everyone older succumbs to this nasty view of modern life; but it is hard to resist when society seems to be disassembling.   It is not easy for anyone raised in an era of traditional religion, patriotism, family, social homogeneity, and Jeffersonian ideals of individualism and community to feel comfortable in today’s culture .  Radical feminism, gay rights, black power,  pluralism, and defiance of traditional public and private institutions are not easy to take. As much as we try to understand, there seems something wrong when Biblical authority is challenged; when the principles of democracy are distorted by venal individualism; when identity is valued more than assimilation.

It is almost impossible to take in stride the progressive radicalism on college campuses, the conditionalities that erode the nature of personal responsibility, advancing secularism, or provocative displays of sexual pride.  Even those older Americans motivated by concerns for social justice and enlisted in progressive causes cannot look admiringly at the changes occurring at what seems to be a bewildering and unstoppable rate.

How can we, then, contribute productively in a workplace whose demographics are far from ours, where the zeitgeist is one of positivism and idealism, and where decisions are based on what could be rather than what has been?

It is true that the insights of the old have some value.  For example after 40 years working in the bush, a seasoned development economist can reasonably predict tribal behavior, the corrosive nature of persistent nepotism and its inevitable impact, the inevitability of individual enterprise and the equally inevitable struggle to suppress  it for political gain.  Yet he cannot as reasonably or easily envision innovative solutions.  The irony of his intelligence and historical insights is that they limit his creativity – i.e. understanding the new era, new belief systems, and the new approaches derived from both.

Which is why, for better or worse, old people need to get out of the way, cede power and influence to the young and wish them well.  The world changes, but the old do not.  While an elder employee has the advantage of historical knowledge if not insight, a younger worker with the same intelligence and talent for insight, and with a new version of  curiosity and will; and with a natural flexibility and energy that his older colleague has lost, has every right to take the reins.

The world of politics is no different.  Why should we be entrusting the country to septuagenarians?  They are sure to be as fossilized as the rest of us, unable to imagine the future because of the trappings of the past and obliged because of upbringing, education, and old-fashioned worldview to look at problems in old-fashioned, predictable, and necessarily inappropriate ways. 

There is a limit to intelligence.  No one denies that of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump who never would have risen to power and influence without natural intellectual ability, logical discipline, and intellectual rigor.   Yet pure brain power is not enough.  It is no accident that the greatest scientific and mathematical discoveries were made by young men.  

Niels Bohr, Planck, Newton, and Galileo would have been stuck in their ways like everyone else had they lived longer.  Einstein remained remarkably fertile until his death at 76, but he was as trapped in the thinking he did in his twenties and thirties as anyone, and he was not surprisingly unable to conclude a Unified Field Theory.



In some fields like literature and art, the best works are produced when artists have achieved a certain maturity; but artistic production is as much a progressive development of technique and application than pure, original insight.  The first works of Eugene O’Neill are immature grand guignol, but Long Day’s Journey Into Night and later plays relying on historical insight and a keen, long observation of human behavior are brilliant.


In those fields which require instant insight, innovative risk-taking, and an almost visionary look at future possibilities, discoveries are made by the young.  Once again it is no accident that Silicon Valley is run by young’uns.

It is also true that young politicians can be inept, ignorant, and unacceptable for high office.  Youth does not automatically confer genius.  Yet it is still surprising that two seventy-year olds are running for the American presidency. Why can’t our youthful nation produce any young, smart, determined, creative candidate?  Youth and intelligence would be enough; because smart young people are quick studies who can survey the landscape, absorb volumes of information, and come to reasonable and appropriate conclusions.

There is one last, compelling reason for the old to turn over the reins to the young – pessimism.  For most older people it is very hard to maintain enthusiasm, social commitment, and idealism after a certain age.  Anyone who has been paying attention has to conclude that individual enterprise is temporal, insignificant, and quickly forgotten.   At best the old are thinking of eternity and not how to improve the world they will never see.  Those lucky enough to have been born with congenital curiosity and intellectual energy never seem to wear out, and continue to learn; but in their heart of hearts they know that learning is a pastime, an exercise to fill the interstices of a shortening life.

Even the most energetic politician – and Trump and Hillary are more energetic than most – will have trouble keeping the black dog away.  No such concerns should bedevil a President.   It is better to put up with youthful blunders than to suffer under a regime of age-related ignorance at best, and depression at worst.

So, advice to my generation – Get out of the way! Everyone will be better off for it.  Our time is for reflection, family, and leisure.  Eventually even those of us with a Type A retirement – teaching, writing, classes, Kant, and political engagement – will eventually slow down and face the music.  “We all die alone”, said Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy’s short story of the same name; and sooner or later we need to come to grips with that unpleasant fact.

Race, Gender, Ethnicity–A Narrow and Self-Serving Deconstructionist Interpretation Of The Bible

The late Antonin Scalia proudly called himself ‘a strict constructionist’, dismissed calls for deconstruction of the Constitution according to principles of race, gender, and ethnicity, and insisted that with patience, erudition, and respect for the past one could indeed conclude the original meaning of the Founding Fathers.  One could interpret the Constitution in this way because it is a document based on principle rather than law.   The basic moral precepts enunciated in the document – the God-given rights of Man – were essential, fundamental, and unchangeable. 



When Jefferson wrote about ‘the pursuit of happiness’, he was not referring to the satisfaction of individual needs, but the fulfillment of personal ambition which was conceived within the framework of the community.  The pursuit of liberty was no less consequential.  Freedom in Jefferson’s mind was not just a statement of political independence from King George and his colonial oppressors.  It was more importantly a sanction to pursue one’s own God.  To Jefferson and his colleagues the soul was not just a religious construct but more importantly the essence of human nature.  Liberty mean unfettered pursuit of spiritual renewal and belief.



The Founding Fathers were sons of the Enlightenment, a movement which although based on rationality, intended logic to be used in the service of religion. One had an obligation to pursue the truth for only one reason – to know God. 

Jefferson’s reference to the pursuit of life was not intended to justify any action that protected, defended, promoted one’s own life; but a responsible life, one grounded in precepts of the Bible which dictated personal responsibility and right action.

There has recently been a movement to radically alter the Constitution. It reflects the values and perspectives of 18th century patrician, intellectual men, say progressives eager to make the document more relevant and more appropriate to the current era.  How could Jefferson and his colleagues have foreseen the pluralistic culture of today?  How could they have anticipated the issues of social and sexual identity that define America today?  Their idea of freedom, rooted in the philosophy of 18th century Europe and applied in the new American Republic in 1789 by necessity was Biblical and narrowly political in nature.  Radical progressives go so far as to say that ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ were no more than nostrums to please and cater to the elite landowning classes of Virginia.

Yet strict constructionists like Justice Scalia understood the philosophical nature of the document.  It was a statement of the philosophical and religious principles which are at the foundation of this and any liberal democracy.  Conditionality had no place in judicial interpretation.  It mattered not what determined an individual, only what his fundamental rights were.   Murder in the name of retribution would always be a wrong because God conferred life and no one had a right to take it away.  The freedom of religion was sacrosanct especially in a society in which many religions proliferated.  The issue was not to protect or promote one particular religion, but to consider the expression of faith, however made, inviolable.


The freedom of assembly was again based on the principle of religious and political expression; but it was never intended to be lawless, indeterminate, and self-centered.  The principle was to be respected at all costs; and advocacy of political or religious ideas should never intimidate.  Groups with an antagonistic, anti-communitarian, and anti- democratic agenda were not welcome.  The commonweal and the sanctity of the individual must be balanced.

Revisionist interpretations of the Bible are no different.  Progressives, feminists, and radical racialists want their say in the revocation of Biblical injunctions based on currency and at least a cautious diffidence about Biblical texts.  Once again, there is no way that Moses could have foreseen or predicted the complexity of the modern era.  ‘Thou shalt not steal’ cannot apply to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized for whom ‘stealing’ is both a legitimate statement of economic necessity and a political statement against the elitist ruling class.  ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ cannot apply to the millions of abused women who seek solace and comfort outside of a bad marriage.  Why should a sexually abused child honor his father and mother?

Yet these revisionists overlook the fact that the Bible, like the Constitution, is a book of principles.  The genius of Jesus Christ, his apostles, and the evangelist Paul, was not in their historical vision but in their appreciation of the revolutionary vision of the Messiah.  Love, salvation, redemption, divine justice, and grace were the principles of a new age, and had nothing to do with class distinction, the role of women, the inclusion of ethnic minorities, or gender identity.  These principles were overarching, absolute, and essential to the nature of Christianity.  They, as enunciated by Jesus, his apostles, and his disciples, were not meant to be guidelines, but absolute dicta.



The Old Testament as well has come under progressive scrutiny.  The injunctions against homosexuality are categorically rejected because they enunciated in a retrograde social era.   These injunctions, however, were not meant as unique condemnations, but as statements of principle.  The procreative family was natural, normative, and Biblically honored.  The elaborate genealogy of Kings was nothing less that a paean to procreation, lineage, and future history.   God created Adam and Eve, and presiding over the Fall, intended the human race to be fruitful and to multiply.  Genesis is very specific about the maleness of Adam and the femaleness of Eve. 

Gender ‘diversity’ is not the issue.  The principle of a heterosexual, procreative family is.  As long as the principle is not derogated, such diversity can exist.

Feminists have argued long and hard for a gender-neutral reading of the Bible.  Despite the fact that the Palestine of the 1st century was traditional and patriarchal and that the apostles, disciples, Roman Emperors and governors, Jewish Kings and prelates, landowners and theologians were necessarily all men, feminists continue to search for female relevance.  Who, they say, were the witnesses to the Resurrection?  Regardless of their socially inferior status, they were chosen by God to attest to the miracle of the Risen Christ. 


Yet women in their socially inferior and caregiving role, were not surprisingly at the tomb of Christ.   Who but the mother of Jesus, Mary, would be at the portal of the tomb, not to witness an expected Resurrection but to be near the body of her son?

Feminists turn to the Old Testament books of Judith, Esther, and Susannah for feminine legitimacy; but these books are minor in import and Biblical significance.   Women were simply subsidiary, subservient, and at best acolytes. 

The point is that the Old Testament was not about gender equality.  It was about principle.  Both men and women could bear witness to Judaic Law and to the divinity of Christ, and men were the most recognized.  This omission or relegation had nothing to do with discrimination; but with depiction of reality.

It is testimony to the corrosive nature of the race, gender, and ethnicity agenda that so many courses at theological seminaries are feminist/progressive in approach and substance.  Instructors hope to make the Bible relevant to their multi-racial and –ethnic students; but they dilute, diminish, and demean the essential messages of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.  They neglect principle in favor of application and relevance.  In other words, they miss the point.

It is hard to hold the academic line in the face of progressive demands.  A seminary instructor’s first words to her students were, “Look around you. What do you see? A sea of diverse races, ethnicities, and genders.”  Her subsequent words were to assure the class that there would be no old, encrusted, elitist, chauvinist interpretations of the Bible in her class.   “Bravo”, shouted the seminarians, pleased that the instructor was sensitive, inclusive-minded, and appreciative of the contribution of women of color.

Those few students who had hoped for a Scalia-like analysis of the original text to decipher essential meaning, and principles walked out. 

Both the Bible and the Constitution are texts of principle.  They were intended to supersede pedestrian concerns, to move beyond identity politics and narrow political interests. 

Only a ‘strict constructionist’ analysis and interpretation can  express the intention of the Founding Fathers and the apostles.  While temporal interpretation is expected, the current attempts to disassemble, disaggregate, and deconstruct texts recording principle can only lead to disappointment.

Texts, despite Deconstructionist and Postmodern claims, are not up for grabs.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the authors of the Old Testament were not simply chroniclers and journalists, but scribes to the truly revolutionary; and their words should be take as testimony to that revolution.