These people are probably the main users of AirBnB, the cheapest way to spend a night unless you go to a youth hostel of some kind or find a vacant park bench. Air fares seem to get even lower in real terms, so yes, if you live cheaply you can afford that sort of travel.
Spiritual vacuity? More of that in the USA, IMHO. As they say, travel broadens the mind. Others more cynically opine that it only confirms your prejudices. As one who wants to see the world, I applaud their initiative, but hope for their own sakes that they are not doing it by maxing out their credit cards or taking loans, or getting into debt generally.
My experience of backpacking was that you get to see more of a country, warts and all, if you are there at the lower levels short of actually being in prison.
And, when all is said and done, what should these people do otherwise? Buying a house is out of the question on their incomes. People of that age don’t care about saving for pensions, and saving on the whole is no longer worth it, as you lose the money to inflation and the banks are talking about negative interest on savings.
Why wouldn’t there have been? I’m not particularly keen on it. I don’t like being in unfamiliar situations by myself, especially when those situations are where I can’t speak or read the language. make that situation one with large crowds of people and it’s straight to panic attack for me. and with 7+ bn people on this planet, I can’t be the only one.
Well if people didn’t like to explore/travel just for the hell of it most of if not of the USA wouldn’t be the USA … and see Appalachia region to see how people who never went more than 40 miles in any direction end up …
I think the point was more that there have always been people who love to travel and explore. It’s nothing related to modern life. I’m sure there have always been people who don’t like to travel.
I have nothing to say to the OP’s apparent misogynist bitterness, but I am one of those who have both enough money and leisure to travel but have no interest in it. I just don’t enjoy it enough to offset all the headaches, anxieties, and unpleasantness that are also part of traveling. I like being home far more.
Also I believe that travel doesn’t improve the vast majority of people who like doing it nearly as much as they imagine. It is just entertainment, by and large. Edifying perhaps but in the end it is just entertainment, whether you are hobnobbing with Real Peasants or lolling on a cruise ship.
I think you read that statement opposite of what it was trying to say. I interpreted it as there’s always been a time when at least some people wanted to travel. At least, that’s how I’ve always understood that construction. Like “has there ever been a time when somebody didn’t want to overthrow their government?” means not that everyone always wants to overthrow the government, but rather that at any point in time, there is always somebody who has wanted to overthrow the government.
Business travel can be really varied. I worked with a guy who went to Paris four times before he had the cab driver drive him past the sights - he had an extra half hour before his plane. Otherwise, he saw his hotel and our offices. My husband has done a lot of international travel this year - and for the most part has seen his hotel, the place where he is speaking, and whatever he sees outside the window of the car. Usually his schedule is fly in, sleep, speak to several groups of people, fly to the next location grabbing dinner in the airport, sleep… But he’s also spent three weeks at a time in Taipei, which gives you time to go see the meat shaped stone. I got to see Sydney and London on his trips this year. He got two days in Sydney on his own, flown around Australia without seeing any of it, and a day and a half in London.
There are cities I’ve been to on business trips, but didn’t have a chance to see. I once flew into NYC - finding out I was going to catch a plane (this was before 9/11) at 9am, and being back home by 10pm that night. Cab from airport, hour long meeting, cab back to airport for next flight out.
I am not obessed with travel but I like to take an occasional long distance trip. I am more of a fan of short-distance tourism. Like taking a day trip to somewhere a couple of hours away to catch a show, check out a festival, or just walking around. I can understand wanting to travel to remote and exotic locations. But I don’t understand wanderlusters who don’t even bother exploring their own backyards before buying a plane ticket to go somewhere else.
I think social media has turned travel into a competitive sport for young people. I think there are some young people who jump on the traveling bandwagon because they think that traveling is what they are supposed to do at their age, whether they want to do it or not. However, there are a lot of constructive, positive things that young people are pressured into doing, like going to college, dating, or having hobbies. Plenty of people wind up doing things just because they are following the crowd and they end up being better people because of it. If they go bankrupt in the process, that is on them. Part of being grown is knowing how to push back against the pressure to overspend.
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On one hand, I kind of agree with you. People are great at rationalizing why they do what they do. This past weekend I did a day trip to Washington DC to check out the African American history museum. Afterwards, I rented an electric scooter to get to a dumpling shop in Georgetown four miles away. It wasn’t a fun ride at all, and there were several times I almost killed myself (it was the first time I had ridden a two-wheel scooter, electric or otherwise). And it wound up being an expensive journey. But to keep my spirits up, I told myself that it was a fun experience but I was just too hot and sweaty to fully appreciate it in the present. And sure enough, after I had a chance to eat and relax, I had convinced myself that I had had the best time ever.
I am aware that I have deluded myself to certain extent, but I do think I did get something valuable from the experience. For one thing, I have an interesting story to tell about how I practically killed myself riding around on a Lime scooter in one of the busiest cities of the US. So I can whip this story out the next time a “small talk” conversation gives me an opening. For another thing, the trip gave me a memory of me doing something crazy and badass. Whenever I doubt my own strength and courage, I can bring up the image of clumsy-ass me riding down Wisconsin Ave on a scooter in search of dumplings.
I used to be someone who used to struggle with both small talk and self-esteem. I don’t think it is just a coincidence that I got better in these areas once I started traveling more.
Travel is possibly less self destructive than who can post the most Instagram photos of themselves drinking fancy martinis.
Social media has turned a lot of life into a competitive sport - and not just for young people. Dinner out, clothing, makeup, concerts, sporting events, friendships, child rearing, travel. I HATE concerts and seeing how much fun my friends are having at concerts makes me think maybe I want to go (then I remember I HATE concerts.) However, for some people social media POSTING is competitive, for others it is sharing. You get to determine if their perceived motivations are really theirs, or if you are projecting your own feelings on their motivation. And sometimes, their posts aren’t meant for you.
I have certain anxieties about travel, particularly air travel and crossing international borders, but if someone else handles arrangements (like my wife, for example), I always end up loving the experience.
Growing up, my parents would take us to India every three or four years to visit our relatives. As I child I had a very hard time adjusting, but international travel, seeing with my own eyes and other senses how diverse the human experience can be has been a major influence on what I think about people and the world.
Left to my own devices, I would be a bookish homebody, and without having had other people pull me into long-distance trips would have, I fear, left me with a mindset that I see too often in people like the OP.
I don’t know enough about the OP to judge es character, but people I know who are disdainful of travel or of people who want to travel often have very narrow mindsets and ways of thinking that when grouped together create social attitudes that are bad for individuals and for society as a whole.
Nah, it’s just another venue for those who have been competing with the Joneses since it was about who had the biggest cave. Age is irrelevant; social media is simply a place to find others of a similar mindset. There’s people who’d see a bank of sardines swimming in the ocean, mistake it for a peeing contest and decide to join.
Nah, I disagree. I think social media makes it a million times easier to be tempted by “the Joneses”, and because of this, there are many people (most them quite young) who are seduced into keeping up with them who otherwise wouldn’t give a flip.
Like, it used to be that only people with an active social life were especially vulnerable to keeping up with the Jones. You get invited to enough cocktail parties in big fancy houses and you just might feel the tug to throw your own cocktail parties and get your own big fancy house. But if you never got invited to cocktail parties back in the day, you weren’t likely to feel this pressure. You could be a “weirdo” without knowing you were one.
But social media makes it so that even loners-by-choice feel social pressure. In fact, social media fosters the notion that doing what “everyone else” is doing (whether that be traveling, dating, eating out, clubbing, or partying) isn’t just how you maintain friends, but it is also how you acquire them. Also, back in the day a person didn’t know when their friends were having fun without them. Ones friends and associates could go on exotic vacations without everyone and their mama knowing every single detail. Maybe it would be mentioned in a Christmas card, but probably not. But now that knowledge can be accessed in real time. That is a new dynamic–one the average human psyche can’t help but to respond in some kind of way.
If ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ only started with the rise of social media in this millennium, how do you explain all of the jokes about it in readily accessible media from the early to mid 20th century? Or the documented cases throughout history, going back at least to rich Romans trying to outdo each other with impressive architecture?
