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Incoming thread that no one asked for- you've been warned.
International travel is, perhaps, the most valuable investment we can make in ourselves. This may be especially true for Americans where, for much of the country, the trek to an international border is not an easy one.
International travel is, perhaps, the most valuable investment we can make in ourselves. This may be especially true for Americans where, for much of the country, the trek to an international border is not an easy one.
When we experience a foreign culture it forces us, sometimes with a subtlety bordering on the imperceptible, to question our own cultural norms that we can too easily assume are global truths.
There is a feeling of liberation that accompanies learning, firsthand, that another country and culture solves common problems in a way that differs from our own.
Like every valuable investment, international travel comes with risk.
Like every valuable investment, international travel comes with risk.
We are easily tempted into viewing world as a smorgasbord where we can pick the solutions we prefer and leave those we don’t, crafting our perfect world. It is only after closer inspection we learn often that these aren’t a la carte selections
but are component parts of complicated and complex systems that have shaped them from time immemorial. If we are lucky we also learn that different does not inherently mean better or worse.
The subjective nature of value allows us to easily conflate our preference for something with an the objective superiority of that thing. We start with our preference for something and then support our preference, prove it to be rational and true,
by providing select metrics and quotes from people we like that we can use to argue with people who dare to prefer something else. This is rarely as true as it is in preferences we discover through international travel.
When traveling we often find ourselves in one of two camps: defenders of the home or enamored expats. When in the first camp we find ourselves defending the preference for the known, often defensive in response to someone is expressing a preference for their known over our known.
Conversations include exchanges such as: “Your country has a disastrously interventionist foreign policy and spends so much on the military. How can you live there?”
“Only because the world looks to us to solve every problem, what do you expect?
“Only because the world looks to us to solve every problem, what do you expect?
Your country has the luxury of not spending on defense because they know my country will defend them.”
And,
“You put ranch dressing on everything. Gross.”
“Have you tried it? Your food here is so controlled. It’s good- that’s why people buy it.”
And,
“You put ranch dressing on everything. Gross.”
“Have you tried it? Your food here is so controlled. It’s good- that’s why people buy it.”
When in the second camp we prefer the new and different to the known. We find ourselves overlooking or writing off the flaws of our newly adored preference, usually when preaching the superiority to our friends back home. Conversations include exchanges such as:
“I read that they actually have a much higher violent assault rate double that of us.”
“sure, there were some rough parts of town, but it’s just bar fights and stuff. I never saw a single gun- and I’ll take that every time.”
And,
“sure, there were some rough parts of town, but it’s just bar fights and stuff. I never saw a single gun- and I’ll take that every time.”
And,
“Aren’t their toilets just holes in the ground?”
“Did you know squatting is actually much healthier for you? It’s the natural way. I wish we had their toilets as a standard here.”
“Did you know squatting is actually much healthier for you? It’s the natural way. I wish we had their toilets as a standard here.”
Of course these examples seem hyperbolic, but they are also verbatim quotes from real conversations. If we have travelled, we have all found ourselves in one of these camps. They are comfortable and you will always find fellow campers to reinforce your preference.
Preferences are natural an unavoidable and, in and of themselves, not bad. In my preferred world we would be free to move and live, unabated, in the place we most preferred. However, absent my utopia,
I would argue that the best we can do is work to realize that our preferences are simply a difference of opinion. We can prefer high taxation and a robust social safety net without believing the preference for another structure is inherently inferior and those who hold such
a preference are either ignorant or evil. We simply have a difference of opinion, and the liberation we experienced upon intitally discovering these differences is nothing compared to the liberation we can experience
when we realize that people are allowed to have opinions opposed to our own- without requiring our permission. Even if we believe we are “right” and our preference is “true”, even then, we can further unburden ourselves by understanding it is most often acceptable
for people to be wrong. Imagine those same conversations if we participated from this viewpoint- or rather, imagine the other conversations you would be having instead.
While I advocate we all embrace this “preference for distinguishing personal preference from objective superlatives” in all aspects of life, I believe its benefits are most obvious when partnered with international travel.
We can travel with the freedom to more deeply question our own preferences and gain a better understanding for the preferences of others, we are free to view them as different without sacrificing or compromising our own values.
