Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Nicos Hadjicostis, Destination Earth * 1/2

I was looking forward to this "New Philosophy of Travel by a World-Traveler," anticipating that it would alter my thinking about travel and enhance my future traveling experiences. The Foreword by Hadjicostis' traveling partner offered promise when it correctly noted that "errand days gave us a unique view into everyday life and ended up being just as fascinating as our exploration days." Not a new insight for me, but the kind of suggestion I was looking for.

Alas, the book was filled with proclamations that the author believes to be profound but which are trite, condescending, and entitled.

Hadjicostis takes a basically Buddhist approach to his subject, presenting travel (at least "four-dimensional travel") as transformative, allowing the traveler to live in the moment, connect with his fellow humans, and "capture the soul" of a country.

Wait, what's that last one? Sounds kinda colonial. for a free spirit like our traveler. His examples of soul capturing are cringe-worthy: he embodies the spirit of the Vietcong by arguing with his cab driver, gets in touch with his inner cannibal by properly eating the head of a roasted pig in the Solomon Islands, and climbs aboard an Indonesian truck to help students with the call to prayer and "have a unique interaction with Muslim youth!" He frequently defaults to the notion of the noble savage, for example explaining how cultures that eat with their hands are less mediated than ours.

Most of the time he extols the virtues of the whole world and its people, but then he says something like this:
Definitely not all regions of a country or the Earth are worth visiting. Athens is a sprawling metropolis of four million people, but its important attractions, architectural beauty, historical monuments, and cultural life are all concentrated in the four square kilometers around the Acropolis.
What happened to the spirit of the place? Now who is promoting "one-dimensional travel"? 

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