The Merits of Travel

Like an indefatigable leviathan, the issue of travel keeps coming up in conversations at the moment. Everyone I talk to is vehement that we must be doing it, like some blinkered religion no one stops to question. But the relevance of it, I can't get over the question of whether there is any or not.

We're taught in Britain that it's our birthright. To be able to move freely through the world, to seek employment, adventure, or relaxation, all just as equally essential. We are all middle class now and the world is our playground. We have overcome our capitalist oppressors, *chortle*, and we can now enjoy such luxuries as the experiences that only other countries can offer. Just like the rich once had exclusive access to. Our health, wealth, and life expectancy in comparison with our ancestors and the current slaving masses in the "developing" world, are testament to this.

But does anyone stop to question its relevance? Sure, we can argue that the experience one gains from travelling the world gives us perspective, which helps us make better decisions, enriches us as individuals and in turn our families and communities. That is hard to dismiss.

But to what degree must we travel in order to gain perspective? Must we see every golden cupola the world has to offer? Witness every "primitive" tribe in all the darkest deepest rainforests? Must we all drink from fish bowls of hallucinogenic drugs with bronzed Swedes on Thai beaches? Eat Argentinean steaks on the Pampas they came from?

Surely the benefit of literature is that we do not have to experience these things first hand. That we can be enlightened via proxy. This must be good enough for most of our experiences, our thinking, and the concoction of our world view.

Perhaps it is the same kind of misguided individualism that inspires half the world to be indelibly inked with "unique" tattoos. Is it the effect of the awareness of feeling so insignificant in the world that we must strike out in some way, to be appear original, at all costs? I'm sure these confused ramblings are something along those lines too.

I don't like to bring the environment into this, as horrific an effect our cumulative attempts at individuality are, these quests for a questionably richer fabric of personal history. But surely the same question would, and should arise. If there were no environmental degradation from millions of people taking pointless journeys, surely we must still question the point of those journeys.

Of course, many of them are not pointless. There is little we can do when the globalised world encourages us to fall in love with people from far flung reaches, or retire to overseas "paradises". All of which require us to travel to keep alive those essential connections with our loved ones. I would not begrudge anyone who feels that need, I have felt it myself, of course. The perpetuation of those close relationships is essential, possibly one of the very few rational reasons for journey.

But for all others, I can't get it. Surely our efforts should be devoted to our immediate surroundings. To enrich them, to make them beautiful and pleasant places that we would want to live, relax, love, and retire in, not an infinite squalor we continually want to escape from. Then we would have no need for the greener grass over yonder.

As the late poet Glyn Hughes said in a recent interview for the Dark Mountain II anthology, "We are sold aspiration...Earn enough money to get on a plane and fly somewhere else to lie on a beach. Why? You don't need it. Go round the corner and lie in a field instead."