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Of everything I learned and experienced in traveling one thing stands out above all the others: "self improvement is the primary good in your life" Traveling i

Of everything I learned and experienced in traveling one thing stands out above all the others: "self improvement is the primary good in your life" Traveling involves a lot of hedonism, and one day while traveling you suddenly realize you are on a hedonic treadmill. The first amazing meal you eat is life changing. The second one is about 50% as novel and good as that. Then you're comparing the next meal to 2 others, and the meal after that to 3 others... The cycle continues until you have consumed the earth and achieved emptiness. What remains is yourself. Once there is nothing left to consume to satisfy yourself you really have to ask whats next. The answer is building, and probably building yourself. The lessons I learned about myself were some of the most hard: - I understood escapism is not the answer - I got a realistic set of priorities for my life - I challenged and surprised myself socially - I learned what really matters and what doesn't More explicit examples of things I appreciate from having traveled: - Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling - Visiting Shenzhen made me afraid for America - I experienced Hong Kong before china destroyed it. - I watched history in real time (NK trump, HK, covid) - I saw a Chinese person shrink to 1/4 their size when a conversation got political - I see video of foreign countries and I see streets I have literally walked on - I experienced being a guest in multiple different cultures and was culture shocked to my core. - I saw the insides of homes and buildings in different cultures as well as the different ways things were constructed - I experienced the inhumanity that poverty causes - I experienced real life poverty and actual real happening today slavery - I have seen the costs of not having rule of law - I have seen pollution on the scale you cannot even imagine until you experience it - I experienced my own privilege in very visceral ways - I have experienced cultures without workers rights and its effects - I have experienced multiple civil protests in other countries - I have seen what its like to be in a functioning democracy - I have been in a country where the voting system makes sense - I have been around police officers that made me feel more safe instead of less safe - I have made multiple friends I still talk to - I almost fell in love - I visited a major holy site and saw religion being practiced in a way I never had before. - I have seen cultures in decline and cultures on the rise and how the people in them act and function - I experienced being in cities older than my country - I met people from parts of the world I wasn't aware of, with histories I'd never heard of - I saw foreign propaganda first hand - I found ways of life I liked better (and not) than what I grew up in - I saw both how good things can be and how bad things can be - I experienced pro-diversity cultures and anti-diversity cultures and their effects - I was exposed to multiple different non conventional ways of life - I have several outstanding invites and opportunities to visit people I have met who were also traveling. - I saved one person's life with some first aid - I learned several new skills

nexus2045 6y ago
Great comment, could you expand on "Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling"?
- hayst4ck 6y ago
  The thing that most needed explaining to a westerner is the great firewall of china and lack of freedom of speech. The argument that was made was foreign media dominance would result in 1 billion people being too unwieldy to effectively govern. Without it you have literal peasants with no education being directly exposed to potential (and probable) western manipulation. That manipulation could be political (overthrow the government) or economic (buy American goods) and the cost is direct exploitation of Chinese people and a failure of society to operate at scale. Words like century of humiliation, opium, forced open, and the like were used here too. Western exploitation and manipulation of China is not taught or explained in American schools, nor is it really taught that western powers came in and ransacked the country, to what extent they did, nor the mechanisms by which they (we) did it. The standout paradigm shift for me was the statement "we want to democratize, but we cannot because our public is uneducated, you cannot have democracy without education." After seeing Hong Kong, I decide that I don't really believe china wants to democratize and this was likely a lie the person I talked to believed themselves, but I believe in the second half of the statement. Growing up in America you never really analyze democracy or its properties, you just understand that it's good and the correct way of life as any good indoctrination will do. Live free or die. A pretty important property of democracy to consider is that it will function as well as the half of its most poorly educated people. It doesn't take much observation of how bad faith republicans are to see the consequences of a society dominated by its least educated people. There is a clear tradeoff between individual sacrifices of rights and the well being of society overall that I think can be argued for successfully here even if I disagree with it personally. Not being the dominant culture ups the stakes on loose controls. The overall idea of protectionism being necessary but unideal was compelling to me. The overall idea of hard limitations on how society can operate based on the properties of that society was compelling to me. There was a mental shift from right and wrong, to pros and cons and tradeoffs, which is much more healthy discussion to be having. Another key concept that was explained was the idea of planned vs actual corruption. It was explained that there is a planned acceptable level of corruption in China, and that this is mostly seen as lubrication, a guarantee, or a bounty to get stuff done. Unfortunately, rather than corruption growing linearly in a planned way, it was growing exponentially in an unplanned way and this was causing problems. The IP theft was somewhat of a "your country was built on it, too" thing. There was a bit of "you have so much, you should share." Somewhat similar with the "we were colonized, now we want to colonize" idea. I think there was a bit of "you wield power or it gets wielded against you." I don't agree at all, but returning abuse you've received onto the world is an unfortunately human thing to do. I would not utter the words Taiwan, Uighur, Tibet, or Falun Gong while in China, because that seems foolish, so I didn't get any kind of satisfying explanation for those, and there probably isn't one that would be acceptable or satisfying. I suspect at best the explanation would be "look what America did to native Americans," or other justification by precedent. China knows it benefits from outside experts and it has 1000 talents and other things to get Chinese people, especially, back in the country, but with english being nil, and a culture that is fairly anti-foreigner that is an uphill battle, so there was significant worry about the pace of innovation. There was a bit of reference to the term "locusts" (not by me) and the reputation Chinese tourists have. There was a fair amount of acknowledgement but also explanation of sudden wealth growth and historic lack of education resulting in low class behavior. Some of the more high profile IP theft cases (vials in bags) were explained by the idea that that behavior had been consistently happening and it was understood by all parties involved that it was happening, until one day feds showed up. I didn't buy that so much. There was also a fair amount of "we're nobodies, so we're not at risk" talk when it comes to speech, but I can't operate in a society like that because it's far too much exposure to vulnerability. I got a mild run down of some of the mechanics of corruption, good faith corruption, and bad faith corruption. I definitely started to get a lot of the understanding that dealing with the incredible amounts of poverty, dealing with large amounts of systemic corruption, dealing with entrenched power structures, and balancing that against hostile foreign super powers that would almost certainly exploit you was a pretty incredible task. As evil as I think china (the government) is for what it is doing, when you look at its struggles it paints a picture you have to respect, it gives a lot of empathy to the struggles of a Chinese well edcuated person, it makes you feel empathy for the average ignorant person. I think of all the takeaways I had it was just how significant fear was as a primary policy motivator. Generally, unethical behavior is understood to be a product of unchecked ambition and therefore comically evil, but the idea that most of the unethical behavior is motivated out of fear was fairly compelling.

nexus2045 6y ago

Great comment, could you expand on "Someone broke down to me why china is the way it is from an informed and educated position in a way I found mostly compelling"?

hayst4ck 6y ago
The thing that most needed explaining to a westerner is the great firewall of china and lack of freedom of speech. The argument that was made was foreign media dominance would result in 1 billion people being too unwieldy to effectively govern. Without it you have literal peasants with no education being directly exposed to potential (and probable) western manipulation. That manipulation could be political (overthrow the government) or economic (buy American goods) and the cost is direct exploitation of Chinese people and a failure of society to operate at scale. Words like century of humiliation, opium, forced open, and the like were used here too. Western exploitation and manipulation of China is not taught or explained in American schools, nor is it really taught that western powers came in and ransacked the country, to what extent they did, nor the mechanisms by which they (we) did it. The standout paradigm shift for me was the statement "we want to democratize, but we cannot because our public is uneducated, you cannot have democracy without education." After seeing Hong Kong, I decide that I don't really believe china wants to democratize and this was likely a lie the person I talked to believed themselves, but I believe in the second half of the statement. Growing up in America you never really analyze democracy or its properties, you just understand that it's good and the correct way of life as any good indoctrination will do. Live free or die. A pretty important property of democracy to consider is that it will function as well as the half of its most poorly educated people. It doesn't take much observation of how bad faith republicans are to see the consequences of a society dominated by its least educated people. There is a clear tradeoff between individual sacrifices of rights and the well being of society overall that I think can be argued for successfully here even if I disagree with it personally. Not being the dominant culture ups the stakes on loose controls. The overall idea of protectionism being necessary but unideal was compelling to me. The overall idea of hard limitations on how society can operate based on the properties of that society was compelling to me. There was a mental shift from right and wrong, to pros and cons and tradeoffs, which is much more healthy discussion to be having. Another key concept that was explained was the idea of planned vs actual corruption. It was explained that there is a planned acceptable level of corruption in China, and that this is mostly seen as lubrication, a guarantee, or a bounty to get stuff done. Unfortunately, rather than corruption growing linearly in a planned way, it was growing exponentially in an unplanned way and this was causing problems. The IP theft was somewhat of a "your country was built on it, too" thing. There was a bit of "you have so much, you should share." Somewhat similar with the "we were colonized, now we want to colonize" idea. I think there was a bit of "you wield power or it gets wielded against you." I don't agree at all, but returning abuse you've received onto the world is an unfortunately human thing to do. I would not utter the words Taiwan, Uighur, Tibet, or Falun Gong while in China, because that seems foolish, so I didn't get any kind of satisfying explanation for those, and there probably isn't one that would be acceptable or satisfying. I suspect at best the explanation would be "look what America did to native Americans," or other justification by precedent. China knows it benefits from outside experts and it has 1000 talents and other things to get Chinese people, especially, back in the country, but with english being nil, and a culture that is fairly anti-foreigner that is an uphill battle, so there was significant worry about the pace of innovation. There was a bit of reference to the term "locusts" (not by me) and the reputation Chinese tourists have. There was a fair amount of acknowledgement but also explanation of sudden wealth growth and historic lack of education resulting in low class behavior. Some of the more high profile IP theft cases (vials in bags) were explained by the idea that that behavior had been consistently happening and it was understood by all parties involved that it was happening, until one day feds showed up. I didn't buy that so much. There was also a fair amount of "we're nobodies, so we're not at risk" talk when it comes to speech, but I can't operate in a society like that because it's far too much exposure to vulnerability. I got a mild run down of some of the mechanics of corruption, good faith corruption, and bad faith corruption. I definitely started to get a lot of the understanding that dealing with the incredible amounts of poverty, dealing with large amounts of systemic corruption, dealing with entrenched power structures, and balancing that against hostile foreign super powers that would almost certainly exploit you was a pretty incredible task. As evil as I think china (the government) is for what it is doing, when you look at its struggles it paints a picture you have to respect, it gives a lot of empathy to the struggles of a Chinese well edcuated person, it makes you feel empathy for the average ignorant person. I think of all the takeaways I had it was just how significant fear was as a primary policy motivator. Generally, unethical behavior is understood to be a product of unchecked ambition and therefore comically evil, but the idea that most of the unethical behavior is motivated out of fear was fairly compelling.