3 ms·
Here is a darker, but better, version of this thesis, from a pre-instragram time: To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: ali
by adamgordonbell 4y ago
Here is a darker, but better, version of this thesis, from a pre-instragram time:
To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit.
It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you.
It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.
- im3w1l 4y agoThe notion of experiencing an unspoiled place is getting less and less realistic. But it's not the only possible goal. We could set others. Embracing a role of active participant rather than passive observer. Engaging in a mutually beneficial manner rather than trying to see without being seen.
- cafard 4y agoThe last overseas visit we made was to Naples and Rome. Rome has been sacked a number of times over two millenia, bombed by the USAAF, and has a variety of home-grown problems. Whatever we went to Rome to experience, it wasn't unspoiledness. And on the other hand, Rome is not at all a dead thing.