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This would have been interesting if he have LIVED in all 193 countries. Travelling through the countries, like he did, does not seem to add much value to one's
by yitchelle 14y ago
This would have been interesting if he have LIVED in all 193 countries. Travelling through the countries, like he did, does not seem to add much value to one's life other than some self-centric ego boost. I am not trying to dilute the effort and the resourced he put into this achievement, it is a significant effort, and expensive as well. However, I read the post and thought, meh.
I have lived in about 6 countries in my 40yrs and still felt that I have missed something worthwhile in those countries. The culture, landscape, food etc in the various countries are what I travel for. Not for a stamp in my passport.
- jdotjdot 14y agoThere is still something extremely valuable to be found in visiting all of these places. Indeed, the more time he spent in each place, the more he would learn--but there is a limited amount of time and the world is huge. You could equally argue that he should have visited and/or lived in every town, since every town has its own unique experience. By your standards, what does "living" somewhere even consist of? Staying there for a month? A year? 10 years? I've been places for a year and don't feel like I "live" there, and I don't see how arguing that he should have "lived" in 193 places is a valid criticism. Nor is asserting that he's only traveling for the stamp--he refers often to what he's learned about people and the human condition, and the stamp is simply a proxy for measuring his progress in this journey, since you really can't measure "how much have I learned while traveling?" until way after, as he says. While it's not strictly necessary to visit every single country, I think what he's down is incredibly valuable and that people should travel even more for better cultural understanding.
- yitchelle 14y agoThe one thing that this shows is that the world is indeed getting smaller. Travelling to all countries in a life time is something that is not possible, or extremely difficult to do without plenty of money and resources. Hopefully, within my kid's lifetime, the amount countries that he can travel to, quickly, is achievable. Imagine travelling to between Berlin and Singapore in a couple of hours.
- galactus 14y agoI think the point is that when trips are too short they are not really adding anything to your "cultural understanding". I see it like reading the wikipedia page for 193 different programming languages Vs. actually learning how to program in a few of them.
- sageikosa 14y agoI always feel that the Commodore 64 and Apple ][ pages fail to capture the actual essence of those machines.
- fyi80 14y ago> value to one's life other than some self-centric ego boost. You just discovered the key to happiness, my friend. Everyone gets to make up the rules to the game they play. The beauty of it is that, if I am happy because I am better than a loser like you, and you are happy because you are better than a loser like me, we both win. The only real losers are the fools (usually hyper-intelligente ones, on traditional IQ scales) over-analyzing and looking for deeper meaning where there is none.
- sageikosa 14y agoWell fair enough, but that doesn't mean anyone else has to consider the accomplishment "great". Perhaps my rules of achievement are how many supposedly "great achievements" I can deconstruct...
- vacri 14y agoYou're making it sound like he did nothing but visit airports and train stations.