Take a train of thought travelling
Travel broadens the mind. This is such generally accepted wisdom that it borders on fact. Ask your grandmother or Instagram captionists about the benefits of travel. Hell, even Mark Twain waxed lyrical about how seeing the world was fatal to one’s various -isms. To an extent, they are all correct. Seeing different people in different parts of the world living different lives is all types of eye-opening — or, at the very least, it stirs something in the soul.
The question is, what exactly does it stir up? Is travel really the balm that treats one’s existential ills? I think not.
A few thousand years ago, a roving band of brigands decided to found a city in what is now Italy. Having done some unspeakable things to the neighbouring population of lady-folk, they chose to settle in their newly christened city-state of Rome. After some time, the travel bug bit them and they went exploring.
It turned out that the neighbours had some pretty cool stuff that would have been far too inconvenient to buy, so the Romans did what brigands do best and just took it. Over the years they got very good at taking things. So good, in fact, that they developed airs and graces about it and forgot that many of the things they had incorporated as part of their culture originated elsewhere.
As with everything, not all of the brigands were bad. Some did very lovely things — but others killed Jesus and oversaw genocides.
Fast-forward a couple of years to the island nation that would grow into the United Kingdom. Fed all the way up with their crappy weather and worse food, the British decided to do some travelling. Helen Zille will tell you their travels brought civilisation and enlightenment to much of the world. The people from the parts of the globe that Britain “civilised” view it a little differently.
Then again, you have people like Mother Teresa, whose travels brought the plight of the poor into such sharp focus that she dedicated the rest of her life to helping the most downtrodden. The foreign adventures of Jesus’ apostles inspired the most popular biography of all time and Elizabeth Gilbert’s jaunts gave us Eat, Pray, Love.
The point is that travel doesn’t broaden the mind so much as it reveals our deeper natures.
If you walk around the fancier parts of Cape Town, or Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, you will bump into well-travelled people who will tell you how much “better” places like Australia and the UK are. Never mind that London is one of the most expensive cities to live in and sees the sun less often than a prisoner serving a life sentence in maximum security.
Meanwhile, Australia is home to snakes that fly and all the AWB members who could afford to flee SA. Probe a little more and you will find a strong correlation between how these people view a “better” country and the prevalence (or lack thereof) of melanin in the general population.
In short, people are how they are and travelling doesn’t change that. We filter things through our own lenses and those are designed to block out information that fundamentally challenges our world view.
Send a racist travelling and all they will see is proof that their group is better. Take a communist on a world tour and all they will see is evidence of the failures of capitalism. Once your ideas have congealed in your head, very little can shake them loose.
So maybe the idea here is for folks to travel when they are young. It is easier said than done, but seeing the world, not just the nice palatable parts but the grittier bits too, while you are still formulating opinions on it seems a much better way to ensure that we don’t just end up exporting the Vierkleur to New Zealand.
WE FILTER THINGS THROUGH OUR OWN LENSES