On “Travel”

bigsley
7 min readJul 9, 2023

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OOOOOK first of all, I just want to say in full transparency that I am super overwhelmed in general in life ~ I just completed a huge project at work, my parents were visiting this last week, and I just bought this large property with Z and two dear friends and have been trying to stabilize my housing. We also just adopted another elderly dog and we’re in the process of adopting a baby soooooo what I wrote was somewhat more on the “vent/rant” side of things and less on the “well-constructed-argument-in-service-of-a-larger-purpose” side of things.

I also want to acknowledge that the way I write tends to be on the universalizing / judgmental side, stylistically, but I hope to emphasize that this is a consequence of the way I was taught to write/express myself, not the way I actually feel.

I think that the recent stories I posted to instagram might have been interpreted along the lines of “travel is wrong.” I guess I set this up by starting off with “Travel is neo-colonialism.” No one wants to be a colonizer, so I think that it’s easy to read this and think: “ah crap, I travel, so maybe bizzie thinks I am a colonizer” or something.

So, I want to preface this all by saying that no matter what you personally do in life, I’m not judging you. As in, I’m not deeming you “good” or “bad.” If you punch someone in the face, I don’t think you’re a “bad” person. I might say that you’ve committed violence or caused harm. I might express my personal expectations for how you could address that harm. It might cause me emotional reactions like being mad at you. But, thoughts like “this person is bad” never cross my mind.

I’m writing this partly as an attempt to dispel any misconceptions about what I wrote and what it means so that hopefully the full message comes across. A bunch of people responded to my stories — thank you for that. I aspire to express myself in a way that contributes to the liberation of all beings, and feedback about the emotional effect that my words have is crucial to that.

What I wrote was not about “travel” in general

I meant my stories as a criticism of a very specific subset of travel which I could call “bourgeois tourism.” Think: people (especially white people) in their 20s/30s/40s flying around, burning carbon, disrupting communities, creating a void in their own communities, for “fun.” Of all the ways to “have fun” I think that hauling your meat sack to a distant locale is possibly one of the most violent and disruptive.

What I wrote was not meant as a criticism of lower-class folks going on family vacations, of people visiting their far-flung family members, of business travel, etc. These things might be worthy of criticism and analysis, but I’m not the one to criticize those things.

It might also appear from what I posted that I don’t travel or participate in tourism. But I do. Part of what I’m writing is my own personal process of grappling with the complexities of violence, power, and privilege which surround travel and tourism.

I’m a white, cis, able-bodied, and in tech. I’m not here to criticize people of color, trans people, disabled people, or people without means. If things that I write help folks in any of those groups meaningfully reflect on their own relationship to violence and structures of power then I’m glad, but that isn’t my intention.

What I wrote was not a criticism of people who have moved away from California

I’m really sorry if it came across that way — what I meant to communicate was that the land where you are needs you. I focused a bit on California, specifically, because this place is very beautiful and special and I have friends who travel all over the world who could just as easily travel all over California — and by doing so they could create meaningful relationships which would inter-play with their lives, while burning less carbon, and actually contributing to the place where they live.

I realize it can be really painful to read what I wrote if you moved away from California because you felt like you had to for financial reasons. I know that California is a really hard place to live, financially. What I posted was trying to be part of the solution to that problem (I think California has many societal problems, especially its upper socio-economic classes).

The comment that “the top 10% of income-earners do 90% of travel” was factually incorrect.

Someone poked me on this, which I appreciate. From my research it looks like the top 20% of income-earners are responsible for 50% of air travel. This is a more accurate statement.

I do want to say that my aim was specifically towards “excessing travel in pursuit of leisure/fun” in which case I’m pretty confident that my original assessment was correct, but I have no actual way of saying. It seems like the lower 50% of income earners travels through the air ~1–2 times/year on average, and my assumption is that that is a form of self-care and/or visiting family. Maybe I’m wrong.

From a completely anecdotal perspective, the people I personally know who have means are flying all over the got-dammm place where the people I know who have less means tend to stay around and go on trips only rarely and fairly selectively.

Criticizing the upper class is tricky

I think there is a class of social media posting which is “pro-travel.” E.g. pictures or videos of people visiting distant locales describing how great their experience is. This class of posting is “pro-travel” because when I think the effect it has largely is to compel other people to travel. When I see a picture of someone on a sandy beach, there’s a little ping in my brain which asks me to go visit a sandy beach to relax. Etc.

I posted what I did because I want us to have channels of meaningful public dissent when it comes to communal practices which are violent or harmful. I posted what I did because I want more “anti-travel” posts out there, and I don’t see them, so I inarticulately and crudely contributed one. I also believe there are a lot of topics around which there isn’t enough public, critical dialogue and that travel is just one of them.

The difficulty I face when criticizing behaviors of the upper class is that such criticisms inevitably come across as universal criticisms of behavior. They aren’t intended this way, but I can see how they’re read this way.

Another difficulty in cricitizing the upper class is that if you criticize the upper class from a “lower-class” position you’re “participating in politics of envy” whereas if you criticize it from an “upper-class” position you’re “being hypocritical.” Apparently there is no position from which it is possible to criticize the upper class (?)

It’s also really hard to articulate precise criticisms without universalizing at all. I said “travel is neo-colonialism” because I want to poke my rich friends and make them feel uncomfortable. I realize that this can make folks, especially folks who have been affected by colonialism, feel like “oh no, I’m participating in the bad thing.”

Non-indigenous Americans are the children of diaspora

Someone asked me a question: “should affluent people not migrate?” Thanks for this question — it’s a great one.

First of all, I’m not here trying to tell people what they should or shouldn’t do. I just want people to know what effects their actions are having. They should make decisions based on knowledge of the effects. My hope is that good souls which know that an action is violent won’t take that action, but that’s a topic for a whole other essay.

<<<[[[Perhaps a slightly better question is “how should the affluent be educated?” which is the central question of the Prajnaparamita Sutra and, to paraphrase, the answer is “they should realize the emptiness of phenomena.” (sorry, this is a bit of a digression)]]]>>>

That all being said, I believe that the fact of affluent Americans who migrate a lot is tragic. Other than indigenous folks, and European extractive capitalists who had the ability to return to Europe (many of whom still do), the US is largely a nation of children of diaspora. My ancestors came here fleeing various god-awful situations. Many people’s ancestors came here non-consensually — either as slaves or as migrant workers or under false pretenses. Our ancestors who came here often did the best they could when they got here to create a little stability.

I do think there’s something tragic about the children of people who struggled to come here and create stability uprooting for comfort, fun, etc. I don’t know how to fully articulate this in a way that is completely compassionate. The fact of its tragedy isn’t meant to convey a judgement.

It’s like, my ancestors worked really really hard to get to the point that I could go to college and get a good degree and a good job. And I took that degree and job and moved wayyyy tf away from my family. Why did I do that? It’s something very painful and something for me to investigate deeply. There’s a certain sense in which I felt like I “had to” — I was neuro-divergent and bisexual and somewhat gender-nonconforming in a rigid, conservative, anti-intellectual culture. So I had to leave. But perhaps I should have stayed?

I still think that staying put is radical, but we don’t all always need to do the most radical thing.

Part of the reason that I am sacrificing greatly for this project of purchasing and healing land is that I want nothing more than a connection to place. I think that connection to place is one of the greatest healers and I think that that connection is mutually healing. As we work to heal the land the land works to heal us.

I hope that I can play some part in helping people re-connect with the land, their ancestors, and mother earth. I hope that you find these words helpful or comforting. I hope that they do justice to all the teachers who have guided my path.

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bigsley
bigsley

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