Journal 6 - Van Williamson

Because we come up with ideas and generate knowledge when we are mobile, it only makes sense that we would want to share it as soon as possible. Writing and instant access to social networks allows us to always be in contact with others, so that we are never really “alone” anymore. To me, this makes writing almost feel like a tether of some sort. If we go out in the world looking for new experiences and trying to understand a world apart from our own, the act of writing and sharing ones experience without any delay keeps us in our old world. All the assumptions, subtly racist fears, and marketing campaigns stay with us no matter where are. One time I went to Thailand for a month over the summer, where I found myself avoiding social media even when the internet connection was decent. People from home would ask me ridiculous questions like “Can you drink the water there?” Their concept of a foreign place was so far gone and misinformed by the culture they live in that I didn’t even want to speak to them, because they wouldn’t get it.

I honestly think travel blogs and the like are cheap, almost dishonest. People try to write about their experience and what they learned, but most of the time it just feels like they’re trying to share the same view you could get over here. The inability to detach oneself from their original place of learning keeps us ignorant, because we thicken the delusional filter of American perception. We try to explain everything in our own terms, as if the people of Thailand or Haiti see the world as miserably and perspectiveless as us. This isn’t to say that writing stops us from thinking, but I think the connectivity we have available only strengthens the ignorance we try to get rid of when we travel. If we could put down our thoughts and let them sit a while, so that the whole experience can wash over us, we might figure something out about how other humans live and think. Instead, we lay down in a hostel bed and just hammer out what happened that day so everyone can see. See? See what I did today? I didn’t listen to anyone, but I looked around and saw cool stuff that gave me more American ideas.