I'm a little baffled by this sentiment, surely people who have no interest in falcons can get the most out of exposure to it? It's completely new to them...how else are you supposed to find new things in the world if you only look at things you already know about? Unless you mean only people who do meticulous research should be allowed to experience things, like some sort of arcane mystery of a secret society.
It's like the idea - which I've also heard expressed - that people without a deep knowledge of classical music have no business seeing an orchestra. That's exactly who needs to see it the most! They just might love it.
Yeah, but how do you know you like duck tongue and deep fried intestine until you actually sit down and try them?
Probably most people in the West will not find duck tongue appealing (it has a hard piece of cartilage in the middle), or chicken feet, or intestine or stomach or whatever. Even if you are pretty sure that you'll find it disagreeable is it worth it to give it a shot, just in case?
I just want to chime in and say I agree with almost everything you're saying. (I say "almost" because I never agree with literally "everything" someone else says.)
I would say this really misses what it's like to be somewhere you don't know very well. You have absolutely no way of knowing what you'll find interesting in a given place. The 'common' things give you a jumping off point, and sometimes they turn out to be boring and sometimes they turn out to be fascinating and it's really hard to know beforehand. I tend to avoid the most common places because I have a pathological hatred of queueing but I don't think that's the right approach. Petra is the most popular attraction in Jordan and it's incredible. Mt. Fuji is beautiful. People go there for a reason. (Conversely, going to visit touristy caves in Vietnam was one of my worst experiences ever and I had to buy my friends drinks to apologise for suggesting it).
I think there's just a perception among some people that if a lot of people do something it must be bad. If you think you're better than most people, you better do something different, or you might be mistaken for one of the plebs! But traveling involves a lot of taking chances on things that you can't really judge beforehand, so sometimes it's boring yes but sometimes it's spectacular. You just don't know, and unless you're very experienced the 'things to do' are a perfectly good signpost.
"But if you go to the hospital just because that's what everyone does while in Abu Dhabi, and it ends up being just as boring as you thought it would be (because you find birds boring), you're not thinking things through enough."
Seems like you're the one who started lecturing?
Trying out new stuff even if you're skeptical is fine. I don't see why the fact that lots of people wanna do this would make travel off-putting.
I think you are saying, basically, “when traveling, rather than thinking about what they are interested in seeing and doing and building an itinerary based on that, some people seem to feel compelled to check off a list of externally compiled Must See Items. I think there are downsides to that.”
I think there are downsides too! I had an absolutely amazing trip to Paris in 2016. I really regret not seeing the inside of Notre Dame (the line was very long and the panhandlers were making me anxious), but I don’t regret not seeing the Eiffel Tower except at a distance. But I had an AMAZING TRIP overall! I plotted out a whole fantastic adventure including the grave sites of many literary figures and composers, a tour of famous bookstores, lots of walking and looking at buildings (Notre Dame) from the outside, and I think two full days at the Louvre. Also lots of sleeping in, eating croissants at no-name bakeries, etc.
Downside of not checking off a list was not seeing Notre Dame pre-fire.
But I got so much pleasure out of the hours I spent at Shakespeare and co instead after ducking out of the line, and touring the cemetery all alone for most of a day hunting for obscure graves.......
....there are upsides and downsides to both approaches and why anyone needs to judge anyone else’s approach I will never know.
I think it's pretty wild that you somehow made this about you, no one is telling you how to travel - though let me express how incredibly, incredibly, INCREDIBLY impressed I am that you've done lots, and lots, and LOTS of travel.
I am only making the point that the typical tourist stuff does have value to many people and if someone wants to try something new it's a good starting point. You can travel however you like, and if you never want to try anything that's fine. But a lot of people who travel DO want to try things, and unfamiliar things like a falcon hospital are a perfectly fine start. You're the one who's saying everyone else is travelling wrong because they don't stick to what's familiar.
I've always found it most rewarding to lean into whatever the country does best, be it birdwatching, castles, or music. I thoroughly enjoyed water puppetry in Vietnam despite having no general interest in puppets. I enjoyed a farm homestay in Anatolia despite not having a big interest in farming. Hell, hanging with some avid cavers in Kentucky was a complete blast. If you skip the Louvre or the Hagia Sofia because you're not an avid art or history fan, you're really shortchanging yourself a potentially powerful or at least fun experience.
Yes. I commented on the desire for exclusivity above. What Callard is really after is a feeling of being "special" or exceptional - somehow different from the herd.
I’ve had itineraries when traveling out of the country but have the most fun when I try to explore on my own, off the beaten path stuff (usually by renting a car - which is always fun if you don’t know a word of the language or what the traffic signs mean!)
Maybe this'll make the point a bit more clear: people who don't speak Russian have the most to gain from learning it, but if such a person tried to read The Brothers Karamazov in the original, they wouldn't get anything out of it.
I think that travel is a good thing if it leads you to challenge your assumptions. For example, I lived in Japan for a while and saw child pornography being sold openly at newsstands. It's not uncommon to see nudie mags in the waiting area of restaurants.
Of course tourism doesn't really have the same effect compared to just settling down and living somewhere for a few months.
Facebook is my window onto the larger culture and absolutely travel is seen as an achievement. Not by me but by seemingly everyone else. People post their pix as though they somehow did a thing to be admired, when they just did a thing they happened to have the time and money and desire to do. And others appear to be admiring them for it. As with much in the larger culture (for instance running marathons for charity), I feel like an absolute Martian that has to nod along and clap, or risk offending people. I didn't read the article, and I'm certain I would not be able to stomach her writing style (Facebook has also shown that I could probably not get through one page of a Cormac McCarthy novel), but I understand feeling alienated by Seemingly Everyone Else's view on travel. But I'm used to that feeling (See above re: Cormac McCarthy).
What Vlad said. I get this take down, but I also agreed with Callard on many points.
A scene from National Lampoon’s European Vacation often runs though my head when this topic comes up. Clark has a schedule, a tight schedule, of everything someone is supposed to see. They get to some fountain in Rome, clearly exhausted from dashing about the city to see the things. Clark lets them look for less than a minute and then tries to hustle everyone to the next supposed-to-see thing. Whining and humor ensue, the whining because they aren’t having fun, and the humor because the whole thing hits close to home for many family trips abroad.
Travel is an expensive and time-consuming hassle, which was true before Covid and geo-political changes made the world a little less accessible in the past few years. Going though the effort of travel is a waste if one is doing it because of some culturally declared thing we are supposed to like. Also, it encourages the idea that staying at home, cultivating your neighborhood and community is some provincial, anemic life—which is a pervasive cultural assumption. (For me, this is the travels mystique’s real offense.)
If you love travel, great. But I do think it is worth asking ourselves why we love it. And like anything else, if the answer tends to keeping up with the Joneses impulses, maybe a different hobby would suit.
"Stop living your life as a performance for other people. Nobody who matters gives a fuck." oh, but they do, just in a different way. It's about getting status points.
"The problem is that Callard, who over-intellectualizes everything and cannot escape the impossible standards for beauty and meaning she’s forced on herself, could never do anything merely because it’s cool. She demands we all serve some other, unchosen master."
In my experience, the Intellectual Class of humans do what they think is "cool" and then come up with some elaborate rationalization for doing it, because it's not enough just to like something, "something" has to be enlisted in a larger cause.
In the last few months a ton of Americans are traveling, so every popular travel destination is overcrowded with American tourists, to a degree that's unpleasant even if you don't normally find tourists objectionable. Like Disney World crowded.
I don't really trust this deflationary impulse but I wonder if that's the story about why the piece got written -- maybe Callard or other people at UChicago just got back from a disappointing vacation.
Perhaps my standards are too low, but honestly I'm just pleased that genuine weirdos like Callard are still out there in places of prominence in the world. I do also admire the fact that she seems to have gone through multiple cancellation cycles and mostly just continues to do her own thing unimpeded, as far as I can tell.
Boethius was totally a liar. There's no consolation in The Consolation of Philosophy, just thinly-disguised self-deception. (Readers of my earlier comment on Christianity and Platonism, note that The Consolation is purely Platonist, yet is often thought of as Christian.)
Hey, I think you found me: a retired and very tired old man living alone and loving it. As the bumper sticker says, Retired: Nothing To Do And All Day To Do It.
Am I nobody? I'm sure to most type A people that I am guilty as charged.
I don't feel any more worthy or worthless than ever, but it's hard to be objective about oneself, no? (In fairness to me, you won't get an objective opinion of me from my ex-wife either, because, look, I was drunk when I said and did most of those things.)
I think that was a throwaway line (see above) by Freddie. He's a fast thinker and writer of profuse, but very interesting scripts, probably of all sorts. He probably even has a book of unpublished poems and a screenplay or two, and, of course, a novel. If so, I bet they're complex, stuffed with data, description, events, no local color, and people, whom he consistently compares to himself, in short, a think-piece. Which is fair: Who would one know better and what do we know less of than another's thoughts? Even the gods are unaware of our musings till we choose to reveal them, sometimes for cash, sometimes for fame, sometimes for both, sometimes because we have nothing else to do, like me, here, looking for something, god knows what.
Doing nothing and being a nobody is how I often feel during travel, in a way that I did not feel when I was a child, and wasn't expected to be productive. Then I was dragged along on many trips (for which I am extremely grateful) and had to make my own fun and just absorb everything around me. Now I just feel like, oh, I guess I should find the good food place and figure out what to order and eat it, and hunt down the Thing To See, because here I am. It was SO MUCH BETTER when I was little.
Ugh. To be concise: Agnes, did you know that there were/are regimes that didn't allow people to travel? My parents grew up in one and to them, travel now is, in fact, a profound experience signifying freedom and agency. I'm trying hard not to be Internet-mean here ... but yeah, there are also people who can't travel because they're too poor or don't have legal documents or any number of things ... really this just illustrates the insufferable phenomenon of editors screwing over writers to get hate clicks. Writers beware. Your scandalously contrarian idea may not necessarily be great.
A follow-up to a digression which is important to me, and to other writers:
"Every word I have ever written has been for “the producer” because that’s the only way to create anything that has integrity or which can spark someone else’s interest, by writing for yourself. It’s the height of hubris to think that you can ever occupy a mental space so outside of yourself that you can write for others and satisfy the dictates of enthusiasm and sincerity at the same time."
I see the relationship between writer and reader very differently--as a literal relationship. This was more-possible in the days of oral storytelling, and is more-possible again in the days of fan-fiction and blogs.
Imagine saying instead,
"Everything I've ever done in my marriage has been "for myself", because that's the only way to do anything that has integrity or which can spark someone else’s interest, by doing it for yourself."
Some perhaps-lucky writers, like Stephen King or Tom Clancy, are on the same wavelength as a lot of readers, and can write for themselves and get a big readership. But the writers who are on the same wavelengths as their readers, can't easily put their readers on a new wavelength.
As a writer, I have a lot of ideas to write about, but I write about the ones that I think readers may find interesting. I sometimes dress them up for the public, when I'd rather just show the bare skeleton, like a Borges short story, and let the reader infer the skin. I find this kind of writing--not /for/ the writer or the reader, but writing to connect them--much more satisfying. It is to sex as writing for yourself is to masturbation.
So I wanted to know for myself what Agnes Collard was "on about" as the Brits say, and after a quick read, I think your interpretation is a little generous.
There is a group of people (one might even call it a class, as that's what it thinks it is) that can only find personal validation in invalidating others. Take the falcon hospital. Most people's thinking would be this simple: I'm in Abu Dhabi. The Arabs are famous for their falconry. I will probably never have a chance to get this close again to such a magnificent animal, and I definitely won't be in Abu Dhabi again. This is an experience I will carry with me for the rest of my life. My, wasn't that amazing! It's icing on the cake that I can tell others about it.
Now let's be clear, I personally will never go the Abu Dhabi. Even if I were interested, I lack the funds to travel extensively, so I have to pick and choose and form a bucket list. And if I do travel overseas, I won't be looking to "kill time." I'll be looking to fit everything in and regretting what I missed and didn't get to experience. So if I see someone who has those chances, who can be so cavalier and dismissive about the opportunity to see *falcons* in *Abu Dhabi* well, let's say the word "pissed" is appropriate. And if you can't understand how privileged and lucky you are to have that experience . . . these are the same people who will lecture all and sundry on the privilege of the level of melanin in their skin but never understand the privilege of their own position. It would be a joke if the trend, particularly in academia, were not so pervasive and corrosive.
Anyway, returning to my point, I see a darker meta-trend that comes out of academia, and it can be summed up as follows: those peasants can't possible get what we get out of these experiences, so taking them away won't be a problem. The peasants find traveling "fun" and confuse that with life-altering experiences. But you *need* a purpose to travel because, in this case, climate change I would guess goes unspoken. It's the John Kerry effect. The rest of us are supposed to give up our cars and our dogs and every other little thing that can be tied to "bad for the environment," but John Kerry can take a private jet to *climate conferences* because his mission and his presence are so much more important than anything you could possible have to travel for, even in your pathetic little Prius. And essays like this condition people toward that attitude.
Yep, this is pretty much my experience with the professional Managerial Class (or 'PMC' for short). It really is about putting others down to bring yourself up.
I am also tired of being lectured to, also by wokie PMC types, about my "privilege." I actually had to work to get where I am thank you very much. Being lectured to by a white person with more privilege that I can ever dream of having, about my "privilege" has gone from annoying to grating.
I hear you. I recently read something about the Race to Dinner women, the south asian woman in particular called herself "formerly white" because she grew up in the upper middle class, was in a sorority etc. Now her life's work is to tell people like me how much more privileged I am than her, even though she has no idea what its like to wonder how you are going to cobble together a couple bucks to get on the bus to take a one day nanny job to buy $10 worth of gas and $20 worth of groceries.
I lived that so I understand now how much more privileged my position is.
Also, note that she/the authors she’s quoting excluded travelling out of necessity/duty from the definition. So it’s fine for her to go places because of her fancy important job. But what about the poor schmuck who works as an accountant for XYZ Corp. in Peoria, who (let’s say) studied the Japanese language in college or as a hobby, and decides to fly to Tokyo for a couple weeks to check out some cool temples and landscapes and museums and try chatting with the locals in Japanese a little? It seems like the attitude toward him is “Haha, dumbass, that’s the BAD kind of travel, and you’re wasting your time and you’re going to die someday anyway!”
So apt. I would say she is straining to preserve her exclusivity and specialness. As modern life affords luxuries previously reserved for the elites to the "lower" classes, how does one differentiate oneself from the hoi polloi, the plebes, the "deplorables?" By crafting completely arbitrary values for "right" and "wrong" and applying these to everything. What a straitjacket to confine oneself in.
I don't think people of this ilk can stand thinking of themselves as normal, garden-variety human beings. Which is rather sad. Sucking the marrow out of life is NOT an intellectual exercise. It's a way of living/being that takes us far beyond ego. I would rather live richly, feel deeply, dance madly and laugh uproariously and not torture myself with arbitrary rights and wrongs, goods and bads. Just be. Just experience. Just enjoy what you encounter. Why can't we just be human and enjoy the journey? Because then, I suppose, we are not special. And therein lies the rub.
There's a word for this sort of attitude: Christianity. And an older word: Platonism. The obsession with transcendentals; the belief in and pursuit of perfection; the sophistic rationalization; the direction of one's life by turning words with positive or negative connotations into meaningless metaphysical superlatives to chase ("purpose", "meaning", "significance", "pure", "corrupt"); the disdain for "mere" bodily life; and especially the denial of temporality and of the finality of death. The main thing missing is the infantile demand for absolute certainty. (Also, relentless dichotomizing into good and bad; but all animals, including all humans, do that naturally.)
(I don't claim this describes Agnes Callard. I can't vouch for Freddie's objectivity. But the pattern he describes is the worm at the heart of the West, the cause of both its exceptionalism and its insanity.)
Agnes Callard does teach ancient philosophy, and she and her husband talk about Plato and Aristotle in the New Yorker profile. Wouldn't be surprised if she identified as a Platonist.
This in no way detracts from your piece but I’ll just mention she came on my podcast (it is a very small production) and I found her to be extremely good company before, during and after recording. An absolutely top human being at least from my experience - she was very generous with her time for this nobody appearing from nowhere!. She has been on a couple of times since and always really good fun to be around.
I'm a little baffled by this sentiment, surely people who have no interest in falcons can get the most out of exposure to it? It's completely new to them...how else are you supposed to find new things in the world if you only look at things you already know about? Unless you mean only people who do meticulous research should be allowed to experience things, like some sort of arcane mystery of a secret society.
It's like the idea - which I've also heard expressed - that people without a deep knowledge of classical music have no business seeing an orchestra. That's exactly who needs to see it the most! They just might love it.
Yeah, but how do you know you like duck tongue and deep fried intestine until you actually sit down and try them?
Probably most people in the West will not find duck tongue appealing (it has a hard piece of cartilage in the middle), or chicken feet, or intestine or stomach or whatever. Even if you are pretty sure that you'll find it disagreeable is it worth it to give it a shot, just in case?
I just want to chime in and say I agree with almost everything you're saying. (I say "almost" because I never agree with literally "everything" someone else says.)
Me too.
Seemingly pointless or impulsive exploration often leads to magical serendipity, inspiration, even revelation. As an artist, I am all for this!
I would say this really misses what it's like to be somewhere you don't know very well. You have absolutely no way of knowing what you'll find interesting in a given place. The 'common' things give you a jumping off point, and sometimes they turn out to be boring and sometimes they turn out to be fascinating and it's really hard to know beforehand. I tend to avoid the most common places because I have a pathological hatred of queueing but I don't think that's the right approach. Petra is the most popular attraction in Jordan and it's incredible. Mt. Fuji is beautiful. People go there for a reason. (Conversely, going to visit touristy caves in Vietnam was one of my worst experiences ever and I had to buy my friends drinks to apologise for suggesting it).
I think there's just a perception among some people that if a lot of people do something it must be bad. If you think you're better than most people, you better do something different, or you might be mistaken for one of the plebs! But traveling involves a lot of taking chances on things that you can't really judge beforehand, so sometimes it's boring yes but sometimes it's spectacular. You just don't know, and unless you're very experienced the 'things to do' are a perfectly good signpost.
"But if you go to the hospital just because that's what everyone does while in Abu Dhabi, and it ends up being just as boring as you thought it would be (because you find birds boring), you're not thinking things through enough."
Seems like you're the one who started lecturing?
Trying out new stuff even if you're skeptical is fine. I don't see why the fact that lots of people wanna do this would make travel off-putting.
fwiw you are making perfect sense to me!
I think you are saying, basically, “when traveling, rather than thinking about what they are interested in seeing and doing and building an itinerary based on that, some people seem to feel compelled to check off a list of externally compiled Must See Items. I think there are downsides to that.”
I think there are downsides too! I had an absolutely amazing trip to Paris in 2016. I really regret not seeing the inside of Notre Dame (the line was very long and the panhandlers were making me anxious), but I don’t regret not seeing the Eiffel Tower except at a distance. But I had an AMAZING TRIP overall! I plotted out a whole fantastic adventure including the grave sites of many literary figures and composers, a tour of famous bookstores, lots of walking and looking at buildings (Notre Dame) from the outside, and I think two full days at the Louvre. Also lots of sleeping in, eating croissants at no-name bakeries, etc.
Downside of not checking off a list was not seeing Notre Dame pre-fire.
But I got so much pleasure out of the hours I spent at Shakespeare and co instead after ducking out of the line, and touring the cemetery all alone for most of a day hunting for obscure graves.......
....there are upsides and downsides to both approaches and why anyone needs to judge anyone else’s approach I will never know.
I think it's pretty wild that you somehow made this about you, no one is telling you how to travel - though let me express how incredibly, incredibly, INCREDIBLY impressed I am that you've done lots, and lots, and LOTS of travel.
I am only making the point that the typical tourist stuff does have value to many people and if someone wants to try something new it's a good starting point. You can travel however you like, and if you never want to try anything that's fine. But a lot of people who travel DO want to try things, and unfamiliar things like a falcon hospital are a perfectly fine start. You're the one who's saying everyone else is travelling wrong because they don't stick to what's familiar.
I've always found it most rewarding to lean into whatever the country does best, be it birdwatching, castles, or music. I thoroughly enjoyed water puppetry in Vietnam despite having no general interest in puppets. I enjoyed a farm homestay in Anatolia despite not having a big interest in farming. Hell, hanging with some avid cavers in Kentucky was a complete blast. If you skip the Louvre or the Hagia Sofia because you're not an avid art or history fan, you're really shortchanging yourself a potentially powerful or at least fun experience.
Yes. I commented on the desire for exclusivity above. What Callard is really after is a feeling of being "special" or exceptional - somehow different from the herd.
I’ve had itineraries when traveling out of the country but have the most fun when I try to explore on my own, off the beaten path stuff (usually by renting a car - which is always fun if you don’t know a word of the language or what the traffic signs mean!)
Maybe this'll make the point a bit more clear: people who don't speak Russian have the most to gain from learning it, but if such a person tried to read The Brothers Karamazov in the original, they wouldn't get anything out of it.
I think that travel is a good thing if it leads you to challenge your assumptions. For example, I lived in Japan for a while and saw child pornography being sold openly at newsstands. It's not uncommon to see nudie mags in the waiting area of restaurants.
Of course tourism doesn't really have the same effect compared to just settling down and living somewhere for a few months.
Facebook is my window onto the larger culture and absolutely travel is seen as an achievement. Not by me but by seemingly everyone else. People post their pix as though they somehow did a thing to be admired, when they just did a thing they happened to have the time and money and desire to do. And others appear to be admiring them for it. As with much in the larger culture (for instance running marathons for charity), I feel like an absolute Martian that has to nod along and clap, or risk offending people. I didn't read the article, and I'm certain I would not be able to stomach her writing style (Facebook has also shown that I could probably not get through one page of a Cormac McCarthy novel), but I understand feeling alienated by Seemingly Everyone Else's view on travel. But I'm used to that feeling (See above re: Cormac McCarthy).
Travel is definitely a class signifier.
What Vlad said. I get this take down, but I also agreed with Callard on many points.
A scene from National Lampoon’s European Vacation often runs though my head when this topic comes up. Clark has a schedule, a tight schedule, of everything someone is supposed to see. They get to some fountain in Rome, clearly exhausted from dashing about the city to see the things. Clark lets them look for less than a minute and then tries to hustle everyone to the next supposed-to-see thing. Whining and humor ensue, the whining because they aren’t having fun, and the humor because the whole thing hits close to home for many family trips abroad.
Travel is an expensive and time-consuming hassle, which was true before Covid and geo-political changes made the world a little less accessible in the past few years. Going though the effort of travel is a waste if one is doing it because of some culturally declared thing we are supposed to like. Also, it encourages the idea that staying at home, cultivating your neighborhood and community is some provincial, anemic life—which is a pervasive cultural assumption. (For me, this is the travels mystique’s real offense.)
If you love travel, great. But I do think it is worth asking ourselves why we love it. And like anything else, if the answer tends to keeping up with the Joneses impulses, maybe a different hobby would suit.
"Stop living your life as a performance for other people. Nobody who matters gives a fuck." oh, but they do, just in a different way. It's about getting status points.
"The problem is that Callard, who over-intellectualizes everything and cannot escape the impossible standards for beauty and meaning she’s forced on herself, could never do anything merely because it’s cool. She demands we all serve some other, unchosen master."
In my experience, the Intellectual Class of humans do what they think is "cool" and then come up with some elaborate rationalization for doing it, because it's not enough just to like something, "something" has to be enlisted in a larger cause.
If she wasn’t named Agnes Callard, you’d have to name her - Agnes. Callard. Perfect.
In the last few months a ton of Americans are traveling, so every popular travel destination is overcrowded with American tourists, to a degree that's unpleasant even if you don't normally find tourists objectionable. Like Disney World crowded.
I don't really trust this deflationary impulse but I wonder if that's the story about why the piece got written -- maybe Callard or other people at UChicago just got back from a disappointing vacation.
Perhaps my standards are too low, but honestly I'm just pleased that genuine weirdos like Callard are still out there in places of prominence in the world. I do also admire the fact that she seems to have gone through multiple cancellation cycles and mostly just continues to do her own thing unimpeded, as far as I can tell.
Maybe I collect weirdos, but she seems pretty conventional to me.
She's weird, just not at all cool or edgy.
Pretty bold to call Boethius a liar in that last paragraph, Freddie.
Boethius was totally a liar. There's no consolation in The Consolation of Philosophy, just thinly-disguised self-deception. (Readers of my earlier comment on Christianity and Platonism, note that The Consolation is purely Platonist, yet is often thought of as Christian.)
You might consider this an argument against knowing who Boethius is.
Did it console Ignatius Reilly? I think it did not!
"someday you will do nothing and be nobody"
Hey, I think you found me: a retired and very tired old man living alone and loving it. As the bumper sticker says, Retired: Nothing To Do And All Day To Do It.
Am I nobody? I'm sure to most type A people that I am guilty as charged.
I don't feel any more worthy or worthless than ever, but it's hard to be objective about oneself, no? (In fairness to me, you won't get an objective opinion of me from my ex-wife either, because, look, I was drunk when I said and did most of those things.)
I think that was a throwaway line (see above) by Freddie. He's a fast thinker and writer of profuse, but very interesting scripts, probably of all sorts. He probably even has a book of unpublished poems and a screenplay or two, and, of course, a novel. If so, I bet they're complex, stuffed with data, description, events, no local color, and people, whom he consistently compares to himself, in short, a think-piece. Which is fair: Who would one know better and what do we know less of than another's thoughts? Even the gods are unaware of our musings till we choose to reveal them, sometimes for cash, sometimes for fame, sometimes for both, sometimes because we have nothing else to do, like me, here, looking for something, god knows what.
"Retired: Nothing To Do And All Day To Do It."
I'm using this one, now that I too am retired. Maybe a new T-shirt with it printed on the front.
Doing nothing and being a nobody is how I often feel during travel, in a way that I did not feel when I was a child, and wasn't expected to be productive. Then I was dragged along on many trips (for which I am extremely grateful) and had to make my own fun and just absorb everything around me. Now I just feel like, oh, I guess I should find the good food place and figure out what to order and eat it, and hunt down the Thing To See, because here I am. It was SO MUCH BETTER when I was little.
Ugh. To be concise: Agnes, did you know that there were/are regimes that didn't allow people to travel? My parents grew up in one and to them, travel now is, in fact, a profound experience signifying freedom and agency. I'm trying hard not to be Internet-mean here ... but yeah, there are also people who can't travel because they're too poor or don't have legal documents or any number of things ... really this just illustrates the insufferable phenomenon of editors screwing over writers to get hate clicks. Writers beware. Your scandalously contrarian idea may not necessarily be great.
Right, I never traveled until I was an adult because we were too poor. I don't care if you think the things I do are garish and tacky.
That's the spirit! 🌼
Years ago in Japan I saw child porn being sold out in the open. The local 7-11 carried giant glossy phone directories for local sex services.
Go someplace very different because it will blow your mind.
And possibly other parts of you as well!
If there's anything that I love more than child pornography it's prostitution. Or is that the other way around?
I was assuming the child pornography was for children.
So suggestively posed teddy bears?
It should only be made by children, for children.
Lots to think about in this essay. But it was also nice to get out of my head and enjoy the pure pleasure of reading it. Great stuff.
It's fine writing, and explains complex ideas in simple and entertaining language.
A follow-up to a digression which is important to me, and to other writers:
"Every word I have ever written has been for “the producer” because that’s the only way to create anything that has integrity or which can spark someone else’s interest, by writing for yourself. It’s the height of hubris to think that you can ever occupy a mental space so outside of yourself that you can write for others and satisfy the dictates of enthusiasm and sincerity at the same time."
I see the relationship between writer and reader very differently--as a literal relationship. This was more-possible in the days of oral storytelling, and is more-possible again in the days of fan-fiction and blogs.
Imagine saying instead,
"Everything I've ever done in my marriage has been "for myself", because that's the only way to do anything that has integrity or which can spark someone else’s interest, by doing it for yourself."
Some perhaps-lucky writers, like Stephen King or Tom Clancy, are on the same wavelength as a lot of readers, and can write for themselves and get a big readership. But the writers who are on the same wavelengths as their readers, can't easily put their readers on a new wavelength.
As a writer, I have a lot of ideas to write about, but I write about the ones that I think readers may find interesting. I sometimes dress them up for the public, when I'd rather just show the bare skeleton, like a Borges short story, and let the reader infer the skin. I find this kind of writing--not /for/ the writer or the reader, but writing to connect them--much more satisfying. It is to sex as writing for yourself is to masturbation.
So I wanted to know for myself what Agnes Collard was "on about" as the Brits say, and after a quick read, I think your interpretation is a little generous.
There is a group of people (one might even call it a class, as that's what it thinks it is) that can only find personal validation in invalidating others. Take the falcon hospital. Most people's thinking would be this simple: I'm in Abu Dhabi. The Arabs are famous for their falconry. I will probably never have a chance to get this close again to such a magnificent animal, and I definitely won't be in Abu Dhabi again. This is an experience I will carry with me for the rest of my life. My, wasn't that amazing! It's icing on the cake that I can tell others about it.
Now let's be clear, I personally will never go the Abu Dhabi. Even if I were interested, I lack the funds to travel extensively, so I have to pick and choose and form a bucket list. And if I do travel overseas, I won't be looking to "kill time." I'll be looking to fit everything in and regretting what I missed and didn't get to experience. So if I see someone who has those chances, who can be so cavalier and dismissive about the opportunity to see *falcons* in *Abu Dhabi* well, let's say the word "pissed" is appropriate. And if you can't understand how privileged and lucky you are to have that experience . . . these are the same people who will lecture all and sundry on the privilege of the level of melanin in their skin but never understand the privilege of their own position. It would be a joke if the trend, particularly in academia, were not so pervasive and corrosive.
Anyway, returning to my point, I see a darker meta-trend that comes out of academia, and it can be summed up as follows: those peasants can't possible get what we get out of these experiences, so taking them away won't be a problem. The peasants find traveling "fun" and confuse that with life-altering experiences. But you *need* a purpose to travel because, in this case, climate change I would guess goes unspoken. It's the John Kerry effect. The rest of us are supposed to give up our cars and our dogs and every other little thing that can be tied to "bad for the environment," but John Kerry can take a private jet to *climate conferences* because his mission and his presence are so much more important than anything you could possible have to travel for, even in your pathetic little Prius. And essays like this condition people toward that attitude.
Yep, this is pretty much my experience with the professional Managerial Class (or 'PMC' for short). It really is about putting others down to bring yourself up.
I am also tired of being lectured to, also by wokie PMC types, about my "privilege." I actually had to work to get where I am thank you very much. Being lectured to by a white person with more privilege that I can ever dream of having, about my "privilege" has gone from annoying to grating.
I hear you. I recently read something about the Race to Dinner women, the south asian woman in particular called herself "formerly white" because she grew up in the upper middle class, was in a sorority etc. Now her life's work is to tell people like me how much more privileged I am than her, even though she has no idea what its like to wonder how you are going to cobble together a couple bucks to get on the bus to take a one day nanny job to buy $10 worth of gas and $20 worth of groceries.
I lived that so I understand now how much more privileged my position is.
Also, note that she/the authors she’s quoting excluded travelling out of necessity/duty from the definition. So it’s fine for her to go places because of her fancy important job. But what about the poor schmuck who works as an accountant for XYZ Corp. in Peoria, who (let’s say) studied the Japanese language in college or as a hobby, and decides to fly to Tokyo for a couple weeks to check out some cool temples and landscapes and museums and try chatting with the locals in Japanese a little? It seems like the attitude toward him is “Haha, dumbass, that’s the BAD kind of travel, and you’re wasting your time and you’re going to die someday anyway!”
Exactly!
Also, so much of the "necessary" work-related travel is completely contrived. I'm an academic and just had a conference at a beach resort.
So apt. I would say she is straining to preserve her exclusivity and specialness. As modern life affords luxuries previously reserved for the elites to the "lower" classes, how does one differentiate oneself from the hoi polloi, the plebes, the "deplorables?" By crafting completely arbitrary values for "right" and "wrong" and applying these to everything. What a straitjacket to confine oneself in.
I don't think people of this ilk can stand thinking of themselves as normal, garden-variety human beings. Which is rather sad. Sucking the marrow out of life is NOT an intellectual exercise. It's a way of living/being that takes us far beyond ego. I would rather live richly, feel deeply, dance madly and laugh uproariously and not torture myself with arbitrary rights and wrongs, goods and bads. Just be. Just experience. Just enjoy what you encounter. Why can't we just be human and enjoy the journey? Because then, I suppose, we are not special. And therein lies the rub.
There's a word for this sort of attitude: Christianity. And an older word: Platonism. The obsession with transcendentals; the belief in and pursuit of perfection; the sophistic rationalization; the direction of one's life by turning words with positive or negative connotations into meaningless metaphysical superlatives to chase ("purpose", "meaning", "significance", "pure", "corrupt"); the disdain for "mere" bodily life; and especially the denial of temporality and of the finality of death. The main thing missing is the infantile demand for absolute certainty. (Also, relentless dichotomizing into good and bad; but all animals, including all humans, do that naturally.)
(I don't claim this describes Agnes Callard. I can't vouch for Freddie's objectivity. But the pattern he describes is the worm at the heart of the West, the cause of both its exceptionalism and its insanity.)
Agnes Callard does teach ancient philosophy, and she and her husband talk about Plato and Aristotle in the New Yorker profile. Wouldn't be surprised if she identified as a Platonist.
This in no way detracts from your piece but I’ll just mention she came on my podcast (it is a very small production) and I found her to be extremely good company before, during and after recording. An absolutely top human being at least from my experience - she was very generous with her time for this nobody appearing from nowhere!. She has been on a couple of times since and always really good fun to be around.
Signed
A fan!
Aversion to experience is universal too.