Slow Travel or the Illusion of Authenticity (page 3 of 3)

That’s exactly where the problems start for me, Joël, when "people try to convince us"!! I’ve had it for ages with "eat 5 fruits and vegetables a day," "smoking is baaaad," "walk 10,000 steps a day," "drink in moderation," and now "stop flying because climate change is your fault." Help!! Enough with the constant guilt-tripping!! It pisses me off so much that I do the exact opposite: I hate sports, I smoke, I booze, and I get the hell out of here as soon as I can (but thanks to this discussion, I’ll now say that to offset my carbon footprint, I slow travel once I’m there 😄). When the "decision-makers/guilt-trippers" of all stripes put trucks on rails and ban plastic production worldwide, they can lecture me—but definitely not before 😜

they will ban plastic production across the entire planet

For the rest of the planet, no idea, but in Tanzania, plastic bags are banned in travelers' luggage.

I didn’t know that before checking if I could bring cheese and cold cuts for picnics. (Still didn’t get a clear answer to that question, though...)

tobacco is baaaad

Before ending up in the hospital for three months because of tobacco before I was 40, I was just as carefree about it.

Since then, I honestly don’t miss it.

But since I haven’t faced the other consequences yet, I keep going...

That’s the whole problem. You have to be directly affected to react.

Still, is it really living if you never take risks?

(I thought it was 6,000 steps. That’s already hard enough to reach—except on vacation...)

Yes, in Kenya too, plastic bags are strictly banned, Agnès. But does that mean they don’t have a single factory left making plastic? I hope so!

And of course, if I get lung cancer tomorrow, I’ll tell myself, "Ah, if only I’d known!" But I’m definitely part of the hedonist club because I believe in destiny, not so much in a healthy lifestyle (I know so many people who lived perfectly healthy lives and still died from some nasty disease!).

But I think we’re getting off topic here 😅

Maybe we’re drifting apart, but I’ve noticed you’ve got quite a strong personality lately. In this thread, you’ve written a lot of things I see eye to eye with, and it seems like you’ve got your head screwed on right, as they say.

“Slow travel” is a concept that some tout as a philosophical revolution in travel. But on closer inspection, it’s nothing more than a marketing spin on an age-old practice.

The term is wrapped in an aura of intellectualism. It promises to reinvent the experience of travel by valuing slowness, contemplation, and cultural immersion.

The idea of “slow travel” claims to add depth to travel, but it often relies on clichés.

Beyond the interest of the debate, attempting to define or compartmentalize ways of being—isn’t that just tying useless knots with rhetoric, semantics, and psychology? Knots that will only tighten the threads of the human tangle even further... and dig trenches instead of building bridges.

Don’t we experience every shade of the palette when we’re somewhere else, far from our usual bearings? Don’t we approach the unknown first with superficiality, speed, and a kind of hunger (wonder?) before deepening, refining, and nuancing... before slowing down and taking our time?

Beyond the fun of playing with words 😛, why go to absurd lengths to submit to a label—or to label others, just to differentiate ourselves—by picking descriptors from a value scale that runs from “authentic” to “superficial”?

We travel the way we live. Some people show off, get lost in self-satisfaction, while others travel without watching themselves travel, without adopting an attitude or posture, without wondering what their status is or comparing themselves to others.

If words determined how we exist, then we’d need to invent a neologism to define exactly what we all are—alternately or simultaneously—whenever time and space open up and we decide to go see what’s out there.

But I think we're getting off topic here 😅

This section is a bit like a Christmas family dinner. It starts at point A and ends at point B, having taken all sorts of detours along the way... And like at a family meal, there are arguments, some leave the table, others make up.

(I don’t know any hygiene enthusiasts. I tend to avoid sectarian types!)

Hello,

Beyond the pleasure of crossing paths with... the words "Stick out your tongue," why go to absurd lengths to submit to a label, or try to label others—to better differentiate ourselves—by picking descriptors from a value scale that ranges from authentic to superficial?

Why spend time, in a life that’s scandalously short, reading a "sea of blogs"? Why not explore the production of the human spirit outside the vast online ramblings of the world we’ve ended up in?

That said, suddenly discovering that by hiking in the mountains, I wasn’t engaging in a physical and mental activity (which can be painful!) outdoors in stunning landscapes but was actually *slow traveling* gave me a good laugh.

As for choosing the train as often as available time and the political situation of the territories to cross allow, that has nothing to do with ecology, authenticity, or whatever else. It’s very prosaically linked to some difficulties with flying corned beef, and also to a mindset that prefers visual continuity and perceiving something of the intermediate changes rather than fragments (splash, I fall from the sky here and there).

Catherine

Why dedicate time, in a life so scandalously brief, to reading a "sea of blogs"? Why not explore the production of the human mind beyond the oceanic online rambling of the world we’ve ended up living in?

... Because curiosity. A small, light flame that gently pushes aside blinders and invites us to step off the main boulevards and take the side roads...

These new platforms for mental creations (yes, those too. It’s not just about The influencers-the-airbrushed-photos-the-selfies-the-ads-the-influencers-with-full-lips-and-curves...) are vast playgrounds where, like here, the worst rubs shoulders with the best.

Nervous snapshots in sounds and lights of the best and worst of the world as it is—sometimes heavy pills to swallow that make your teeth grind, sadden the soul, afflict the heart, delight the neurons, and focus on tiny initiatives that don’t interest the media but mark the future with little glowing pebbles, small flames of hope.

A sky dotted with ephemeral flashes streaking by in an unbroken thread. Dark or bright, trivial or profound, annoying, moving, surprising, instructive, or utterly pointless.

You don’t pin down shooting stars, and they don’t disrupt the world we’ve ended up living in... but forbidding their light—or observing them through a distorting prism—might risk letting insidious nostalgia too quickly wrap our lives in a cozy good-old-days hum that shields us from difficulty, discomfort, and what unsettles us, but also closes us off to wonder, delight, and awe.

Getting back to the original topic...

Why always criticize other people’s choices? Some people do slow travel and you don’t like it? So what? It doesn’t stop you from traveling the way you like, does it? It’s crazy this very French tendency to always feel attacked, to always think someone’s trying to impose something, to always criticize when people do things differently. It seriously wears me out.

Hello,

It’s crazy this very French-French tendency to always feel attacked, to always think someone’s trying to impose something, to always criticize when people do things differently. It seriously wears me out.

If I may, a few words on this topic this morning, though I don’t have time to expand on it right now. I think you’ve been living in Japan for a long time, and I suspect you’re not fully aware of some of the changes over the past ten years or so in France—and a bit in Europe too. Of course, many people feel their freedom to do what they love and want is under threat. The media today—and in France, the media *is* the state—no longer informs free and responsible citizens or appeals to their free will: it points out threats and feeds us commands: alerts of every color at the slightest breeze... Moralistic and puritanical injunctions not to smoke, not to drink, not to eat this or that, to bike, to get screened for this or that. Have you noticed in France the "prevention" messages after every ad? Have you seen how low-income drivers are being pushed out of cities? Have you observed the "clarifications" in the form of copy-pasted responses under every article or news piece that might—oh, the scandal—make people question the accepted narrative? Have you noticed the recurring emphasis on promoting "good practices" and "virtuous behaviors" in official speeches, corporate communication, and public messaging?

So when you write: "Doesn’t that stop you from traveling the way you like?"

Yes, of course, there’s an intention to impose a way of traveling, to ban others, in the name of goodness and virtue. And we shouldn’t overlook the influence strategies of radical ecology or its origins.

You’re right to point out that Japan has very strong normative pressure; that’s true. But it’s in the name of ethnicity and nation—it’s imposed because it’s fundamental to Japanese identity, it’s self-evident. In France, it’s very different.

Michel

Hello,

@kola, What transport! I don’t know if it’s a question of luck, method, or perseverance to dig out the gems, but I find the Web buried under endless repetition of the same tired phrases. These days, I much prefer practicing "slow reading" 😎, which offers mental landscapes that feel infinitely vaster and more varied to me.

@Michel, What struck me most during my trip to France for the "holidays" was receiving a "pas de souci" from every single person I spoke to. As for the pressure from environmentalists wielding "virtue" and its guilt-tripping power, it’s really just a continental cultural habit. How often were we bombarded with financial "virtue" and economic "good" at the start of the last decade? That environmentalists are now using this tool of influence isn’t surprising at all.

I don’t know anything about "slow travel." In Italy, "slow food" was created and promoted to preserve a way of life and cultural identity. That doesn’t seem transferable to travel, despite the lexical plagiarism.

Catherine

To get back to the original topic... Hi, Why always criticize other people’s choices? Some people do slow travel and you don’t like it? So what? It doesn’t stop you from traveling the way you like, does it?

Getting back to the original topic, that’s not what I read in the post author’s text. They’re not directly criticizing "slow travel"

Moralistic and puritanical injunctions: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat this or that, ride a bike, get tested for this or that.

And why?

Societies are becoming more litigious, and some people don’t hesitate to sue tobacco companies, winemakers, McDonald’s, their doctor—whatever—even though they themselves are the cause of their own problems.

All this information is just so no one can claim, "I didn’t know smoking two packs a day might leave me lugging around an oxygen tank for the rest of my life," "I didn’t know eating junk food morning and night could lead to quadruple bypass surgery," or "I didn’t know sipping a bottle of *Rubis des Treilles* every morning could end in cirrhosis."

The second reason is economic: fewer excesses, fewer healthcare costs...

After that, you’re free to do what you want. There’s absolutely no obligation to slather on sunscreen at the slightest ray of sun, drink only water, walk 6 miles a day at 3.7 mph, keep your home at 66°F, eat tofu with seeds, brush your teeth three times a day for two minutes each time, or split hairs.

Good evening,

After that, you're free to do what you want.

I’m not that optimistic. Things aren’t set in law yet—but many are thinking about it—but when you want to undertake something within the institution or company you’re part of, you’re made to understand that the project must be "sober," "virtuous." In France, the State acts as the religion that no longer exists, and one that’s increasingly being excluded from all public spaces. But I get what you’re saying: the ultimate degree of individualism, with nothing but an abstract universalism as a horizon, is asserting one’s own sensitivity at the expense of everyone else’s freedom.

Michel

If you're an employee, you've never been free to do what you want.

Otherwise, you have to be the boss...

As for individualism, I prefer it to the self-denial that comes with being enslaved to the group.

The Taliban's Afghanistan? No thanks.

If you're an employee, you've never been free to do what you wanted. Otherwise, you have to be the boss...

There are plenty of very intermediate statuses 🙂. Working for quality production, working for the success and achievement of the company, and working for the salvation of the world and the Greater Good aren’t quite the same thing.

As for individualism, I prefer it to the self-denial that comes with enslavement to the group.

Me too, assuming that enslavement to the group/nation/ethnicity can truly be called enslavement.

Michel

- and in France, the press is the State -

Michel, you're the salt of this forum. Apart from that exaggeration, I agree with the rest of your point—except for that last paragraph, which would delight many nationalists, leaning autocratic.

Good evening,

Many people don’t realize it, but in France, the press is heavily subsidized.

That last sentence ruffle your feathers? It’s not an expression of a wish, a political or societal choice, or a preference—it’s an anthropological observation: only an individual who is already established as such can see themselves as being subjugated. A Japanese person, a Korean, or a Russian, to take patrilineal anthropological examples, naturally sees themselves as part of the group and doesn’t view it as subjugation.

Michel