Why I am against tourism

Traveling vs. Tourism

Tourism is one of those words often easily overlooked. Many of us want to travel the world, but end up touring it instead. The idea of enriching your life, your experience, through travel is, for the majority, a lame excuse to seek the novel in life. It is easier for those in the 1^st world to travel and feel like we have pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones, than it is to push ourselves out of our comfort zones at home. It is a luxury of first-world existence.

While I admit that it is worth getting to know other cultures than your own, much of the time it is not worth the harm of travel. Tourism, besides being environmentally taxing, can at best, render local economies reliant on and subject to the whims of the market demand, and at worst, destroy preexisting local economies.

Obviously there is a balance to be had. I think we are overreaching that balance. I believe there are alternatives to the culturally dictated methods of cultural enrichment. Different cultures can be found in our own backyard. Get to know the poor, the oppressed in your own city and state. Get to know the people who live differently from you. Make friends with someone rich. Visit someone dying. Mentor someone. Our own nation is such a diverse place, replete with diverse cultural experiences. 

Visiting 500 year old ex-convents doth not a cultured person make. (No the irony of this article, written on Mexican soil, does not escape me.)

However, we Americans not just like but must believe that we are all the same, everyone is equal. The rich downplay their wealth, claim to be 'upper middle class'. The poor likewise play up their station. Everyone works to seem 'common'. Our language reflects that. When people use five dollar words, we ask them to speak English please. Lord forbid we sound intelligent. Others may think that we think we're better than them (one of the greatest fears of Americans). This serves to make Americans appear to be very united, very similar. But this in fact serves to drive us apart.

We have enough to learn at home that we deserve to focus our efforts on knowing our own place before exploring the world. I believe travel can teach one a lot about one's own place. I believe it is beneficial to see the world through another culture's eyes. Other cultures can be found here however. And many people take it well beyond the limit. Some travel to consume the world, to check it off their list, just to say they have done it. This is not the point.