When I encountered Agnes Callard’s essay, The Case Against Travel, earlier this year in The New Yorker, it immediately resonated with me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I had previously engaged with Callard’s book, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, finding its exploration of self-improvement both intricate and insightful. Secondly, I had been wrestling with my own uneasy feelings about recreational travel, struggling to put them into words. I was eager to see how a writer and philosopher of Callard’s caliber would approach this complex topic.
Callard’s piece adopts more of a historical overview approach rather than a direct condemnation. While she touches upon critical aspects – how tourism can bring out our less desirable traits while paradoxically making us feel at our best, its disproportionate impact on visited locations and cultures compared to personal transformation, and its potential for dehumanization – these points are often presented through the lens of other thinkers. Her own direct argumentation feels somewhat understated. This, I believe, is a deliberate choice. It’s not solely her personal case against travel, but rather an exploration of the broader arguments against it, with her acting as a guide through a gallery of perspectives.
Building a strong argument against travel is indeed challenging. Philosophically, “travel” is too encompassing to be simply categorized as good or bad. Practically, its widespread popularity and deep cultural integration mean that even compelling critiques are unlikely to sway opinions significantly. Yet, travel is a practice that deserves critical examination, and Callard’s attempt is commendable.
Callard expresses skepticism about travel as a transformative experience, suggesting it often acts as “a boomerang, dropping you right where you started.” While this can ring true for routine vacations, I’ve found that, cumulatively, my travel experiences have steered me to a different place than where I began. However, this journey has also reshaped my perspective on travel itself:
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I now primarily view leisure travel as a means to other ends, such as personal growth, intercultural understanding, and environmental appreciation. These are valuable pursuits, enriching life considerably, but I’m increasingly aware that they can be pursued closer to home, often without the inherent downsides of travel.
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I find a striking similarity between leisure travel and the materialism it’s frequently contrasted with, particularly in the cliché that “millennials value experiences over things.” Both are forms of consumerism, fueled by a deeply ingrained human acquisitive drive, prone to excess and perpetually unsatisfying.
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I’ve come to believe that certain places are so unique and fragile that they are better off untouched by tourism. Locations where even the most respectful, brief, or “mitigated” presence can inflict environmental or cultural damage amounting to a form of vandalism. While past travels cannot be undone, I can consciously choose future destinations with greater mindfulness.
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I recognize that our home communities urgently need our engagement, involvement, and attention, and many individuals yearn for deeper community connections. Global travel and local living are not mutually exclusive, but they do compete for our focus. I increasingly desire to prioritize the latter.
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My enthusiasm for air travel has waned significantly. Although aviation constitutes a smaller fraction of global emissions annually, it represents a substantial portion of my personal carbon footprint, a common scenario for many in developed nations. The carbon emissions from a single long-haul round-trip flight surpass the annual per capita emissions of numerous countries. Even with reduced flying, my carbon footprint remains disproportionately high. This realization is unsettling.
To be clear, I still travel, including occasional air travel. I still value exploring new places. However, I am consciously striving to discover and appreciate my local surroundings more deeply and reserve flights primarily for visiting loved ones, rather than solely for satisfying wanderlust. This feels like a step forward, yet it also feels like an insufficient compromise between personal desires and global responsibility.
I had hoped Callard’s essay might offer a resolution to this internal conflict, further curbing my appetite for travel and influencing others similarly. This might be an overambitious expectation for a magazine article. Nevertheless, Callard offers valuable insights. As I continue to grapple with the ethics of leisure travel and other forms of high-impact consumption, I find wisdom in her book. It delves into personal transformation and managing inherent conflicts, offering a pathway forward when such dilemmas arise.
In her book, Callard proposes that instead of resisting our desires, we can achieve better outcomes by cultivating better desires. For instance, rather than relying on willpower and restrictive rules (“don’t eat the cookie”), we can focus on “wantpower” (“learn to desire the salad”). This shift is a gradual process of embracing new values, requiring self-awareness and self-compassion. In Callard’s words, “aspiration is work, and we often want to be further along in this work than we are.” Applying this to my travel dilemma, the value I aspire to is not simply “less travel” but “greater contentment.” This path towards contentment would likely involve reduced travel, but it’s a worthwhile pursuit even beyond the urgency of climate change.
For those on a similar journey—aspiring towards personal and planetary betterment—where does travel fit in, if at all? Perhaps the most valuable form of travel can help us mitigate the negative aspects of travel and even inspire broader behavioral change in an ecologically strained world. For me, a quote adapted from Marcel Proust encapsulates this ideal: “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Callard’s essay reminds us that cultivating “new eyes” is more challenging than we often assume, but her book assures us it is achievable, echoing a similar sentiment: “the aspirant is trying to see the world through another person’s eyes, namely, through the eyes of the person who has the value she aspires to acquire.”
This ability to perceive the world anew is accessible to everyone, here and now, without necessitating travel. It’s a process demanding effort, patience, and self-compassion. However, in addressing climate change and ecological overshoot, we must not mistake patience for complacency. Viewing climate action through Callard’s aspirational lens presents a near paradox: the transformation we seek requires patience in the immediate moment (acknowledging our current state) and urgent impatience in the medium-term (recognizing the drastic changes needed by 2050). This is not our natural inclination as a species, but it’s not beyond our reach.
Special thanks to Toby and especially Lindsay for their invaluable feedback and time in reviewing drafts of this essay. Your thoughtful insights were essential to its completion.
