[imbnwa]

On a lower frequency, this similar to why I'm not interested in tourism as "self-discovery", "new experience", or some shit, like the rest of the world is just stage and props for my existential theatre. I'm not gonna change as a human unless I actually move there to live permanently. Even worse, the middle-class trend to make the number of distinct places you've visited some form of social currency ("how many stamps are in your passport?").

I remember this sales guy who always made it a point to tell every woman he talked to that he did Peace Corps in Africa and how it changed him working with Africans. Like, you could've just volunteered somewhere on the south side of the city if you really wanted to help some African folk.

[rajin444]

Are you saying Africans and (black, which I assume you mean but I’m trying to be charitable) people in your city are basically the same? I imagine the lives and cultures in Africa are vastly different than whatever city you’re in.

[martin_a]

I think OP is talking about some kind of "charity tourism" that's happening. I think Europe has some effects like this, too, where people prefer to go to Africa to "help some children" while they could be "doing good" by getting active in local organisations. No need to travel some thousand kilometres for that.

[pessimizer]

You're also assuming that their town doesn't have a lot of African immigrants living on its south side, and that the speaker wasn't (very questionably) saying that their experience with Africans affected the way they interacted with local black people.

[rajin444]

That’s why I mentioned lives and cultures in Africa. African immigrant lives in x city are gonna be different than in Africa.

[imbnwa]

If the only way for you to deal with Black skin charitably be that they be some exotic Other "over there", that're 'different', who 'actually have it bad', and that you don't need to ever run into again, then you're part of a problem and don't know why.

Africa won't want for charitable aid labor in spite of this sentiment, it just can field those grunt work jobs from people who're, you know, from the area itself rather than Western tourists looking for a story to tell or a CV to pad.

[ubercow13]

Do you really think you can't learn anything as a tourist?

[MomoXenosaga]

Most people can't learn anything and they don't want to. It is impossible to explain what living in a slum is like to a middle class woke guy.

[ubercow13]

Well if you're being that reductionist, what's the point in doing or learning anything? Why is tourism any more useless than any other pointless attempt for a woke guy to learn something?

[imbnwa]

Learn anything? Certainly you can realize the true scale of Angkor Wat.

[Levitz]

> I'm not gonna change as a human unless I actually move there to live permanently.

This, in my experience, is simply not true.

There is a value in going to different places, changing every variable there is to your life except yourself.

When you are somewhere you've never been to, where you know nobody, where the food, language and customs are all different, then you can find out which parts of yourself stay, who you are and what you are capable of. That has value.

[musingsole]

Maybe, but too many think that visiting a resort town in a far flung country has given them a meaningful experience of "otherness" as if those same resorts weren't purpose built to coddle to foreigners being out of their element.

And even if you do fall through the tourism system and find yourself elbow to elbow with a native, the thought that you as a foreigner will unlock their culture in handful of days when most natural born members of a group will be learning their own eccentricities to the day they die is one of the more disgusting flavors of arrogance.

[kibwen]

There are plenty of pitfalls to the attitude that tourism will grant enlightenment, but I agree that some amount travel is crucial. Experiencing a different society (the everyday bits, not just the facade shown to tourists), even for a short amount of time, helps to humanize the people living in that society (or really, any society other than your own). Never straying from one place for your entire life is a great way to cultivate the attitude that the only "real" culture is the one that you're familiar with. In a connected world, empathy for people outside your own immediate sphere is important, and even a small amount of travel to a small number of places will generally suffice to begin developing this sort of empathy.

[imbnwa]

It's just, you don't need a plane ticket and a passport to satisfy these goals