191 - Travel vs. Tourism

Lost Xplorers

From the notes of Kris Saknussemm...

Temporary tattoos and the latest Oscar’s night—two more examples of why we’ve entered the Post-Civilization Age. People who say the Oscar’s have been in “decline” for quite a while are the kind of folks who wouldn’t draw much distinction between Ted Bundy returning to have sex with a corpse three days after the murder, or three weeks. I maintain there’s a difference.

Moving along, it’s struck me of late that there’s a relationship between Education (public school system) and Tourism, which often goes unnoticed. We know there’s a connection between Education and Travel. Travel is how humanity has educated itself about the human globe (and all this means), the planet Earth, and the larger world / universe we’ve been able to comprehend. All good. Tourism? Hmm, not so good. Why? What is the difference between Travel and Tourism?

Many interesting people have tried to speak to this issue, including well-traveled writers such as Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams, and Jack Kerouac—hell, the list goes on and on. What a great list. But it doesn’t go that far back in time…because “tourism” in anything like the sense we mean it today really only fired up after WWII. Up to then, “travel” frequently meant adventure—both intentional and inadvertent. Calamity. Discovery. Decadence. Plunder. Escape. To be sure, the English fascination for a Tour of the Continent (Europe) was fashionable curriculum for the upper classes. But generally, Travel was a more eccentric endeavor. Hoity-toity or rough and ready. It was selective. A curious club.

I’ve recently had my students read Walker Percy’s wonderful essay “The Loss of the Creature.” It has a lot to say about reclaiming personal experience and sovereignty—and not sacrificing validation to a shadowy priest caste of so-called experts. It deals directly in the connection between Education and Travel or Tourism?

So, taking my view that Tourism arises as an industry (and as a system of social values) post-WWII…isn’t this about when the commitment to a fully national public school system takes off? I think before then, any sort of structured public education program was very porous and unevenly distributed even within states. More an idea than a system or a network. Is there a connection? What can the difference between Travel and Tourism possibly tell us about how the public education experiment is faring?

Kris's music piece at the end is titled "Recurring Dreams."