robot-dreams comments on Rationality Quotes January 2015 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Gondolinian 01 January 2015 02:23AM

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Comment author: robot-dreams 08 January 2015 05:49:22PM 10 points [-]

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on If You Demand Magic, Magic Won't Help

Comment author: RichardKennaway 08 January 2015 11:17:44PM 16 points [-]

And yet, I also have packed my backpack, embarked in the air, and woken up in Rome, and unlike Emerson have indeed been intoxicated in contemplation of the things that were. And as in Rome, so also in Florence, and Prague, and London, and the cave monasteries of Turkey, and the Alhambra, and the temples of Japan, and other places also.

In other words, YMMV.

Comment author: robot-dreams 10 January 2015 07:41:57AM *  2 points [-]

I hope the quote didn't come across as "travel sucks, period". Admittedly, with the opening "Travelling is a fool's paradise", it's hard for the quote to come across any other way. But my interpretation is not so much that Emerson is against travel; it's that Emerson is against yearning for travel as the magic solution to all of your problems. No matter where you go, you bring yourself--so if the problems lie within yourself, no amount of travelling will let you escape them.

You sound like an awesome person who would love life even if you didn't get to travel (perhaps less, but still). When you chose to set out on your adventures, what was your motivation (I would be pretty surprised if it was to "lose your sadness")?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 10 January 2015 08:39:17AM 4 points [-]

When you chose to set out on your adventures, what was your motivation (I would be pretty surprised if it was to "lose your sadness")?

I wanted to see these places. There's nothing quite like being there.

Comment author: Epictetus 11 January 2015 09:25:35PM 5 points [-]

This reminds me of Socrates' quip:

How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you?

Comment author: gwern 02 February 2015 04:12:33PM 2 points [-]

It's a common enough classical remonstration; eg Horace's "Skies change, not cares, for those who cross the seas."

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