Travel

Imagine anyone being able to travel virtually anywhere...such as along the Trans Siberian Railway.  No substitute for the original, certainly, but perhaps a relatively green way nonetheless of democratising curiosity.

Being cut loose from the habitual is the essential gift of travel, as uncomfortable as it may be psychogically fruitful. Christianity once took our feelings of dislocation and placed them at the heart of a thesis as to the spiritual benefit of pilgrimages. Without accepting the church's analysis, we may nevertheless be inspired by its approach to the value of feeling like a lonely outsider. As much as any destination, it is isolated periods in untried hotel rooms, in paleozoic canyons, in disintegrating palaces and empty service station restaurants that facilitate an underlying psychological or spiritual point of our journeys - Alain de Botton http://theschooloflife.typepad.com/the_school_of_life/2010/06/alain-de-…

Leading economist and activist Jeffrey Sachs believes that there are many practical things individuals can do to make a positive difference in the world.

When I travel I spend the majority of my time quietly observing the different environments and the way the ordinary people in any place go about their everyday lives. I'm constantly on the lookout for what they do that is different and what they do that is the same. I try to have as many conversations as I can with different people contrasting my way of life and backround with theirs and comparing our different cultures, economies and philosophies. I am always amazed at how ready and willing people are to share their experience with me and how unique and interesting we all are - Oxford Muse, 2005

Traveling through the world produces a marvelous clarity in the judgment of men. We are all of us confined and enclosed within ourselves, and see no farther than the end of our nose. This great world is a mirror where we must see ourselves in order to know ourselves. There are so many different tempers, so many different points of view, judgments, opinions, laws and customs to teach us to judge wisely on our own, and to teach our judgment to recognise its imperfection and natural weakness - Michel de Montaigne