Too many of us travelers. No, not travelers—tourists. We are an army of clichés, marching through the streets where locals actually live; taking, giving, distorting, and transforming their lives. Was it more organic before algorithms? Does it matter? It is what it is now, with Blackstone, Vanguard, and Silicon Valley nudging, prodding, and sucking everyone dry.
I’m sitting in a café in Bologna, just a few feet away from where Dante once looked up at the two towers, inspiring him to include them in Inferno. Imagine him having to dodge tourists as he tried to contemplate the towers—imagine the swarm of modern travelers buzzing around as he composed the Commedia. Perhaps, if things were as they are now, he’d have needed a tenth circle. But what sin or vice would tourists be condemned for? What would be the appropriate punishment? Perhaps tourists are as vilified as they are nowadays because they embody so many vices at once: vain self-indulgence, lust, violence—any group of tourists at any given moment can be guilty of one or all of these.
Perhaps the issue lies in the moral contradictions—or outright absence of morality—that make tourism problematic, for some destinations more than others. Yet for all of them, the issues are essentially the same: cultural homogenization, cultural imperialism, gentrification, hedge funds snapping up entire city blocks and displacing local communities. The impact of every tourist is substantial. Being a tourist, therefore, demands a willful ignorance—a self-serving blindness to the consequences of one’s actions. It takes a great deal of selfishness to pursue one’s desires regardless of the fallout, and that, in itself, is a moral failing.
Of course, the same could be said for just about anything in Capitalism. Every desire carries incalculable repercussions, so why single out tourism? Tourism is merely one form of consumerism, and it should be seen as such, despite how it’s portrayed.
Dante was a traveler, not a tourist. A diplomat then an exile. He knew what it was like to be far from home and at the mercy of others.
“You shall learn how salty tastes another’s bread,and how hard is the path—going down and up another’s stairs.” (Paradiso XVII, 58-60)
Perhaps, unlike travelers, it is this lack of perspective that makes so many tourists unbearable—their demand for convenience and familiarity comes at the cost of the original culture, while travelers move about out of necessity rather than for recreation, mostly conforming to what the native culture can provide. The tourists’ demand for convenience obscures the very nature of hospitality; in fact it cannot exist as a commodity. Too often, as tourists, we mistake transactional politeness for genuine kindness.
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