Posts Tagged ‘travel’
“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices”*…
Inanna Hamati-Ataya on the importance of understanding our place in the world…
In the 1990s, an entire generation was robbed of its historical consciousness by a powerful and seemingly unprecedented tale. This story, crafted as the Cold War came to an end, declared that real or imagined boundaries had stopped working as they once had. Humans were no longer contained within their old geographies or identities. They now inhabited a new world that appeared to be unhinged from the normal evolution of human society.
The concept chosen to capture this transformational moment in human history was ‘globalisation’. It described how new technologies and networks of connectivity had suddenly brought human communities closer together and made them permeable to an uncontrollable flow of people, ideas, goods and cultural practices, which all moved freely across the integrated markets of the world economy. In the wake of this transformation, new jargon emerged, expressing new anxieties: the world had truly become the ‘global village’ that Marshall McLuhan anticipated in the 1960s, but it was a world shaped by multinational corporations and ‘elite globalisers’, who spoke a common, hegemonic ‘global English’, and were spearheading a destructive ‘homogenisation’ (or ‘McDonaldisation’) of human cultures that national borders were too fragile to withstand.
During the past three decades, more people have begun viewing our ‘global’ world as a cursed fate. With its suffocating time-space compression, globalisation seems to have uncoupled us from the logic and flow of history. Our suspicious, bastard identities – patched together from a mishmash of cultures – appear incompatible with our ancestors’ ‘authentic’ traditions and ways of life. We have become strangers to the places they called home, to the ways they dressed, ate or communicated with one another. And, with no template for how to live and no experience to learn from, the deafening siren songs of anti-globalisation movements are now luring us back into the safer identities and boundaries of a lost, golden past.
This tale of globalisation is the most successful scare story of our times. And like all scare stories, it stimulates our fear of an overwhelming unknown.
But it’s all an illusion. There is no new global world.
Our present appears that way only because we have forgotten our common past. Globalisation didn’t begin in the 1990s, or even in the past millennia. Remembering this older shared history is a path to a different tale, which begins much, much earlier – long before the arrival of international supply chains, ocean-going sailing ships, and continent-spanning silk roads. The tale of globalisation is written across human history. So why do we keep getting the story so wrong?…
[She unpacks the answer to her questions, then turns to it implications…]
… In our own contemporary era, anti-globalisation movements have recently shifted from the far Left to the far Right of national and global politics. Justified resentment against the locally experienced injustices of the global economy and the growing disruptive effect of global climate change are now couched in resentment for the social and cultural dimensions of globalisation. Identitarianism, a political ideology that stresses the preservation of narrowly conceived ‘Western’ ethnicities and cultures, has accordingly become the easiest and most efficient strategy to mobilise local grievances, and direct them at whatever is perceived as a threat to the wellbeing of those suffering within. The ugly age of nationalism is back.
Is nationalist identitarianism the ethos we will now deploy to confront the common existential threats that await us in the coming century? Why wouldn’t it be? Does anyone doubt that national borders will be turned, once again, into sacred physical boundaries and fiercely defended against those fleeing the environmental, economic or military devastation of their homes? Do we doubt that eloquent voices animated by the most (ig)noble intentions will rise to justify patriotic bullets being aimed at ‘alien migrants’ and climate refugees? And that leaders will say these displaced people cannot be accommodated because of their numbers and cultures, and the threat they pose to our secure lives – to our ‘identity’?
Such scenarios are far too likely given the rise of xenophobic worldviews, such as the conspiratorial idea of a ‘Great Replacement’, in which elites – imagined to be Jews and other minorities – have begun executing a plan to replace so-called indigenous white Europeans with other populations of apparently greater and threatening reproductive vitality. These racialist worldviews dangerously converge with a public misunderstanding of ‘race’ as reflected in the recent craze for DNA ‘ancestry tests’. DNA has little to do with ‘identity’, as social and political ideologies have constructed it, and much to do with physical and social geography. Our genes are a result of human adaptive mobility, and the journeys, rich encounters and kin-making that our freedom of movement made possible over tens of thousands of years. Our genome does not tell our whole story, but the story it does tell shows how past globalisations made us what we are today.
As we search for ways of communing with one another beyond the stubborn ideology of difference, we should also prepare for vicious future distortions and manipulations of our current scientific and historical understanding of identity. Some humans today carry a few genes that their Pleistocene ancestors inherited from intercourse with our Eurasian Neanderthalian and Denisovan cousins, whom some communities of Homo sapiens encountered on their journeys of cosmopolitan expansion. How might such a genetic difference among us be interpreted and used in the future by those intent on pursuing identitarianism to its silliest or most murderous conclusions? Might they declare that some humans are not ‘pure’ enough to enjoy the full freedom, security and dignity we recognise as the natural rights of humankind? Or might they, on the contrary, elevate the Neanderthalian or Denisovan gene as a marker of Eurasian ‘distinction’ to recreate narratives of racial superiority, similar to those that once plagued archaeological thinking about the allegedly more ‘advanced’ nature of those human fossils laying the farthest away from the species’ original African homes?
Palaeontologists who insist on ascribing the label ‘humans’ to the entire Homo genus while reserving that of ‘modern humans’ to the surviving representatives of the lineage (ie, us) probably understand better than most the dangers of ideological manipulations of scientific taxonomies. But in the open marketplace where ideas freely flow in the name of freedom of thought and expression, how can we protect ourselves and one another from such dangers, if we still perceive plurality as a threat to survival, and cannot see the richness of our shared human culture?
The wars we wage against one another are all civil wars. Until we recognise them as such, they will remain tragedies we accept as natural – or horrors we cheer on in the name of grand notions sold to us by loud voices who know our fears too well (and know too little of the richness of our world and our history). We have always been global, and this is our shared identity. It is our unique way of being and remaining in the world as one family. Whatever we cherish in our humanity and culture has been crafted by our global journeys and encounters. Through them, we will continue to write the story of how we become us…
All of our religions, stories, languages, and norms were muddled and mixed through mobility and exchange throughout history: “There are no pure cultures,” from @berytia.bsky.social in @aeon.co.
Still, as Venkatesh Rao reminds us, the “vacuous over-large abstractions like “globalization” make us underestimate the horizontal historicity of the world.”
* Jimmy Carter
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As we go with the flow, we might recall that it was on this date in 1690 (or so musicologists believe) that Johann Christoph Denner, inspired by a reeded recorder-like instrument called the chalumeau, designed and created a longer and keyed (so more widely-ranged) instrument that was quickly copied and modified by other makers– and became what we know as the clarinet. By 1791, Mozart was composing for the instrument; by Beethoven’s time, the clarinet was a staple member in the orchestra.
To the point of the essay above, it’s worth noting that the chalumeau– and thus the clarinet– were direct descendants of ancient Greek and ancient Egyptian reeded pipes… that may themselves have been modeled on similar instruments from Central and East Asia.
The clarinet, as depicted in Diderot’s Encyclopedia, 1776 (source)
“Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages?”*…
There was more to the period than violence, superstition and ignorance: The Economist on a new book, Medieval Horizons, from Ian Mortimer…
“In public your bottom should emit no secret winds past your thighs. It disgraces you if other people notice any of your smelly filth.” This useful bit of advice for young courtiers in the early 13th century appears in “The Book of the Civilised Man”, a poem by Daniel of Beccles. It is the first English guide to manners.
Ian Mortimer, a historian, argues that this and other popular works of advice that began appearing around the same time represent something important: a growing sense of social self-awareness, self-evaluation and self-control. Why then? Probably because of the revival of glass mirrors in the 12th century, which had disappeared from Europe after the fall of Rome. The mirror made it possible for men and women to see themselves as others did. It confirmed their individuality and inspired a greater sense of autonomy and potential. By 1500 mirrors were cheap, and their impact had spread through society.
Mr. Mortimer sets out to show that the medieval period, from 1000 to 1600, is profoundly misunderstood. It was not a backward and unchanging time marked by violence, ignorance and superstition. Instead, huge steps in social and economic progress were made, and the foundations of the modern world were laid.
The misapprehension came about because people’s notion of progress is so bound up with scientific and technological developments that came later, particularly with the industrial and digital revolutions. The author recounts one claim he has heard: that a contemporary schoolchild (armed with her iPhone) knows more about the world than did the greatest scientist of the 16th century.
Never mind that astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo knew much more about the stars than most children do today. Could a modern architect (without his computer) build a stone spire like Lincoln Cathedral’s, which is 160 metres (525 feet) tall and was completed by 1311? Between 1000 and 1300 the height of the London skyline quintupled, whereas between 1300 and the completion of the 72-storey Shard in 2010, it only doubled. Inventions, including gunpowder, the magnetic compass and the printing press, all found their way from China to transform war, navigation and literacy.
This led to many “expanding horizons” for Europeans. Travel was one. In the 11th century no European had any idea what lay to the east of Jerusalem or south of the Sahara. By 1600 there had been several circumnavigations of the globe.
Law and order was another frontier. Thanks to the arrival of paper from China in the 12th century and the advent of the printing press in the 1430s, document-creation and record-keeping, which are fundamental to administration, surged. Between 1000 and 1600 the number of words written and printed in England went from about 1m a year to around 100bn. In England, a centralised legal and criminal-justice system evolved rapidly from the 12th century. Violent deaths declined from around 23 per 100,000 in the 1300s to seven per 100,000 in the late 16th century.
Another “horizon” was speed and the sense of urgency that went with it. By 1600 a letter bearing important news could be carried 200 miles in a single day, thanks to people starting to use relays of horses at staging posts. Over the course of the 14th century mechanical clocks were developed, allowing time to be standardised and appointments to be kept.
The period was also marked by growing personal freedom, with the banning of slavery within England by the English church in 1102 and the rapid decline of serfdom after the Black Death of 1348-49, when nearly half the labour force died. Political power expanded to include a growing land and property-owning yeoman class. Whoever thinks the Middle Ages were all darkness has a middling understanding of history’s truths…
Shedding light on the Dark Ages: “Is everything you assumed about the Middle Ages wrong?” (gift link) @TheEconomist on @IanJamesFM.
* “Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages?…I guess it’s because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears – Chaucer’s, Boccaccio’s, Henry Knighton’s, Thomas Walsingham’s, Froissart’s, Jean Creton’s… writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves.” — Terry Jones (@PythonJones) in The Observer
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As we look back, we might recall that it was on this date (the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene) in in Middle Ages (more specially, in 1342), that Central Europe’s worst flood ever occurred. Following the passage of a Genoa low, the rivers Rhine, Moselle, Main, Danube, Weser, Werra, Unstrut, Elbe, Vltava, and their tributaries inundated large areas. Many towns such as Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg, Regensburg, Passau, and Vienna were seriously damaged, with water levels exceeding those of the 2002 European floods. Even the river Eider north of Hamburg flooded the surrounding land; indeed, the affected area extended to Carinthia and northern Italy.
“Tourism basically boils down to the leisure of going and seeing what has become commonplace”*…
Last year six European countries (seven if, given Istanbul’s gateway status, you count Turkey) dominated the list of top-ten countries most visited by foreigners; France alone had over 100 million visitors.
Janan Ganesh argues that the continent’s success in attracting tourists is a problem…
This is the first century in several that Europe won’t shape. Even the 20th one, the “American” one, played out on the continent’s world war battlefields and cold war frontline. The largest ideas, Einstein’s and Keynes’s, were conceived by Europeans in Europe. So were those experiments — Picasso’s in painting, Joyce’s in literature, Le Corbusier’s in architecture — that we bunch under the name Modernism. European states had colonies well into the second half of the century, which brought discredit, but also clout.
All of which makes our present impotence sting a bit. Europe has a lack of major tech companies, a reduced share of world output and, as protectionism spreads, no hope of matching American or Chinese largesse on domestic industries. In a trading world, Europe had one superpower, the “Brussels effect”, by which EU regulations became the de facto global standard. The fragmentation of trade could deprive Europe of even that vote on the shape of the future.
Now, at the risk of bathos: tell me about your summer break. It involves Europe, doesn’t it?
I suggest these two things — the irrelevance of the continent, and the popularity of it — are linked. Because Europe commands the interest of the world without trying, it struggles to understand how marginal it has become, and to respond. It can count on levels of attention that other places must fight for. It can reap a level of income from visitors that is near-unique in the rich world. In 2019, the last pre-Covid year, tourism was 12 per cent of GDP in Spain, 8 in Portugal and 7 in Greece. No western nation outside Europe, save New Zealand, got to 3 per cent. Nor did Japan or (despite an airport that could be a destination itself) Singapore.
Europe is forever sweet-talked — “You matter” — and not by tourists alone. Think of the wider cultural patronage it receives as the glamour continent. If a regime wants to sportswash itself, it acquires Paris Saint-Germain, not the Lakers. If a Chinese rural-dweller wants to advertise their ascent into urban affluence, LVMH products, not the US equivalents, are de rigueur. Europe should never shrink from these strengths. It would be crackers not to monetise its own prestige. But such mastery of the “soft” stuff might blind it to what is afoot in tech and other harder realms. The danger is that Europe becomes the geostrategic equivalent of a person too beautiful to ever need do or say anything interesting. It can be flattered into not noticing that the century is being authored elsewhere.
And so the phrase “tourist trap” acquires a new meaning. The entrapped aren’t the visitors. Yeah, smirk all you like when they order a “cross-ont” at the pâtisserie and overpay to boot. The locals are the ones with the problem, and the problem is a sort of lucrative stagnation.
Tourism is said to despoil places. But that can be managed. Venice has banned tour groups larger than 25. Barcelona has put up its tourist tax again. Europe could charge more without losing custom because, in the end, nowhere else can match it for sheer geographic compression of what we can only call good stuff. (I did Zurich to London in 75 minutes on a flight this year. I can’t do waking to exiting the bed in 75 minutes.)
No, the “blight” of tourism isn’t, or isn’t just, environmental. It is mental. It saps a place’s incentive to modernise. It rewards ossification. For a long time, theories have circulated as to why market reforms are so difficult to enact in Mediterranean Europe in particular. These include: some collectivist ethos in Catholicism (but then how to explain businesslike Bavaria?), weather so good as to induce a taste for leisure (what about Australia?) and high expectations of the welfare state (unlike Scandinavia?).
None of these explanations check out, quite. Doubtless, no single one ever could. But it matters that southern Europe can get a lot wrong in policy terms and still expect to be patronised, in at least one sense of that word, by outsiders bearing not just hard currency but ego-boosting attention. What an exorbitant privilege. And what a nice way to decline…
“Europe’s real tourist trap” (gift link): the continent gets too much attention from the world to recognize its irrelevance. @FT.
* Guy Debord , The Society of the Spectacle
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As we rebook, we might want to recall that it was on this date in 1894 that a major contributor to French and European tourism this summer was founded: the International Olympic Committee. The IOC is responsible for organizing the modern (Summer, Winter, and Youth) Olympic Games, and for governing the (currently 206) National Olympic Committees (NOCs).
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”*…
… a circular journey of discovery that can be accomplished much more quickly today than 110 years ago…
In 1914 John G. Bartholomew, the scion of an Edinburgh mapmaking family and cartographer royal to King George V, published “An Atlas of Economic Geography”. It was a book intended for schoolboys and contained everything a thrusting young entrepreneur, imperialist, trader or traveler could need. As well as the predictable charts of rainfall, temperature and topography, it had maps showing where you could find rubber, cotton or rice; maps showing the distribution of commercial languages, so that if you wanted to do business in Indonesia you knew to do so in Dutch; and maps showing the spread of climatic diseases, so that if you did find yourself in Indonesia you knew to look out for tropical dysentery. It also contained the map you see here, which told you how long it would take to get there from London: between 20 and 30 days.
This is an isochronic map – isochrones being lines joining points accessible in the same amount of time – and it tells a story about how travel was changing. You can get anywhere in the dark-pink section in the middle within five days – to the Azores in the west and the Russian city of Perm in the east. No surprises there: you’re just not going very far. Beyond that, things get a little more interesting. Within five to ten days, you can get as far as Winnipeg or the Blue Pearl of Siberia, Lake Baikal. It takes as much as 20 days to get to Tashkent, which is closer than either, or Honolulu, which is much farther away. In some places, a colour sweeps across a landmass, as pink sweeps across the eastern United States or orange across India. In others, you reach a barrier of blue not far inland, as in Africa and South America. What explains the difference? Railways.
In the early 1840s an American dry-goods merchant called Asa Whitney, who lived near New York, travelled to China on business. It took 153 days, which he thought a waste of time. When he got back he began lobbying for a transcontinental railroad connecting Lake Michigan with Oregon, which had a trade deal with China. The railroad, he thought, would cut the journey time to China to about 30 days and open up the market. Similarly, the British invested so heavily in the Indian railway that between 1860 and 1880 it extended from 838 miles to 15,842 miles. If you compare this isochronic map to one from the 1870s, by Francis Galton, you see the difference. Bombay is quickly accessible by sea; the rest of India less so. Likewise, there is no spit of pink reaching across the Russian Empire on Galton’s map, because there was no Trans-Siberian Railway. As the geographer L.W. Lyde says in his introduction to Bartholomew’s atlas, “isochronic distances…change with every additional mile of railway brought into use.” What was the one thing a young entrepreneur needed most? A train ticket…
“Time Travel,” by Simon Willis in Intelligent Life/1843 Magazine
That was then. Now entrepreneurs and other travelers are reaching for a different kind of ticket– now we have aviation…
In late 2015 the Rome2Rio team spotted a beautiful travel map on Intelligent Life. The map, which was published by venerable mapmaker John G. Bartholomew in 1914, illustrated how long it would take to travel from London to destinations across the globe.
We were excited to see such a fantastic visualisation of travel times and we were curious to see what had changed in the 100-odd years since; especially at such a world-changing juncture in travel technology. The first commercial flight took place on January 1st, 1914, so travel times started changing drastically soon after this date.
We created a new map using Rome2Rio’s routing engine and unique repository of transport data… It is clear that travel times have improved immensely. Modern air, rail and road infrastructure has led to a ten-fold increase in travel times across the dark pink parts of the map.
Globalisation is also readily apparent. Journeys that would have taken 10 to 20 days by boat and train have been replaced by the speed of air travel, with most of the world now accessible within ½ to 1 day. This change is most apparent in Asia. In 1914 reaching Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo would take up to 40 days. Now, these powerhouses are a day’s travel from London.
Island destinations have benefited from the advances in technology as well. Locations such as the Bahamas, Bermuda, Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar are all with ½ a day’s travel, suggesting demand for direct flights by holiday makers. For those who prefer colder locales, visiting the world’s coldest city, Yakutsk, is a breeze in comparison to the area surrounding it; from London, it takes ¾ of a day…
“Time flies? According to these maps it does,” from Rome2Rio
What a difference a century– and a new technology– can make…
* T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” The Four Quartets
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As we fasten our seatbelts, we might recall that it was on this date in 1935 that was Amelia Earhart became the first person successfully to fly from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. It had been attempted numerous times before by other pilots who’d been foiled by mechanical trouble; Earhart had none. Indeed, it is said that during the final hours of her flight, she relaxed to the broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera from New York.
Sadly it was just two year later that she went missing while attempting to fly from Lae Airfield in Papua New Guinea to Howland Island (about 1,700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu). She was never seen again.
“Every solution tends to become the next problem”*…
Dingxin Zhao is sociologist who marshals history, historiography, and his own discipline to explain how ancient Chinese wisdom can shed light on the troubled times through which we’re living…
During a reading project I undertook to better understand the “third wave of democracy” — the remarkable and rapid rise of democracies in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa in the 1970s and 80s — I came to realize that this ascendency of democratic polities was not the result of some force propelling history toward its natural, final state, as some scholars have argued. Instead, it was the result of American political influence spreading around the world after the U.S. had established itself as the sole global superpower.
However, the U.S. endeavor to impose its political system in foreign lands where its policymakers did not have much knowledge facilitated the rise of many low-quality democracies, ethnic conflicts and refugee crises and triggered a global resurgence of authoritarianism and conservatism. Adding to such complexity, the crippled democratization movement, promoted under the banner of liberalism, inadvertently eroded the prominence of liberal ideologies — the very bedrock of enlightenment — across the world.
Upon arriving at this conclusion, I grappled with a sense of unease. I began to question whether I leaned too conservatively or possessed a certain authoritarian personality. Eventually, I realized that my conclusions were influenced by a Daoist perspective on history that had been imprinted on me during my upbringing in China.
Such a Daoist understanding of history contrasts with the teleological tenets found within the Judeo-Christian tradition and the symmetric cyclic interpretations that are also common in Western thought. And it could provide several insights in comprehending our increasingly intricate and uncertain world.
According to the Tao Te Ching, a succinctly composed text attributed to Laozi from the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.E.), history revolves around two pivotal elements. The first is that it unfolds in cycles that are characterized by perpetual transformations and negations. This cyclical perspective on historical development immediately sets the Daoist understanding of history apart from the linear and teleological understanding found in Judeo-Christian traditions, exemplified by narratives in the Bible and subsequently interpreted in diverse ways by theologians…
[Zhao explores the contrast, with both the teleological and the cyclical, using illuminating examples from St. Augustine, Hegel, Marx, Oswald Spengler, Neil Howe, Mancur Olson, Ibn Khaldun, and others]
… The second pivotal element within the Daoist understanding of historical development departs from this symmetry. The forces guiding each historical transformation and negation need not be the same: an “asymmetric cyclic theory.”
In the Tao Te Ching, Laozi famously wrote, “The Dao that can be stated cannot be the universal (or eternal) Dao.” This proclamation essentially asserts that symmetric cyclic theories cannot lay claim to universal or eternal truths. This is because the significance and function of any causal forces invariably change with different contexts.
In premodern China, Laozi’s precocious and highly sophisticated grasp of history often veered into mystical directions. Today, armed with the insights of modern social sciences, I would characterize the Daoist asymmetric cyclic theory of history as the “principle of reverse movement.”
This principle posits that as any organization, political system, idea, culture or institution gains ascendancy, the opposing, undermining forces concurrently intensify. In China, this has been visually conveyed through various forms of taiji diagrams. Among these diagrams, the one I believe best encapsulates the core of history’s asymmetric cyclical nature is also the simplest: Two forces of opposing nature undergo simultaneous change over time. As one force grows stronger, the other weakens, and vice versa.
To give some examples: In arenas of military and economic competition, entities that organize better and produce more efficiently tend to gain an edge. This nature of military and economic competition induces cumulative development — a form of societal change that bolsters humanity’s capacity to generate and accumulate wealth. In early modern Europe, heavily influenced by the linear historical outlook of Judeo-Christian traditions, thinkers often formulated theories that portrayed such cumulative developmental processes as progress toward a better future.
However, in the Daoist principle of reverse movement, as one actor in military or economic competition progressively secures the upper hand, opposing actors would also gather momentum. For instance, the dominant actor becomes increasingly susceptible to various errors — over-expansion, underestimating adversaries, disregarding internal vulnerabilities and potential crises. Meanwhile, weaker actors respond to their more formidable opponent by intensifying their desire to change, including learning from their opponent and striving for “self-strengthening.”…
[Zhao unpacks more examples]
… A Daoist understanding of history could contribute three key insights to the contemporary landscape of political theory and civilizational prosperity:
First, it asserts that historical transformations are not propelled by uniform forces, a perspective that challenges the concept of history being directed by a predestined end or ultimate purpose.
Second, it imparts a sense of humility upon influential social actors as their power ascends, encouraging them to gain insight into potential pitfalls and shifts that might undermine their status and avoid the fallacy of justifying their power supremacy by some teleological and thus moral rationale.
Third, it cautions us against the hubris of making linear predictions about upward-trending social tides and urges us to embrace the intricacies of complexity and acknowledge the multifaceted interplay of diverse forces. By doing so, we are compelled to appreciate the heterogeneous nature of historical change.
Belief in a linear or teleological understanding of history imparts a stronger sense of purpose in life, allows believers to create a more committed moral community and compels individuals within that community to act in a more principled manner. However, “true believers” can be convinced that they alone possess the correct beliefs and are aligned with the right course of history, that they hold a moral high ground to convert, exclude or even resort to violence against those deemed to be on the “wrong side.” Numerous times in centuries past, this belief has led to genocide, imperialism, racist governance, political purges and cultural conflict.
…
The Daoist principle of asymmetric reverse movement not only rejects the imposition of a direction onto history but also negates the existence of any specific, law-like forces underpinning the apparent cyclic patterns of historical events. Laozi’s concept of wuwei has prompted some scholars, like Charles Hucker, to interpret it as an ancient anarchist ideology that has “little to offer in the way of a governmental program.” However, in truth, Laozi is advocating for a form of statecraft characterized by profound humility. This humility is a rare trait, especially among powerful social actors — particularly very resourceful state actors. It becomes even scarcer within cultures dominated by a teleological comprehension of history…
Understanding the principle of reverse movement in history: “Daoist History” in Noema— eminently worth reading in full. And usefully accompanied by “A Daoist Take On The World Gone Sideways,” by Noema editor Nathan Gardels.
* your correspondent
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As we honor humility, we might recall that it was on this date in 1890 that journalist Nellie Bly began her 72-day trip around the world.
In 1888, Bly suggested to her editor at the New York World that she take a trip around the world, attempting to turn the fictional Around the World in Eighty Days into fact for the first time. A year later, at 9:40 a.m. on November 14, 1889, with two days’ notice, she boarded the steamer Augusta Victoria, and began her 24,899-mile journey.
She brought with her the dress she was wearing, a sturdy overcoat, several changes of underwear, and a small travel bag carrying her toiletry essentials. She carried most of her money (£200 in English bank notes and gold in total as well as some American currency) in a bag tied around her neck.
Bly traveled through England, France (where she met Jules Verne in Amiens), Brindisi, the Suez Canal, Colombo (Ceylon), the Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. Just over seventy-two days after her departure from Hoboken, having used steamships and existing railway lines, Bly was back in New York; she beat Phileas Fogg‘s time by almost 8 days.
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