On the Ethics of Travel
I have always been ambivalent about travel at best and terrified of it at worst. Part of this is due to my reflexive worrying and catastrophizing whenever I depart. Did I shut the coffee maker off? Did I lock both locks on the front door? Did I remember to pack my Synthroid? Did I leave the car headlights on in the long-term parking lot at JFK? This paranoia subsides a day or two after arriving at my destination, but it kicks up again a day or two before I leave for home. Will my landlord’s building spring a gas leak, causing an explosion while I am driving or flying back? Am I heading into a local outbreak of a more virulent Covid-23? Are a squadron of Proud Boys mobilizing for an anti-trans offensive, and are at this moment sequestered in the bushes outside my home? While I appreciate a change of scene, I have come to accept that I am far more comfortable in familiar surroundings: certainly not a hermit or shut-in, but perfectly okay with sitting in my kitchen sipping tea and reading a book as the rest of the world whizzes by outside my window.
For this reason, I was eager to read “The Case Against Travel” by the University of Chicago philosopher Agnes Callard in last week’s The New Yorker: as someone with misgivings about the practice, I anticipated an epiphany of sorts that made explicit my low-key paranoia. However, I was mistaken, sorely disappointed at an account of travel-as-a-vice that I…
