this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Also, the value of life was different then.
People didn't always survive traveling to far away places. In fact, the mortality rate was quite high for things like long-distance travel, from things like bandits to wild animals, to sever weather, to traveling by sea and the hundreds of ways you can die on a multi-month journey even before counting storms and shipwrecks. Many people died from very simple things, infected foot blisters, malnutrition, getting sick along the way, it was all just considered part of life and it's why people through history have put such great meaning on their actions and goals. Life has been very brief and fragile for the majority of human history and everyone knew someone who died on a journey or disappeared.
Traveling to somewhere far away was rarely done on a whim, it was usually for some greater purpose, either financial or religious or deeply personal as a way to seek out enlightenment or discover things about the world. (Assuming you had the choice at all.)
This "meaningfulness" is very much stripped from today's world of wonders. Yes, you can fly over an entire goddamn ocean in less time than it takes to read a short book, but without meaning behind your travel, the time spent waiting for your luggage feels unbearable.
We have everything, we're basically gods of our world, and we're miserable because we don't know what the point is.
100% travel has been so stripped of wonder and adventure. I loathe "destination resorts" where you take a plane to chill in an hotel with a pool and buffet, which is identical to the thousands of destination resorts all over the world. a vacation in a Thailand resort is practically the same as a vacation in a Mexican resort.
leaving the traveler with zero personal growth
The greatest travels I've ever been on have been the disasters, when stranded, when forced to socialize and integrate, to learn about the actual world in which people live and work and play. I've lost luggage and had losses, but bathed in jungle waterfalls and helped locals prepare feasts and stayed with the kindest people on Earth for weeks or months and it absolutely reshapes your perspectives of the whole world.
The most boring have been trips to hotels. What's the point of going around the world if you're on a bed watching cable TV and there's a 7-11 in the downstairs lobby.
What's frustrating about talking about this is invariably I run into some well-off liberal American who talks about how they also promote "adventure" vacations where they stay in like, a Yurt in the woods and pay more money to get away from tourist locations, but really it's just another instagram background for their timeline. Discomfort is what makes us grow, not views.
Reading your post and looking back makes me realize that some of my best travel experiences were when, for some reason or other, things got out of control.
As a species, we are wired by millions of years of adaptation to do just that... find new situations to adapt to. Complacency breeds discontent.
100% Travel isn't what's fun. is the adventure, being open to the chaos of humanity in unknown places.
resorts are the opposite. once travel is "safe" and predictable, it's the exact opposite of what those vacation ads sell