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Tourism and Traveling

"The speed of modern transport makes us forget that the main goal of traveling is not the moving along and grazing of countries, but to dwell upon in each one. Since anything done with utmost consequence annihilates itself, tourism stole the core of traveling and left the skin bare of a juicy adventure. What remains is its abstract and material parts: Leaving things behind."
-- jose ortega y gasset (1)

“Traveling is immoral because it is supposed to be a cancellation of space within space.”
-- Otto Weininger (2)

“i went traveling to get to know unknown sources of disappointment.”
-- Karl Kraus

“Let those travel who are stupid enough it”
-- mocked Alfred Döblin

Egon Friedell rarely traveled because he knew:

“When I stay at home, I have three things that no journey can offer me: complete peace and quiet, my armchair, which has already lovingly adapted to my shape, and my imagination.”

Hans Christoph Buch comments:

“Travel (just like eating, drinking, reading, loving) is based on the illusion that the next country, the next beefsteak, the next drink, the next novel or the next woman will be different from all the previous ones.”

Many travel because tourism offers distraction, yet

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”
-- Blaise Pascal

Notes:
1) shortened quote; translated from original spanish "obras completas".

Ortega y Gasset wrote this in the early 20th century.

It remains to point out that Ortega's writings belong to the art of literature, i.e., 'writings whose value lies in the beauty of form or emotional effect.'
-- quote http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/literature.htm

2) -- quote http://www.archive.org/details/taschenbuchundbr00weinuoft

(Weininger's main book, 'sex and character' is also worth reading: https://interesting-books-selector.com/index.php?m=select&id=0253344719&ep=1)

#JoseOrtegaYGasset #OttoWeininger #HansChristophBuch
#traveling #tourism #KarlKraus #EgonFriedell #AlfredDöblin #BlaisePascal #sightseeing #distraction