For every good piece of news there is an underside. With global wealth rising, countries becoming freer and travel costs declining, the world is experiencing a boom in tourism. By all accounts this is a good thing. Traveling and interacting with other cultures, religions and seeing for oneself how others live is essential to understanding and communication that helps to bridge conflict. At the very least, we can hope so.
The bad thing is that all the troops of tourism are leading to the decline of wondrous places. Not the interest in them, but their very survival as Newsweek points out this week. What a sad development. The great interest of world travelers for places such as Luxor, Maccu Picchu and the Great Wall of China is leading to their destruction.
As the world gets more and more interconnected and Cosmopolitanism seems to be finally getting its chance to thrive, we find that our actions are leading to the demise of historic and splendorous things. It would seem that the only hope is the pull of capital. Those who live by the tourist trade (and it’s no small number of individuals or countries) will be forced to spend money to keep the things that make them money in the first place. By all economic accounts, this seems like a wise thing to do. For the rest of us such investments are truly gratifying so that we, and future generations, can see what amazing things those before us have created.
1 comment:
Hello, first commentator here! There's some much worse effects of all that travel. As per this article .
By the way, I found your blog from searching your name from the "commentisfree" site. I think you'll appreciate the " ..... " there, I myself had no less than 4 accounts censored out before giving up.
I met Salma Yaqoob at the very first StW meeting after 9-11. We were significantly friendly for some years. But from Sept 2004 it became clear that she was a hypocrite, pseudo-democrat. I was threatened in a meeting for handing out the wrong excerpts from the last testament and Salma Y and Tony Benn turned their back rather than protest.
Then I was barred from an all welcome discusion? of the cause of 7-7, as Salma walked in past me.
I think she is just another unscrupulous careerist politician. Sad.
You've just said she is SWP. I'm not sure youve understood the situation from your remote location. Or maybe I havent? My understanding is she brought the Central Mosque people into the coalition with the SWP who had set the ball rolling (as a front for their pretty dud org). She doesnt particularly support them, except in being a hypocritical pseudo-democratic power-seeker herself!
Cheers.
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