Buttercup postulates that cheese is decadent, as is travel.
Tom is yet to formulate an opinion but is happy to mull the topic with Buttercup.
Others are invited to stay on topic, or well clear, depending on their intellectual capacity.
Buttercup, hasn’t the exploratory nature of travel contributed more to the world than the term ‘bread and circuses’ would imply?
Travel, for instance, has helped to create global cultural diversity.
And what of the noble cheese? Broadening one’s horizons is always a good thing.
Even 4th pressed olive oil has some merit in the world.
If one’s horizons are broadened by gawping at poor people under the guise of sniffing the hems of their superior foreign culcha, then that’s arsish.
Exploratory Europeans? It depends on your perspective. Indigenous peoples of (fill in space)? Not so sunny an outlook on the whole thing? Yes, stealing stuff from and starting wars with other countries made my country rich enough to provide me with free education from the ages of 4-23. But do X’s scuba diving trips or Y’s Hong Kong shopping trip contribute in any meaningful way to anything? Decadent consumerism.
I’m not proposing that we should all become Merlin or Jesus-like and not leave our tribe, but a little self control, please!
I am now gorging myself on a slightly runny Camembert.
But travel isn’t always about going to places where people are poorer. Would it be decadent of me to visit Florence? Or Berlin?
See, it’s thin end of the wedge time with your debate. You can’t eat that cheese you know. Come to think of it, should you even be in Taiwan? Isn’t that a case of prolonged and excessive decadent consumerism? Or aren’t you saving any money?
I think it’s worse if you eat it on 300 dollar imported water biscuits. Buttercup pledges to reform! Hail the new puritan!
Florence, as long as you are cramming in a morning peering at a renaissance tryptych, does your life-changing experience have more intellectual and moral resonance than a night at the bingo?
Taiwan, perhaps decadent, but in a different way. I’m certainly not on holiday here, as my recent tax bill proves. I have flown less than the average Brit in the past few years. I would debate whether living here has broadened my horizons. Why would I think I was functioning on a higher level because I did exactly what I felt like doing? ‘Growing’ would have been staying in the UK and working in my family’s business.
[quote=“Buttercup”]I think it’s worse if you eat it on 300 dollar imported water biscuits. Buttercup pledges to reform! Hail the new puritan!
Florence, as long as you are cramming in a morning peering at a renaissance tryptych, does your life-changing experience have more intellectual and moral resonance than a night at the bingo?
Taiwan, perhaps decadent, but in a different way. I’m certainly not on holiday here, as my recent tax bill proves. I have flown less than the average Brit in the past few years. I would debate whether living here has broadened my horizons. Why would I think I was functioning on a higher level because I did exactly what I felt like doing? ‘Growing’ would have been staying in the UK and working in my family’s business.[/quote]
Certainly, to sit in Taiwan and eat food imported from one’s home country is decadent. But it is also decadent to sit and eat cheese imported from France if one is a Brit? Wasteful yes, decadent, I’m not sure.
Decadent travel would be a Londoner flying to Cornwall during the half-term. I don’t think it is decadent to travel from England to the Vatican city, or Athens as a tourist. I wouldn’t call that bread and circuses, otherwise everything is. Even giving to charity could be labelled as selfish by that standard.
It is possibly decadent to go to snorkelling in Thailand for the 8th time when one lives in Taiwan. That could come under the ‘bread and circuses’ banner.
I think most people would say that they are broadening rather than limiting their horizons by living in Taiwan.
I didn’t say I was limiting my horizons by living here, but they haven’t expanded at all. Why would they? Is it Taiwan, specifically, that would alter my personality, or living abroad, generally? It’s just wallpaper. Does the ‘otherness’ in a place have value for the individual? And even if it does, what relevance does that have to society as a whole?
I didn’t say I was limiting my horizons by living here, but they haven’t expanded at all. Why would they? Is it Taiwan, specifically, that would alter my personality, or living abroad, generally? It’s just wallpaper. Does the ‘otherness’ in a place have value for the individual? And even if it does, what relevance does that have to society as a whole?[/quote]
The only thing I share with Alain is a fascination for falling in and out of love.
I’m not having you get me to argue for Taiwan! But another culture would indeed show one another way to do things. Yes, any culture. I get that from teaching, so I don’t need it from culture, and I am guessing you are the same. Kids show me how to think outside of my box. Beer also gets me out of my box, but perhaps in a different way.
‘Otherness’ does have value for an individual, just in the way climbing a mountain does, or walking by the coast does. Just ask Daphne Du Maurier. (My second reference to her today!) Observing smallness, or largeness, or otherness stimulates the cranial pathways. And it is hard to get as much of that otherness from just reading a book. External stimulation is good for one. Travel is therefore good for one, and foreign travel is the height of this.
But it is your own culture that makes you say such a thing. A Judeo-Christian sense of being fallen, incomplete, not good enough as you are.
Would a Thai monk say; ‘Oh, if only I could see Macchu Picchu, then I would be more acceptable to myself and my peers?’
What’s the post Nietzschean recipe for slurping up the numinous? Backpacking.
Cheese is an oderous modern fart in the face of Hera.[/quote]
A thai monk would say ‘This monk lark is better than going to prison for killing my wife.’ A monk still needs teachings to follow. It’s not the same as being a hermit.
Are you looking at this purely from a religious viewpoint? I’m looking at it from a personal expansion viewpoint. I slurp up most of my numinous by reading and re-reading ‘The brothers Karamazov.’ When I want to feel awe inspired by creation can’t I go and take a look at San Fransico, or eat some Emmental? Is all I really need a copy of the Orestian Trilogy (or Pilgrims Progress) and some Red Leicester?
[quote=“TomHill”]
Cheese provides odorous modern farts.[/quote]
A subtle yet distinct difference.
OK, fair enough about the monks. The Sangha is not always perpendicular and the robe is not as transparent as it should be.
Medea, Merlot and mozzarella would be an interesting starting point. If you can handle it. Is there anyone who got more from scoffing felafels on the Khao San Road than from reading ‘The Idiot’?
Zhang Guixing’s new novel “My South Seas Sleeping Beauty” has just been described as “Marquezesque est vous a plenty” and I wonder if that is possible in Chinese or if perhaps more credit is not due the translator. Zhang Guixing himself is an English teacher residing in Taipei and teaching, predictably enough, at a high school for girls, though of course he grew up in Borneo. One wonders if this might be the dawn of something vaguely interesting or have the critics out done themselves again. Your thoughts on the isssue, while appreciated, will not likely be terribly informative and it is with this sad thought that your narrator returns to Chinesepod. com for another lesson in ritualized geriatric abuse, quite a problem in the expat community cheese or no.
I was kidding Tom. Anyway, the novel looks interesting. Having grown up in Borneo Zhang Guixing apparently does not need to make things up so much as “invest his own life story with mythical proprtions.” Have you ever neen to Indonesia? What is this tread about anyway? Sorry.
I have been to Bali. Is that in Indonesia? I didn’t try the cheese there either way.
This thread is mostly about the statement, ‘travel is all bread and circuses.’
I’m sure it will be a temporary issue by the time I wake up. Everything in moderation.
Yup. Quite different from the rest of Indonesia I think though because it has always been more Hindu than Muslim. What this translates to culturally is anybody’s guess. The history of that country is extrordinary and I am a neophyte.
Sure hasn’t been for me. I have always travelled to fairly poor countries and, until recently, always on the cheap and mostly alone.
Actually, it is hard for me to imagine being me without the travel. The first point of entry listed in my passport is Jesus. I’d ramble on about the possible symbolism of that but for the fear of becoming cryptic once again.
Oh, this thread is a game! What ho! Or perchance it is just fun. Ladies and gentleman, I present the celebrated Blondin donkey. (To the search engine Batman!)
What fun. Who knows where it might end up next!
Bob, Buttercup contends that your travel has all been in vain for you, and has been detrimental to the very sites that you have scrutinized for your personal development.
And that cheese is in someway indicative of this contention.
Something I have come to understand and appreciate about Buttercup is that she is always exactly half right and half wrong. It is a rare talent, as much ying as yang and so on and so forth. I wonder, has she been to Hat Rin?
EDIT: This post was far too serious, and contained a lot of pointless nastiness towards backpackers, so I’ve edited most of it away. They can’t help it, the poor things.
Anyway, here’s what’s left.
And I find myself arguing with her about half the time, but who’s to say that my halves correspond to hers in any way? Anyway, this time she’s right.
Very often the supposed highlights of any trip are not as good as described in the adverts, as evinced by the number of backpackers sitting around and telling other backpackers that the Reclining Buttercup is a bit crap and too commercialised these days and that if you want to experience the real forumosa you should visit the bob monument which is now 100ft down in the temp forum and may disappear any time soon. Woohoo! We’re cooler than you!