Posted on 5 July 2015

I don’t know about “worst advice of all time” but Chelsea Fagan certainly hits some points about travel and privilege that are well made:

“It’s a way for the upper classes to pat themselves on the back for being able to do something that, quite literally, anyone with money can buy. Traveling for the sake of travel is not an achievement, nor is it guaranteed to make anyone a more cultured, nuanced person. (Some of the most dreadful, entitled tourists are the same people who can afford to visit three new countries each year.) But someone who has had the extreme privilege (yes, privilege) of getting out there and traveling extensively while young is not any better, wiser, or more worthy than the person who has stayed home to work multiple jobs to get the hope of one day landing a job that the traveler will assume is a given. It is entirely a game of money and access, and acting as though ‘worrying about money’ on the part of the person with less is some sort of trivial hangup only adds profound insult to injury.”

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