How important is travel for you?

[castalia]

I believe that travel is very important for personal and societal development. If someone also has the education to understand what he sees in foreign countries, it could really make a huge difference and change one's beliefs about the world and other cultures.

How has travel to foreign countries impacted your beliefs about other peoples?

[LifesEcstasy]

It's not all that important. I travel for a living and it ceased to be a wonder and educational experience a long time ago. The more I travel the more I realise people the world over are basically the same. Which is to say walking time bombs of insecurity and fear. The only thing that changes is the architecture and folk costumes.

[Rationality]

Travel is important, or at least it's something I enjoy. I'd be sad if I knew I'd never get to travel again. At the same time I'm very practical, so I don't do it as often as I could, because it's expensive and would require so much time to learn languages. I also think people everywhere are basically the same though, at heart. There are cultural differences obviously, but people are people. The world seems to be getting very blended in modern times too. I imagine places were more exotic and different before the age of cheap air travel, internet, and global brands.

[katrin]

It's not all that important. I travel for a living and it ceased to be a wonder and educational experience a long time ago. The more I travel the more I realise people the world over are basically the same. Which is to say walking time bombs of insecurity and fear. The only thing that changes is the architecture and folk costumes.

I agree with LE for the most part but I think for many people a little travel can be a good thing. There are some I know (Americans) who don't seem to learn much from travel at all. It's just about partying in Cancun or a "been there, done that, got the t-shirt" attitude toward Europe.

As a history, art, and architecture buff, I've enjoyed immensely the little foreign travel I've done. Lately I've just been wanting to stay in my own country, visiting some new cities and places of natural beauty.

[Warrior]

Some aspects of traveling are okay. It is interesting to see some major historic places and things in person. On the other hand, I'd just as soon not have to figure out a new menu every few days and it can really wreck a training schedule. I learned more history of the places I visited before I went as I did when I got there, but it is nice to visit something like a battlefield and get a better feel for what happened and why. Can't say it changed my opinion of the people in those places at all - mainly just reinforced what I already expected to find.

[SaturnEternity]

People need to travel more often, to many people have become chauvinists here. Its because so many people tend to live in a bubble and all the info they get of whats outside our borders is complete exaggerated crap. The more people get out the more they learn and become aware, the more bubbles pop.

[N0c7urn3]

I agree that the opportunity to travel is a simultaneously a great opportunity to learn. However, I have also seen people go everywhere and learn nothing too. I guess it has everything to do with who you are. Personally, I haven't travelled much, but I did spend an extended amount of time abroad. It made me realise how much culture and societal norms can affect human behaviour. It is simultaneously enlightening and depressing to note just how little say we have in who we are. Who you are is significantly affected by where you are born. A little bit of culture shock should help people realise this, I guess.

[HKF]

The more I travel the more I realise people the world over are basically the same. Which is to say walking time bombs of insecurity and fear. .

Ditto to the first portion. Regardless of differences in cultures, religions, ethnicity, physical appearances, we are human beings with needs, perceptions read sterotypes, fear, desire to be needed/loved, etc.

of cos, i wouldn't want to encounter cannibals, murderers, kidnappers during my travels (which would mean I'm dumb enough to wander to their habitat), as much as they are fellow human beings as well...

[Findley]

People need to travel more often, to many people have become chauvinists here. Its because so many people tend to live in a bubble and all the info they get of whats outside our borders is complete exaggerated crap. The more people get out the more they learn and become aware, the more bubbles pop.

This almost seems like an oversimplification. Does this apply to the average INTJ? Personally, I gravitate towards acquiring knowledge about ideas, things, and places over visiting somewhere new. I think traveling is important to some people, but not necessarily to me. Why seek new landscapes when you can have new eyes?

[Jessamein]

I like to travel. I like to visit places that are different from those in my country. I would love to check out the culture, architecture and history of different places. This is what draws me to travelling.

[eileen]

Travel is one experience I could never go without. When I travel I am outside of my ordinary surroundings and forced to be in the present moment. I try to take 1-2 trips a year to somewhere I have never been, by plane whenever possible.

[Samoan Corleone]

I love travel; there's a whole world out there rich with history, and a whole lot of people with stories to tell. It's pricey, though, but I intend to see as much of the world as I can. I've been to a few countries, and most places in my home countires (New Zealand and Samoa). Once I get a good job, I'd definitely look at visiting a different place every year.

[Still Standing]

I don't see the point of traveling to places where I don't interact with the locals. I never really understood the idea of sightseeing and learning about the history of a place. You might as well just do that in the comfort of your own home, reading a few articles and viewing a couple of videos on Youtube about your place of interest. A lot cheaper and just as enlightening.

But yeah, getting to know different people in different environments than my own is important to me. Discovering their foods, their daily activities, their beliefs, etc. is something that helps me grow as a person, as much in terms of knowledge as in terms of understanding and acceptance towards those who live differently than me.

[Kricket]

Travel is extremely important to me- I'd call it one of my passions (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). Each travel experience gives me better perspective; people are certainly the same all over. It's easy to forget that if you never leave home. You know and see "us" every day, but the only time you hear about "them" is in the news.

Also, I like to see how things are put together, and learning about history fits in nicely with that. How did we get here? How was that temple built? Who's feet polished these steps smooth before I came here with my polyurethane soles? Then I go home and wonder who will be asking those questions about my footprints a hundred years from now. Thinking this way is enjoyable for me. Putting the threads of history together is as tangible and beautiful as weaving a blanket.

I think even small trips have value. A few hours spent in a new corner of your own town, or out in the wilderness... even they impart valuable information. Travel puts you in the (literal) place of others and increases knowledge and awareness.

[Luciferi]

I like some aspects of travel, but doing it often is very exhausting and it takes the fun out of it. My favourite part of traveling isn't so much people and customs, but languages. I like seeing how much of a new language I can learn or how much i can improve one I already know and I like hearing and seeing another language everywhere and just absorbing it all.

[OhSoLovely]

I believe it is truly necessary to become a worldly, understanding, well-informed person. I travel a lot and gain so much from each new place. I gain an understanding that a world exists beyond my small suburbia and people in other countries live different lives than I do. I gain an understanding of the problems the world faces as well as the beauty there is to find.

I have cousins who haven't left their small town and they cannot even fathom certain things that I've seen.

[ModernLit]

i love traveling. i wonder though if it's just a way to escape my reality for awhile, or just to go somewhere so i appreciate "home" when i get back.

i love traveling alone and seeing the world. i think it makes me interesting to see how other people in different parts of the world live their lives. the US is such a young country compared to the rest of the world... i drink culture like nectar.

[Urshulgi]

I love traveling, and it disappoints me that I don't get to do it more often.

If your traveling consists of airport/hotel/work/airport, then I can see why it wouldn't be satisfying. A lot of our consultants express that.

I'm going to Russia for five weeks in September, and I'm stoked!

[Judoka]

Travel is good entertainment period. I don't see any need to dig much into the subject...

[GouldFan]

Traveling used to be a favorite thing for me to do, but the passion sort of died on me. I'm not opposed to traveling, and would like to do more in the future, but I want to sort out my life before I do that.

[Dolores]

I love traveling. I like to go to different places all over the world. I definitely prefer round trips to beach holidays, although a beach holiday is nice sometimes. I gain a lot from traveling. It's very enlightening. I just wish I had more money, so that I could afford the trip I fancy doing: Nepal and the Maldives.

[hagandazs]

I love travelling. It has made me become more open minded, forces me out of my comfort zone, and makes me more well-informed by being exposed to different cultures.

[Booko]

Traveling abroad is only useful to the extent one submerges oneself in the culture to learn about it as opposed to going on sightseeing tours and coming home with holiday snaps to impress your friends with how much you could afford to "travel." ;)

I haven't been able to travel abroad for some years (unless you call Canada "foreign" which I don't), but that hasn't in any way stopped me from learning about other places in the world or other cultures. Well, the Internet is a great advantage if one goes looking to meet people from other places, which I tend to do.

Aside from that, my life puts me in something of a position to have a lot of the world come to my doorstep. I live in the part of my city that's heavy with immigrants, which helps. It would be possible to isolate myself and remain only a part of the middle class mostly white community here, but I'd find that tragically boring. Maybe I'm a weird INTJ, but I don't have trouble striking up conversations with strangers anywhere I might happen to be at the time.

But even more so than living among many immigrants, my religion (Baha'i) is set up in such a way that it makes it very difficult to segregate myself from fellow Baha'is who are unlike me culturally, and as Baha'is tend to move around the world quite a lot, I never know who I might meet and strike up a friendship with.

Travel would be more important to me if I had the money and health to pursue it, and in fact dh and I hope that at some point we can "retire" by living elsewhere in the world and doing something useful (teaching, probably) with less regard to the need for income. What we end up doing will depend on whether our health allows and where something we can offer is needed somewhere in the world.

In the meantime, travel in the form of "road trips" is important to me. It seems to be something of a cultural thing for people who grow up in Michigan to be ready to hit the road and drive anywhere, anytime, for any excuse or none at all. At least I get a lot of jokes about that from people from other states, so I figure maybe we're weird.

I hate being too physically stuck to one place, and even an hour's drive to the N. Georgia mountains for a day can do the trick.

---------- Post added 08-29-2010 at 03:30 PM ----------

There are some I know (Americans) who don't seem to learn much from travel at all.

QFT.

I don't get a lot of my fellow Americans understand there are different meanings to words like "travel," "vacation," and "sightseeing."

---------- Post added 08-29-2010 at 03:40 PM ----------

This almost seems like an oversimplification. Does this apply to the average INTJ? Personally, I gravitate towards acquiring knowledge about ideas, things, and places over visiting somewhere new. I think traveling is important to some people, but not necessarily to me. Why seek new landscapes when you can have new eyes?

You can learn a great deal about many things by reading about them, but some things you can't understand with any depth unless you actually experience them.

I don't travel for new landscapes...I could watch the Travel Channel for that.

I travel to meet people who do not share my cultural views and who will challenge me to consider different ideas, to find what is good in both our cultures and what might do with a bit of improvement. I travel to get out of the intellectual and cultural bubble I live in. Books can help, but they aren't nearly enough. Books aren't written by a representative crosssection of humanity, for starters.

Yes, it might be difficult for some INTJs to get out of their heads, but there's a world out there and it's worth your while to actually have conversations with real people sometimes. ;)

[runoverazebra]

I love travel. It's made me into the person that I am. This quote summarizes my thoughts on the subject more eloquently than I ever could:
"Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating."
- Michael Crichton

[alphawolf]

I believe that travel is very important for personal and societal development. If someone also has the education to understand what he sees in foreign countries, it could really make a huge difference and change one's beliefs about the world and other cultures.

How has travel to foreign countries impacted your beliefs about other peoples?


It's very important to me. It changed my life completely.

[Mohammad]

while i do appreciate travel, i think its more important to live in another country, rather than just to visit it.
the distinction arises because visiting just hits the high points of the place in question, whereas living there shows what people there actually go through in their daily lives. clearly, the second option presents a more meaningful perspective. :)

[TrailBlazer]

I am traveling often enough, work. Always live in the same place however.

[deacon]

while i do appreciate travel, i think its more important to live in another country, rather than just to visit it.
the distinction arises because visiting just hits the high points of the place in question, whereas living there shows what people there actually go through in their daily lives. clearly, the second option presents a more meaningful perspective. :)

big +1 here... what's the point of going somewhere for 2 weeks, shopping, eating, and looking at how other people live? air travel also kinda sucks and isn't as glamorous with all the security checks. i'm talking mostly of those that visit other cities since the beach or the countryside has a calming effect where you don't think of most of your problems. i think they're therapeutic.

[REMwoman]

while i do appreciate travel, i think its more important to live in another country, rather than just to visit it.
the distinction arises because visiting just hits the high points of the place in question, whereas living there shows what people there actually go through in their daily lives. clearly, the second option presents a more meaningful perspective. :)
Every place is a potentially great place if you're there on vacation. Living in a place can open your eyes to the seamy underbelly of life in that place. For example, London is an awesome place to visit and an awesome place to live if you have loads of money. If you are just an ordinary person, it is not a very nice place to live.

[Still Standing]

What's the point of going somewhere for 2 weeks, shopping, eating, and looking at how other people live?

Well, you can talk to those people too, learn how their life is both different from and the same as yours. Most likely, you will be eating different foods from what you eat at home, too. You'll discover the local specialties. Shopping is optional if there's nothing you need to buy. I think it's a great learning experience, and also a nice way to take a break from the routine and gain some perspective. Also, you don't have to stay in the same place all the time. Nothing's stopping you from moving around if you get bored where you are.

[Macka]

I'll go against the grain and say I don't think it's important. I have little interest in travelling, and I've only travelled as far as Australia. I live in New Zealand, so most people would barely consider that leaving the country.

I know my ex and a few friends simply can't understand that I have no interest in travelling. I don't know specifically why; I've just never wanted to travel or see the world.

I don't see it as particularly important to learn about new cultures or experience the world in that way. I work for a multinational company, and I get a lot of exposure to different cultures that way, although it's not really something I either enjoy or dislike.