It’s not just Laozi who doesn’t like to travel

Andrew Sullivan has quotes from Chesterton and Emerson on the foolishness of travel. Here's Emerson:

…He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not
carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old
things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and
dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise.

Sounds rather like Daodejing 47:

You
can know all beneath heaven though you never step out the door, and you
can see the Way of heaven though you never look out the window.

The further you explore, the less you know.

so it is that a sage knows by going nowhere, names by seeing nothing, perfects by doing nothing.

Did Emerson read the Daodejing? I don't think so (please set me straight if there is evidence that he did). But this book sketches the parallels between his thought and Daoism.

I still like to travel, however. I guess I'm just a fool….

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Sam Crane

I have moved The Useless Tree to WordPress. Hope this works!

Categories: Taoism, Travel

8 responses to “It’s not just Laozi who doesn’t like to travel”

Hang

May 6, 2009 at 10:41 pm

Travelling is a fool’s paradise? It’s something new to me. Daodejing says that? Need to check to make sure.

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CP

May 6, 2009 at 10:44 pm

Dang, Sam!
I just read Sullivan and was thinking the same connection, and was about to put up the same post!
Ah well, you beat me to it.
In any event, with respect to Laozi and Emerson, I’m sure that there are ways of desiring travel that really reduce to nothing but escapism. At the same time, it seems to me (IMO) that not traveling can also be motivated by a kind of severe insecurity about who one is.
One should travel, but do it in the right state of mind.
Maybe I’m a fool as well.

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gmoke

May 7, 2009 at 12:40 am

http://books.google.com/books?id=WQuYMnMQ0T4C&dq=Ralph+Waldo+Emerson+Lao+Tzu&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=f2YnZojys-&sig=4MFaGEgRFGx4ghzSN68waYZSUPU&hl=en&ei=RmUCStTfDZGktwfrwtWVBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPP24,M1
Evidently, Emerson did not read the Tao as the first English translation was not available until 1891, nine years after his death.

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jcapan

May 7, 2009 at 1:41 am

It seems that Emerson was of the “it’s not the place it’s the person” school of thought. He said: “I observe that men run away to other countries, because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own, because they pass for nothing in the new places.” In other words, those who travel or migrate are merely pulling geographicals, to escape from themselves or their selves.
David Lamb, the former LAT writer, once penned a wonderful piece on Rt. 66 in Nat. Geographic. In it, he said the hwy. (and all roads really) represented to the dispossessed and alienated the allure of going in lieu of merely being (a butchered paraphrase I’m certain). Perhaps Emerson’s own privileged upbringing accounts for his defense of stasis, though I know he travelled abroad on a few occasions. How might he have felt if he were a college student in 1989 Beijing or a young man in present-day Detroit?
I’m reading Ha Jin, a Chinese immigrant to the US, I myself am an perm. American expat in Japan. I admit I was no great success back home and I’m not here either. In fact, it’s success that I’m striving to avoid. Perhaps men concerned about “passing for nothing” aren’t the ones we should look to for distilled wisdom.
I know one thing for certain, in all the cities and states and nations I’ve lived in over the years, I’ve never been all that at peace with merely being. Confronted with my doppelganger image upon landing in Tokyo or the US et al, I soon seek out roads, trains, anything to keep the wheels turning in search of the unfamiliar. Maybe that makes me a fool or a malcontent or nothing. Or maybe like Odysseus, I’m searching for a road home, to some pre-historical utopia that never did/never will exist. But it’s the journey that’s fulfilling, and surely not the boring monotony of staying put.
And if I wind up like my countryman here:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_MISSING_POET_ASOL-?SITE=YOMIURI&SECTION=HOSTED_ASIA&TEMPLATE=ap_national.html
… the journey will be no less rewarding.

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BruceK

May 7, 2009 at 5:30 am

Seneca says exactly the same in his letters – I would have thought Emerson would have read these at some point.

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brosna

May 7, 2009 at 4:40 pm

Emerson and his great friend Henry David Thoreau both often referred to Chinese and Indian culture in criticising Western manners and politics. “Walden” contains a number of extended quotes from Confucius.
It is known that Thoreau possessed a copy of CONFUCIUS ET MENCIUS translated by Pauthier into French, published in 1841, and quite possibly read Pauthier’s TAO-TE-KING, according to

Click to access DavidTYChen_HDT_Taoism.pdf

I am less familiar with Emerson’s reading. I think he also read French translations from the Chinese, but in any case, he could have gotten it from Thoreau.

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gmoke

May 7, 2009 at 10:40 pm

“The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man’s ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company”
Seneca

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Alexus McLeod

May 9, 2009 at 12:01 am

I’m with Socrates and Kant on this one (although I don’t know their attitude on travel, just that they didn’t do it much). Although I’m not convinced desire to travel is always attempted escape or that it’s unjustified (though sometimes it is), it’s just not my cup of tea–for the most part. A week or two every year or so to check out some different places might not be bad, but I’d rather be home, with my library and my coffee and my local spots, just about anytime.

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