Mountain road (source)
Robert Louis Stevenson once said: “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” It seems, when you’ve taken a step forwards it’s highly illogical to retreat unless the situation so ambiguous that makes you to take a second thought. The following reflection is going to be not about thoughts or ideas. It’s about varieties of travel and its motives.
Modern people got needs. We won’t discuss where did they originate: in civilized times or much, much earlier in a dawn of human civilization. What is important, is the fact that modern human conditions in Western European countries and in the North America, promote travels as a lifestyle. Meanwhile, in Central, Eastern European countries and in the other states, they are part of basic needs, because people usually travel or… to describe it more correctly take trips as a part of labor migration.
To get a meaningful understanding of this delicate matter, you should know that many scientists tried to make a useful model of human needs. In this case, we’ll stay classy and will use hierarchy of needs developed by Abraham Maslow. Some people now think that he was wrong and his model is a very trivial concept. But there is a known fact, that it is much easier to criticize somebody’s work that to make a something innovative, effective, productive and complete. Except this, it’s hard or even impossible to find some concepts or classification made by those, who express their resentment.
According to A. Maslow needs can be grouped in 5 type in a hierarchical order (from the lowest to the highest). Among them: physiological needs, safety, social needs, esteem, self-actualization. Where can we place the travel or the need of travel?
First off, we need to determine two type of travel: one based on the need to get a knowledge and the inspiration, which financed as a typical or extraordinary vacation and one based on necessity: business travel, labor migration, training courses and other trips related to work or income.
When we say: “travel” most people around the world would imagine the picture of luxuries hotels, swimming pools, five-stars service, leisure, many shades of turquoise water near the shores of Caribbean Beaches. One might say: “Hold on a second! Are you talking about Caribbean Sea where The Pirates of the Caribbean are?” I would say, that I meant The Caribbean Sea in general, but the entertainment industry created a beautiful image of the travel to all these unforgettable places. The movie mentioned earlier, was filmed there, but movie didn’t make an attraction, because the sea with its features was there all alone. What filmmakers did, is to add some popularity.
Interesting thing is, that in this case nobody imagined a dim water of polluted, cold Baltic Sea or the Barents Sea, perhaps the Chukchi Sea. This means that as far as imagination goes there are a lot of famous move scenes comes to your mind. Basically there is nothing wrong with that, except the fact that these places are available for those, who can afford it financially.
Many people cannot do it. Even if they could, it seems that they won’t be able to fully appreciate an advantage of such place. It’s like a school group came to Paris to visit the Louvre and after the tour what the remembered is the entrance which has a shape of a pyramid (actually it calls The Louvre Pyramid). The point is, that they weren’t ready to appreciate masterpieces of art, not unless like the art connoisseurs for whom every detail is valuable, mostly esthetically. The bottom line here is, the appreciation of high-culture and related activities, including five stars vacation it’s a state of mind that you can develop along with a habit to some respectful pecuniary achievements.
The keyword for second type of travel is necessary. The obligatoriness is a part of life situation. Many people experience an influence of changes in the society, that makes them face new problems such as unemployment or lack of decent jobs. People lost their confidence and hope for a better future.
In some societies the culture actually based of joyless tradition connect with past. One can be surprised how cultural deformation can affect people’s mind. When I use word “deformation”, I mean deviation from normal or maybe common lifestyle that usually suppose to accompany the people of civilized society.
Well, it’s not a topic for now, but what is essential here is the understanding that when tragedy hit a nation or a society, people didn’t really think about the travel as a way to get entertained or get new excellent pictures, they think about survival in the meaning of brutal fight for a life or softer need of existence in the civilized times in uncivilized circumstances.
News feed is full of this kind of information. This causes migrations, domestic or international trips. Today’s life is completely different that it was 20 years ago. There is progress indeed, but not all countries in the world are part of it. That’s why when people travel with the idea of great rest it’s their self-actualization need which is positioned in the highest place of the hierarchy, while when people travel because they need to get a job etc., it’s situated much lower, somewhere between physiological and safety needs. Therefore, this second type of travel can be considered as a basic need, while first one it’s a matter of a choice and the development of higher needs.
Quick overview 