Gonna make a hot take that I dont think anyone will like but here it goes.
Literally so what? You don’t need to leave a 5 mile square radius to have a full life. People have lived their entire lives in a 25 square mile area and have had full and fulfilling lives for the entirety of human history.
We just live in an era of capitalist alienation and dissolution of communities and social ties that gives people a sense of listlessness and we are sold an environmentally unsustainable idea that we can simply release the pressure gauge of alienation and misery by visiting another town and seeing different buildings and trees twice a year for two weeks and our lives are more fulfilling and become more worldly.
“Wanderlust” is just a symptom of hedonic treadmill and a fundamentally unfulfilling life. For every 1-2K spent on “travel” you could do so many more positive things for yourself and your community that are actually meaningful and valuable.
Even if you manage to have a good time in one of these other cities, towns or areas all you will do is create a new desire to return to them. A gapping hole of desire that obliterates any attempt to fill it and draws everything around it into a pit of misery.
Many areas of the world suck and it makes sense to want to relocate.
But if you can’t find a 5-10 square mile area that you could see yourself living for the rest of your life and never leaving then the problem lies in your own heart and no material possession or amount of travel will ever satisfy you.
Gonna make a hot take that I dont think anyone will like but here it goes.
Literally so what? You don’t need to leave a 5 mile square radius to have a full life. People have lived their entire lives in a 25 square mile area and have had full and fulfilling lives for the entirety of human history.
We just live in an era of capitalist alienation and dissolution of communities and social ties that gives people a sense of listlessness and we are sold an environmentally unsustainable idea that we can simply release the pressure gauge of alienation and misery by visiting another town and seeing different buildings and trees twice a year for two weeks and our lives are more fulfilling and become more worldly.
“Wanderlust” is just a symptom of hedonic treadmill and a fundamentally unfulfilling life. For every 1-2K spent on “travel” you could do so many more positive things for yourself and your community that are actually meaningful and valuable.
Even if you manage to have a good time in one of these other cities, towns or areas all you will do is create a new desire to return to them. A gapping hole of desire that obliterates any attempt to fill it and draws everything around it into a pit of misery.
Many areas of the world suck and it makes sense to want to relocate.
But if you can’t find a 5-10 square mile area that you could see yourself living for the rest of your life and never leaving then the problem lies in your own heart and no material possession or amount of travel will ever satisfy you.
I like to ride bicycles with friends a lot further out than 5 miles