After returning from a year-long hiatus to the United Kingdom and continental Europe, I thought it would be prudent to share my experiences. Having caught the travel bug several years ago when visiting the UK for the first time, a year long overseas working holiday seemed like a dream come true. What I didn’t envisage was the effects of this experience on cognitions, specifically, the feelings of displacement, disorientation and dissatisfaction. In this article I aim to examine the effects of a changing environment on the human perceptual experience, as it relates to overseas, out-group exposure and the psychological mechanisms underlying these cognitive fluctuations.
It seems that the human need to belong runs deeper than most would care to admit. Having discounted any possibility of ‘homesickness’ prior to arrival in the UK, I was surprised to find myself unwittingly (or perhaps conforming to unconscious social expectation – but we aren’t psychoanalysts here!) experiencing the characteristic symptomatology of overall depression, including sub-signs of negative affect, longing for a return home and feelings concurrent with social ostracism. This struck me as odd, in that if one is aware of an impending event, surely this awareness predisposes one to a lesser effect simply through mental preparation and conscious deflection of the expected symptoms. The fact that negative feelings were still experienced despite such awareness causes an alternative etiology for the phenomenon of homesickness. Indeed, it offers a unique insight into the human condition; at a superficial level our dependency on consistency and familiarity, and at a deeper, more fundamental level, a possible interpretation of underlying cognitive processes involved in making sense of the world and responding to stimuli.
Taken at face value, a change in an individual’s usual physical and social environment displays the human reliance on group stability. From an evolutionary perspective, the prospect of travel to new and unfamiliar territories (and potential groups of other humans) is a altogether risky affair. On the one hand, the individual (or group) could possibly face death or injury through anthropogenic means or from the physical environment. On the other hand, a lack of change reduces stimulation genetically (through interbreeding with biologically related group members), cognitively (reduced problem solving, mental stagnation once initial challenges relating to the environment are overcome) and socially (exposure to familiar sights and sounds reduces the capacity for growth in language and, ipsofacto, culture). In addition, the reduction of physical resources through consumption and degradation of the land via over-farming (hunting) is another reason for moving beyond the confines of what is safe and comfortable. As the need for biological sustenance outranks all other human requirements (according to Maslow’s hierarchy), inductively it seems plausible that this could be the main motivating factor why human groups migrate and risk everything for the sake of exploring the unconquered territories of terra incognito.
The mere fact that we do, and have (as shown throughout history) uprooted our familiar ties and trundled off in search of a better existence seems to make the aforementioned argument a moot point. It is not something to be debated, it is merely something that humans just do. Evolution favours travel, with the potential benefits outweighing the risks by far. The promise of greener pastures on the other side is almost enough to guarantee success. The cognitive stimulation such travel brings may also improve the future chances of success in this operation through learnt experiences and the conquering of challenges, as facilitated by human ingenuity.
But what of the social considerations when travelling? Are our out-group prejudices so intense that the very notion of travel to unchartered waters causes waves of anxiety? Are we fearing the unknown, our ability to adapt and integrate or the possibility that we may not make it out alive and survive to propagate our genes? Is personality a factor in predicting an individual’s performance (in terms of adaptation to the new environment, integration with a new group and success at forging new relationships)? From personal experience, perhaps a combination of all these factors and more.
We can begin to piece together a rough working model of travel and its effects on an individual’s social and emotional stability/wellbeing. The change in a social and physical environment seems to predict the activation of certain evolutionary survival mechanisms that are mediated by several conditions of the travel undertaken. Such conditions could involve; similarity of the target country to the country of origin (in terms of culture, language, ethnic diversity, political values etc), social support to the individual (group size when travelling, facilities to make contact with group members left behind), personality characteristics of the individual (impulsive, extroverted vs introverted, attachment style, confidence) and cognitive ability to integrate and adapt (language skills, intelligence, social ability). Thus we have a (predicted) linear relationship whereby an increase in the degree of change (measured on a multitude of variables such as physical characteristics, social aspects, perceptual similarities) from the original environment to the target environment causes a resultant change in the psychological distress of the individual (either increased or decreased dependent upon the characteristics of the mediating variables).
Perceptually, travel also seems to have an effect on the salience and characteristics of the experience. In this instance we have deeper cognitive processes that activate which influence the human sensory experience on a fundamental level. The model employed here is one of stimulus-response, handed down through evolutionary means from a distant ancestor. Direct observation of perceptual distortion while travelling is apparent when visiting a unique location. Personally, I would describe the experience as an increase in arousal to one of hyper-vigilance. Compared to subsequent visits to the same location, the original seems somehow different in a perceptual sense. Colours, smells, sounds and tastes are all vividly unique. Details are stored in memory that are ignored and discounted after the first event. In essence, the second visit to a place seems to change the initial memory. It almost seems like a different place.
While I am unsure as to whether this is experienced by anyone apart from myself, evolutionarily it makes intuitive sense. The automation of a hyper-vigilant mental state would prove invaluable when placed in a new environment. Details spring forth and are accentuated without conscious effort, thus improving the organism’s chances of survival. When applied to modern situations, however, it is not only disorientating, but also very disconcerting (at least in my experience).
Moving back to social aspects of travel, I have found it to be both simultaneously a gift and a curse. Travel has enabled an increased understanding and appreciation of different cultures, ways of life and alternative methods for getting things done. In the same vein, however, it has instilled a distinct feeling of unease and dissatisfaction with things I once held dear. Some things you simply take for granted or fail to take notice of and challenge. In this sense, exposure to other cultures is liberating; especially in Europe where individuality is encouraged (mainly in the UK) and people expect more (resulting in a greater number of opportunities for those that work hard to gain rewards and recognition). The Australian way of life, unfortunately, is one that is intolerant of success and uniqueness. Stereotypical attitudes are abundant, and it is frustrating to know that there is a better way of living out there.
Perhaps this is one of the social benefits of travel; the more group members that do it increases the chances of changing ways of life towards more tolerant and efficient methods. Are we headed towards a world-culture where diversity is replaced with (cultural) conformity? Is this ethically viable or warranted? Could it do more harm than good? It seems to me that there would be some positive aspects for a global conglomerate of culture. Then again, the main attraction of travel lies in the experience of the foreign and unknown. To remove that would be to remove part of the human longing for exploration and a source of cognitive, social and physical stimulation. Perhaps instead we should encourage travel in society’s younger generations, exposing them to such experiences and encouraging internal change based on better ways of doing things. After all, we are the ones that will be running the country someday.
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1 January, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Dennis Quine
V:
Welcome back to the global hyperspace. Travel is always disconcerting, although I think our individual responses may vary. Some people relish the novelties of cultural discontinuities, and some just try to travel in a small bubble that holds as many of the familiar things together as possible. I’m in the latter group; I can’t imagine how I would respond to being dropped into a place like Tokyo where everything is changed from my previous environment.
There are a number of people in my extended family who have never left their birthplace. They grow up and marry, then settle just a few miles from the family home. I’m not a big time global traveler, but what traveling I do seems very strange to them. And the fact that I have moved 1500 miles away to finally settle seems also weird to them. “Why would anyone want to leave the perfect place?” (the Pacific Northwest). My only excuse: I like the dry climate in So California better, plus this is where my work is.
But we do adjust to the new culture after a while, and when I go back to Oregon to see relatives, I sense how I have changed, and somehow they and their environment have not, and it now seems strange and “foreign” to me in some respects, even though I lived there for 21 years growing up.
It appears that much of our life is contingent: there are different ways to do things, any one of which works equally well. Food preferences are an example. I have my idiosycrasies, but the foods that other people eat, although seeming strange at times, also work to keep things together.
I don’t think there is much chance of an emerging global uni-culture anytime in my or your lifetime. People cling to their roots and their tribe’s way of doing things too strongly. We Americans think we have the solution to everyone’s problems, and that leads us into these pointless campaigns to spread democracy and the free market in places where tribal roots are deep, and the people have no experience with “democracy”. We forget that the entire idea of democracy is an experiment in governance that is uniquely associated with the English-speaking peoples (using Churchill’s phrase) in modern times. The idea is totally foreign in places like China, Russia, and most of Africa. Contingency again: they have their ways of doing things that seems to work just as well for them as ours do for us. Even the ancient Greeks had democracy for only a small number in their society.
The forces that are making for a uniform global culture are economic globalization, and universal availability of communications (voice, TV, Internet), and the relative ease of travel. But we will still cling to our cultural identities, because that is how we define who we are in a chaotic world. I don’t think we are becoming “leveled”, because even in a small place like the United States, I sense the differences in ways of life in different areas of the country I visit. Let alone, across the whole world.
Anyway, hope you are comfortable back in your cultural home (Australia), even though it may feel a little strange after a year living in another place. After a while it will feel just like home again, and all those other places will be the strange ones (again).
Happy New Year
(that’s something that most ihabitants of earth share – except the Chinese)
DHQ
3 January, 2008 at 12:58 pm
vulcanis
Hi DHQ, thanks for the kind ‘welcome back’.
I never really thought that a global culture is imminent, basically I had to find something controversial upon which to end the article! But I think in the distant future, perhaps we will unite not only in governance but also in ideology and culture. If we ever develop space-faring technology capable of facilitating extra-terrestrial colonisation, our decendants might consider themselves as a different culture to Earth, thus providing a means to which another cultural division is created, and old differences assimilated.
It makes one wonder what the qualities of ’super-group’ formation must entail; does it require an external threat to act as a catalyst? Personally, I subscribe to this view. Historically, the alliance of different groups of people only seems to come to fruition in the presence of an overwhelming attack (or perceived attack – cue recent evidence eg “WMDs”) from another group that is clearly ‘alien’ in all aspects (political, social, cultural). Just look at all previous human conflicts, there is a clear division between ‘good guys’ and the bad, with each side holding views that chronologically increase in dichotomy. These differences can also be accentuated via propaganda machines, thus causing a greater division between the groups.
Is this group behaviour (where many weaker groups work together in the face of a common enemy) the only way in which global cooperation can be established? Or are we too primitive as a species to cast aside our differences and work towards the common good?
4 January, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Dennis Quine
V:
I don’t want to argue my position too strongly here, because it is obvious we are almost clueless about the future, given all the chaos we have now. But I am inclined to believe that the present surge toward globalization and a “super culture” will progressively come undone in the coming century. By 2100, we will look more like the 18th century, with a number of largely independent and isolated nations/societies, with minimal, not maximal contact between each other.
I base that somewhat negative prognostiocation on the probable convergence of several forces of global scale, all of which will promote increased tribalization and “watching out for oneself, the rest of the world can take the hindmost”.
The first is global warming and sea rise, which will cause massive disruption of populations, and make major shifts in agricultural areas inevitable. One of the things lost in all the hooplaw about CO-2 restrictions is that it is already too late. There is already enough warming going on that this thing will go to completion (warming and ice melting). Stopping the emissions now is irrelevant. The poles are already melting.
Secondly is the end of oil. By 2050, we will be through “Hubble’s Pimple” and be done with the oil age. Then renewables, coal, and nuclear will be the only recourse. The Middle East will be of much less interest to us then. Islamic fundamentalism will probably succeed in uniting that bunch of nations into a regional superstate, but they will have nothing to offer the rest of the world except hatred. Their goal will remain to drag the world back to the 13th century, not the 18th, and I think they may be successful in large parts of Africa and maybe Europe. Simply because they will outbreed everyone else, and have nucs.
Third is the human population (by 2060) pushing up against carrying capacity almost everywhere, and then collapsing in some places. With population reaching 10-12 B at the same time that resource wars (water, energy, etc) reach a crescendo, it will be impossible to hold the world together. Trade will collapse, and people will (as a couple of centuries ago) be more reliant on what they can produce locally. This huge global network of trade and transportation on which we rely on for modern culture will collapse, and we will return to a more tribalized and isolated world.
As far as going off world is concerned, if a viable self-reproducing society can be established on Mars by 2075, it may have a chance of sustaining itself through the Dark Age that will settle on Earth by the end of this century. There is nowhere else in the Solar System that looks interesting enough to be the target for long-term settlement. There is plenty of real estate in the outer system, but it is all at -200C, and sutaining life out there looks dicey, except for Antarctic-like research stations. With existing or forseeable technology, Mars is it. Then we are done.
I’m jaundiced about the possibility of FTL technology. Every experiment we conduct supports the speed limit of light as being real. Unless we invent something to overcome that, we are trapped in the solar system for a long time. More to the point, if my vision of the future is correct, we are headed for a collapse of high technology civilization on Earth by the end of the century, and there will be no way to even support a Solar-System wide civilization.
The argument that we are too smart today to let that collapse happen flies in the face of history: it has happened repeatedly that societies reach a culmination and develop advanced technical knowledge, then collape, or are overrun by tougher, more primitive peoples. What happened to the Egyptian high culture? Forget about what happened to Rome – they brought that on themselves.
Of course, this could all be wrong. Ray Kurzwell (“The Singularity is Near”) thinks the robots will take over before 2050 and straighten everything out. Probably by killing off 9B humans first to rebalance the global ecology. That’s an even worse future vision than mine of an impending Dark Age.
Whatever. Enjoy the sun.
Take care,
DHQ
6 January, 2008 at 8:37 am
vulcanis
DHQ,
It does seem likely that in the face of all this debate about global warming and infuriating procrastination by the world’s leaders we will see a global catastrophe. I must admit that I do feel very uneasy about the future, not only in becoming successful on a personal scale (which is largely to do with society’s ideology of success – get a job, have a family, retire and die) but also unease regarding the future of the human race.
I don’t fear death, on the contrary I think that death is the last ‘undiscovered country’ (to quote Star Trek); the final definitive answer to everything. Not in a religious sense, but rather in a restful, ‘mission accomplished’ sense. But I digress. I worry about the ability of the human race to keep it together.
I think we have so much to offer the universe, even if we aren’t unique. Sure, the cynical view looks bleak – humans are mostly looking out for themselves and every act can be reduced in essence to self-serving interests. But I think we do have some redeeming qualities, and have the potential to do much good (in a scientific sense – piecing together the great cosmological puzzle).
The reality check kicks in with the realisation that humanity has no idea what it is doing. For all our brain power and technical ability, everything can be reduced to a set of comprehensible foundations (possibly not Quantum Theory, however!). The ‘kick in the gut’ feeling really occurs once one realises that humans really do have no idea, and we are all just bullshitting our way through things. In the past we have managed to survive through sheer luck I am sure. This new challenge, however, it not going away anytime soon.
The infuriating thing is that try as I might to find a way out of this mess I can’t help falling back on the easy way of doing things. At the moment I am in between houses, and having to commute some 30-40 mins each day, pumping out greenhouse gases and contributing to the problem (or, DHQ, as you say it might already be too late therefore why am I worried).
I am worried because I care about the fate of the human race. I hold a romanticised view of the future (too much sci-fi) in which we break free of this planet and explore the cosmos. To have that dashed simply through a lack of forward planning and basically, greed, is tragic.
In reality, our society is setup in such a way as to dissuade caution and thoughtfulness. The bottom dollar is all that matters; to hell with a plan that takes the future into account. Cut costs by using cheaper materials (constructed usually of plastics), which in turn, makes it harder to break the cycle of climate destruction.
There are alot of people to whom you could never teach the principles of recycling or respect for the planet. In Australia we call them “bogans” (I think the American equivalent is “Redneck” hehe). If we are to ever challenge and conquer our shortcomings in dealing with this planet’s biosphere, world leaders are going to have to pull their finger out and act in the interests of the many, not just the few. Sure, the political ramifications would be tremendous, and probably not possible under a democratic government (forcing people to act in certain ways, changing procedures and processes of industry) but I think this sacrifice is necessary.
In regards to FTL travel, I do hold high hopes of its scientific possibility. Relativity does not rule out FTL, it is simply the ability to travel AT the speed of light that is theoretically impossible. Wormholes are another option, however the energy requirements and physical engineering are vastly beyond our capabilities at present. I wait with bated breath for the first results out of the new CERN particle accelerator. If we can piece together a grand unified theory, or at least gain some insight into the first few nano-seconds after the big bang (in that chaotic high energy environment), perhaps the creation of stable wormholes will slip-out as a natural consequence. Or an artificial black-hole will form within the accelerator and settle in the Earth’s core, sucking in the planet atom by atom. But hey, at least we won’t have to worry about the climate anymore. I’m sure Bruce Willis could lead a team of NASA scientists and ex-cons down to the core and nuke the black hole shut.
Maybe I am just being an unnecessarily optimistic romanticist, but I do hope that we make it through this crisis (it reminds me of the Asimov Foundation series where Hari Seldon foresees numerous events that challenge the existence of his outposts). If we can make it through this, I am sure we will hang around for a while afterwards. But it won’t be easy.
6 January, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Dennis Quine
V:
Nice discussion. You do have to remember what Harry Seldon missed: The Mule. As it turned out he was just a minor perturbation in the unfolding of the Seldon Plan. But for a while it looked like he would undo everything and set galactic history off in a new direction.
I’ve already admitted to a growing pessimism because of age, but like you when I was just starting my career I had high hopes that we were riding a wave of rationalism and science into a glorious future. Clarke and Asimov were my teachers, too. Overpopulation was still a century away, and no one had ever heard of global warming (although the CO-2 data going back into the 1800s indicated probable continual rise in the greenhouse effect).
The thing that finally got my attention is that things are not getting any better for the human race just because we have progress in science and engineering. We’ve had some marvelous events like the moon landings, but the conditions of human life overall, although changing, seem not to have improved that much the past 50 years. We are now facing potential disasters on many fronts, and there is (as you observe) no will to move foreward with solutions.
Everything isn’t totally depressing. I’m pleased the Pres reinvigorated the manned space exploration program and has funded a new generation of boosters for manned operations. Whether the new administration will sustain the plan to return to the moon and on to Mars, who knows. Maybe we will all be watching the Chinese on Mars in 2030.
I think the fundamental problem is we are not “wired properly” to deal with problems of global extent. We are fundamentally unchanged physically and psychologically since the Cro Magnons first appeared some 100,000 plus years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens (us) today is virtually indistinguishable from the creatures created by Africa lo those many centuries ago. We were birthed in a environment that placed emphasis for survival on close group living (families and small tribes) and saw success as staying alive one more day. No evolutionary pressures to think about global problems like coming ice ages.
So today we are still tribal, and short-sighted., because we are still those old Cro Magnons; we just learned to shave. But having spread all over the planet we are now facing planet-scale problems involving resources, climate, disease, conflict, etc. And the institutions we build to address those issues (e.g., the U.N.) are totally inept. My problem is, that I don’t see any way foreward that has a prospect of substantial improvement.
Maybe a “Mule” would do us good. Take human history off the track it is now on, and try another direction. All I see ahead now is a cliff and a precipitous drop into a global New Dark Age as all the converging waves mount up and overwhelm us in future decades
Ah well, enough of that. The playoffs are on in football.
Got to go,
DHQ
11 January, 2008 at 12:31 am
Dennis Quine
V:
Take a look at the web page “exit mundi”. All the ways the world can end, including some you’ve never thought of. Good science, interesting graphics. Much fun if you are feeling too optimistic about life.
Take care,
DHQ