Go2Go2Go2
^{Travel Exhortations by Ric Carter}

MODERNITY

The laws and principles discovered in modern (post-Newtonian) physics can easily be applied to travel, to gain a greater understanding of the universes surrounding and within us. Modern physics is often seen as incomprehensible, especially by Liberal Arts majors and most especially by post-modern literary theorists and critics, whose own concepts and worldviews are even more mind-numbing and which can't even be shown to work. In these guides I hope to show all you non-mathematicians that your fears are (mostly) groundless and that all this stuff is as easy to digest as curry tofu and lemongrass tea.

NOTE: It's amazing how much the discoveries of modern physics are presaged in ancient Jain philosophy. See ParaLogic: The JAIN DOCTRINE of MAYBE, Extended for details.

• * THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE - just who knows what?
• * THE INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM - can't know it all
• * SPECIAL & GENERAL RELATIVITY - it all depends on...
  
  
• * CHAOS-COMPLEXITY: EMERGENCE - i'm all mixed up
• * (IM)PROBABILITY THEORY - it can't happen here...
• * NON-EUCLIDIAN GEOMETRY - falling off the world
  
  
• * QUANTUM TRAVEL & LIMITS - wierder than possible
• # THE LIMITS TO TRAVEL - just how far can we go?
• # JAIN PARALOGIC PLUS - beyond either/or logic

UNCERTAINTY

Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle shows that any observation we make changes what we observe. This is true at mini-microscopic scales, where the act of locating a particle pushes it somewhere else, and at maxi-macroscopic scales, where observing members of a culture introduces interactions that changes what they do and are. And thus it applies to travel.

In many cases your alteration of events where you go is just a probalistic, statistical matter. Unless you carry and use an assault weapon and/or explosives, or are part of a group performing odd sexual-social-political-religious-etc rituals, your trip to Disney World will likely only be noted by the bean-counters who log your tiny contribution to their cash-flow. Much non-interventionist travel, especially to fabricated 'destinations' designed to efficiently separate you from your dwindling money supply, has similar statistical effects: a bunch of people going somewhere to throw cash around makes the financial analysts smile, while staying away in droves makes their mealy mouths droop.

But travel to other locales, and engage in one-on-oine interactions with the natives and/or other visitors, and you can have a large impact, changing their behaviours and creating uncertainties about what you've actually experienced. Such uncertainties may include:

• Sex Tourism: Was that 12-year-old Thai really a virgin?
• Green Tourism: Was that bird I netted among the last of its species?
• Language Tourism: Was that a polite greeting or a crude expletive I was taught, and why do people gesture so violently when I speak?
• Sight-Seeing: Why does my guide smirk and lead me into a dark alley?
• Bicycle Touring: Haven't we passed this shrine five times already?
• Artisan Touring: What do you mean, I touched it so I have to buy it?

The only way to reduce uncertainty is to avoid observing and interacting with people and places and things. Stay home. Turn your TV on. Watch it carefully. Do everything your TV tells you, as long as you don't journey any further than the nearest shopping mall or theme park. Otherwise, stay home. Keep your doors and windows shut. Do not answer the door or phone. Stay calm.

ADDENDUM:

In the late-20th- and early-21st-century zeitgeist (spirit of the times), Uncertainty (and its relationship to Apathy) can be found encapsulated in the popular exclamation WHATEVER. Our standard of living is dropping? Whatever. A war is illegal, unwarranted, unwise, counter-productive? Whatever. Gasoline is more expensive than wine? Whatever. Our planet is an egg laid by an interstellar bird, covered with cosmic dust, and one day soon the egg will hatch? Whatever.

This gestalt is classically expressed in THE WHATEVER SUTRA, a nicely poetic succinct description of reality as we think we know it.

RELATIVITY

Albert Einstein's formulations of Special and General Relativity show that there are no constants (except the Cosmological Constant, about which few if any cosmologists agree) and that everything is relative to every­thing else. Thus all systems are local; nothing is universal except the universe itself. He also showed that the two greatest forces in the universe are gravitation and compound interest, but that's another matter.

Like UNCERTAINTY, about which Einstein remained uncertain, Relativity also operates on all scales, from within the innermost hidden nooks and crannies of itsy-bitsy atoms to the far-flung expanses approaching the boundaries of creation, if any. And it operates in the realm of human interactions.

Cultural Relativity

The application to travel is mainly in the field of Cultural Relativity, which shows that no cultural-moral-philosophical absolutes exist. Everytyhing related to people and peoples, every action and artifact and argument, is beyond right and wrong, true and false, depending only on its cultural context for validation. Infanticide is wrong in modern Western cultures (except via prenatal screening) but right and even desirable in China, India, and Tennessee. Arrogant posturing is unacceptable in traditional Eastern religion and European politics but is mandatory in American politics, religion and academia. Guns are evil in Europe but are objects of devotion in the US, Latin America and the Middle East.

Travelers need to remain alert for cultural relativity as they wander the world. When rebels (aka bandits aka insurgents aka liberators aka terrorists aka patriots) capture you and hold you for ransom, this is an ordinary business practice and not a crime in many places, the same as when industrialists bribe (aka donate aka support aka encourage) corrupt (aka pragmatic aka progressive aka entrepreneurial) local officials to allow dumping of toxic wastes (aka surplus resources aka recyclable materials aka industrial feedstocks aka noxious garbage) on lands occupied by impoverished peons (aka developing populations, etc). Everything is relative; everything can be judged only within its own context.

Financial Relativity

Also relevant to travel is the study of Financial Relativity, Many currencies (US and Australian and Canadian and Hong Kong dollars, Mexican pesos, and others) are denoted by the same '$' symbol, but the numbers following that '$' are not equivalent — they are relative to some local norm. A coin or bill marked $10 will purchase very different amounts of the same stuff in various places, both within and beyond national borders. Try it and see.

And calculations involving currencies are invariably complicated by conversion factors, percentage shaving, taxes, tips, freight charges, and other imponderables. So don't be surprised that when, in Canada for instance, you purchase 50 liters (about 12 gallons) of petrol at #1.25 per liter, which should cost $62.50 (about US$50), and you hand over a $50 bill and a $20 bill, and all you get for change are just three bizarre octagonal copper coins called Loonies (Canadian dollars) and a smudged receipt in French. That's just how it works here.

Professional Relativity

Then there's Professional Relativity. In the Yukon, three teams of auto-repair professionals charged us over $1000 and couldn't find a single loose wire that another mechanic found and fixed for under $100. And in Mexico and Guatemala, tire-repair professionals effected patches for under US$3.00 that in the states or Canada would have set us back by $30-$50. You can draw your own conclusions about relative professionalism.

As you can see, Relativity can play an important part in your travels. Just remember that you can really save money if you stay with your relatives, especially with the "black sheep" of your family, who will be so amazed that you actually want to have anything to do with them that they'll treat you extra nice. Probably.