> On Aug 26, 2016, at 17:16, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote: > > I am not running down reading at all. But Eruv was probably a more trivial > example. > > You and I have read about Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki, Ra expeditions and Bill > Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” about the Appalachian trail. And possibly > Patrick O’Brian’s novels about the royal navy in the Napoleonic wars. > > The essential thing about brilliant travel literature is that it makes me > want to go there, and hike (as much as I can, mind) through some part of the > trail. And Heyerdahl and O’Brian make me want to go out to sea in something > more than the Hong Kong Star Ferry (the sum total of my actual nautical > experience). > > That is what good travel literature is – and all good literature. It opens > up multiple pathways to experiences and thoughts that one would never be > exposed to, if not for reading them. > > But once you’ve read them, a visit to say the Boston Navy Yard to see the USS > Constitution, or a visit to the Appalachians, becomes much more meaningful > and valuable to you. You actually find yourself seeking out places to travel > to based on what you have read .. or everybody’s holidays would be Thomas > Cook package tours stuck eating paneer butter masala and naan and then > getting onto a tour bus for sentosa island. >
Elitism of the highest order. How many people can really hike the Appalachian Trail after reading Bill Bryson? 20 percent of the book's readers, maybe? So for the remaining 80 percent, the reading experience becomes inferior because it hasn't opened multiple pathways to actual travel? That the book stirs the imagination and the mind isn't enough? We must remember that the people on package tours to Sentosa are often the first travelers overseas in the history of their families. We may all consider ourselves global citizens, but our ancestors who went abroad for the first time were also relatively unsophisticated travelers, by this metric. Not everyone has the luxury of reading a travel book and deciding to emulate the writer of that book. > On 26/08/16, 5:06 PM, "silklist on behalf of Samanth Subramanian" > <[email protected] on behalf of > [email protected]> wrote: > > > >>> On Aug 26, 2016, at 16:52, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> On 26/08/16, 5:00 PM, "silklist on behalf of WordPsmith" >>> <[email protected] on behalf of >>> [email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Intrigued by the phrase "second-hand nature of knowledge." >>> Can any knowledge be grouped into first- and second-hand? >> >> Oh I don’t know. Experiential knowledge does tend to be a cut above the >> “I’ve read about it” variety. >> >> For example that question about the “Eruv” enclosures erected on streets in >> orthodox jewish neighbourhoods so that observant jews can step outside their >> homes during the Sabbath and still technically remain indoors. >> >> What difference do you see between our mutual friend Vikram Joshi pointing >> out that he lived in such a neighbourhood and saw those for himself versus >> someone else who just read about it somewhere? >> >> Not much when you’re looking at the +15 on the pounce in a quiz. Possibly a >> lot more when that fact becomes one part of the total knowledge that makes >> you / shapes you as a person. >> >> A cruder non quizzing (or Brahman Naman) example that might draw a clearer >> distinction would be the hormonal teenager’s “before and after” – the before >> being when his only date is Mrs.Palm and her five daughters, helped along by >> an impressive collection of porn, and the after being when he begins to >> actually make friends with and date, let alone take that relationship any >> further. >> >> I am sure both the before and after incarnations of that teenager are >> familiar with the “insert tab A into slot B” mechanics of sex – but do they >> have the same knowledge? > > Our lives would be pretty poor lives if we all just relied upon > experiential knowledge for the sum total of our knowledge of the world. > Whatever happened to reading as a way to improve our exposure to the world, > improve the world's exposure to us? Why would we devalue, in this manner, > travel literature, or histories, or narrative non fiction, or any books by > foreign writers -- all of which provide us only with so-called "second-hand > knowledge" and not with the experience of these things (which are either > difficult or, in the case of histories, impossible to experience)? > > You can be shaped by the eruv like billy-o. But to suggest that the > cultural significance of that practice should only matter to people who have > lived in those neighbourhoods doesn't make sense. > > > >> --srs > > > > >
