Homecoming - Travel as a Political Act - page 368

cure bed each night knowing that 25 struggling moms and their kids do as well. When you
can learn to vicariously enjoy the consumption of someone who's dealing with more basic
needs than you are, you are richer for it. With this outlook, helping to provide housing to
people in need is simply smarter, more practical, and more gratifying than owning a big
yacht. (This can be done on a smaller scale with much less equity, too.)
Find creative ways to humanize our planet while comfortably nestled into your work-
aday home life. Sweat with the tropics, see developing-world debt as the slavery of the
21st century, and feel the pain of “enemy losses” along with the pain of American losses.
Do things—even if only symbolic—in solidarity with people on the front lines of struggles
you care about.
Put your money where your ideals are. Know your options for local consumption and
personal responsibility. Don't be bullied by non-sustainable cultural norms. You can pay
more for your bread to buy it from the person who baked it. You can buy seasonal pro-
duce in a way that supports family farms. You can, as a matter of principle, shun things
you don't want to support (bottled water, disposable goods, sweatshop imports, and so
on). You can use public transit or drive a greener car. Consume as if your patronage helps
shape our future. It does.
Keep on Whirling
With the fall of the USSR, I remember thinking, “Wow, the USA will reign supreme on
this planet through the rest of my lifetime.” It seemed that American values of democracy
and the free market would be unstoppable. And American economic might, coupled with
our hardball approach to maintaining our relative affluence, would be insurmountable. We
would just keep getting richer and more powerful.
Of course, the outlook today is more sober. We've been humbled by dysfunctional
government, the limits of our military power, periodic financial woes, the meteoric rise
of India and China as economic giants, the costly specter of global climate change, and a
general inability to shape events both overseas and at home.
In this Global Age, the world's problems are our problems. It'll be all hands on deck.
We need to address these challenges honestly and wisely. Lessons learned from our travels
can better equip us to address and help resolve the challenges facing our world. We travel-
ers are both America's ambassadors to the world...and the world's ambassadors to Amer-
ica.