Stop believing travelling makes us better

Guess what?
I don’t think travelling is a way to make people better.
I don’t think travelling opens our mind.
I don’t believe travelling will lead us to better political choices or social analysis.
I don’t believe travelling is an answer.

In the last 6 months we’ve seen a terrible polical campaign for the UK Brexit and one of the most frustrating primary and presidential US election as far as I can remember.
The results of the 3 above mentioned campaigns are (in my personal and debatable opinion) even more frustrating. And there might be even more frustration in the results of the upcoming Italian referendum regarding the constitutional changes.

And I don’t think that the end of the world as we know it is just due, as many say, to an an indefinite but high amount of uneducated people that don’t travel/don’t read books (the most overrated things when it comes to defining what makes us better citizens of the world).

I think people just stopped believing in all the stuffs we had the opportunity to hear about 10 years ago.
In policy. In No-Logo movements.
In what the common good actually is.
In what is actually “common”.
In what is actually “good”.

Yesterday, after the US Election Day results came out, I wrote on some social network:
“Let’s look at the bright side: Michale Moore will make some new film, at last and at least”

This was not a joke, nor a way to play down. I think very few of my followers and contacts understood it was first of all a cinic disapproval towards Michael Moore (that I actually like as director) and to all the intellectual people of the world, that have been so busy in loving Obama’s charm and sympathy, to totally neglect the fact that the US was still bombing 9 countries and fighting useless wars.

Travellers love Obama. Readers love Obama. Not to mention that a lot of the UK Brexit voters are rich and educated travellers.
And they made their choice as the Trum voters did. And also the Democrats who didn’t vote at all in order not to give their preference to Hillary Clinton actually did make a choice.

Another choice that must be made is to question the present idea of democracy.
Is the system of Electoral College democracy? Clinton ha 170.000 voters more than Trump, but she lost because of it just like happened to Al Gore Vs G.W. Bush.
Is the present Italian electoral system “democracy”? (Well, in my personal opinion, no, it’s not).

But that’s not the point I’m focused on today: the point is, even 170.000 people are not so many. So many people have their good(?) reasons to vote Trump/Brexit/Le Pen/Berlusconi etc.

What’s the point in seing the world and meeting people if we don’t listen to their stories and try to understand the reasons of their “in-my-opinion-oddest-choices”?

What’s the point in reading books if we only read those that speak our mind and point of view?

If we do so, I think we make the same mistakes of the people we blame.

And travelling and books won’t be enough to save us from the road to selfish dumbness.