No, Wiseman
Six years ago, industry non-profit Tourism Cares and the Jordan Tourism Board created a meaningful map of Jordan. Most of the points of interest highlighted on it are off the beaten tourist path. The plan was to attract visitors to a little-known and underrated social enterprise that reflects Jordanian culture. Travel agencies that have visited some of the locations have added them to their itineraries, providing a benefit to both travelers and hosts.
Meaningful travel appears to be on the rise. Twenty-four additional destinations have joined the project and are filling out what we hope will one day become a globally significant map.
I have previously written about Mejdi Tours, which also has roots in the Middle East and offers unique and meaningful travel. Mejidi's co-founders, who are Palestinian and Jewish, pioneered the concept of “duel narratives.” They design tours for travelers visiting countries experiencing intercommunal tensions, allowing residents to voice their views on the complex political situation during a series of meetings that expose visitors to diverse (often conflicting) partisan viewpoints. do.
Political polarization is so widespread these days that Mejidi seems unable to address every country where tensions are rising. I wondered if there was a way for an independent traveler to try to gain insight into a situation while also achieving another of Mejdi's goals: achieving simultaneous understanding and even empathy for multiple perspectives, including those that are diametrically opposed to each other. For Mejdi, whose founders have a deep background in conflict resolution, achieving this is precisely the magic aspect.
We believe that the task of organizing listening tours amidst high political tensions is best left to experienced professionals, such as Mejdi's trained guides. It is too difficult for the average traveler to listen to domestic disputes abroad, especially those that are covered extensively in the media, without expressing one's opinion.
However, unless there is a heated conflict or the traveler has already formed an opinion, I think it would be possible to ask for a different perspective during the travel process. My favorite person in the world is someone who lives in England and talks politics. Although he and I have different central points between left and right, we have never kneeled in response to each other's positions when discussing domestic issues that may be controversial in our countries. As a result, we ask each other questions, actually listen to the answers, and ask more questions. Before I knew it, it was 4 a.m. and the bottle of scotch was gone.
In a country with complex issues on which we may have formed opinions, we can still try to listen, but most people find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep quiet about what they think.
Someone pointed me to a recent blog post on Substack by Robert Reich, who served in the Ford and Carter administrations and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. His politics may be polarizing, but this post seeks to do the opposite, perhaps pointing to a dialectical process that helps visitors see difficult political situations through a lens of empathy.
Reich met with a group of students, some Jewish and some Palestinian, to discuss the war in Gaza. He took the political context aside and tried to discover whether there were moral grounds on which they could agree.
As a result of his mediation with the group, they eventually agreed on seven points based on a shared understanding of morality. Some of the agreements were critical of Hamas, some of them were critical of Israel. But some looked beyond the details of the conflict and cited more general principles, such as that it is wrong to kill and kidnap innocent civilians or call for genocide against any group.
I don't think it's a good idea, like Reich, for people visiting a country to organize meetings with opposing political views to find common ground. Mejdi Tours' approach is to reserve judgment while talking to partisans rather than debating them.
But as I read Reich's post, I thought his exploration of almost universally accepted ideas about good and bad behavior could help visitors deal with how complex local politics can be in a foreign land. . I think they'll find that in most situations the problems are trickier than they thought, and they'll become more humble and empathetic, as well as appreciative of the fact that they rarely have political causes. By using — you pass the test of purity for the moral beliefs you profess.
In this way, when justice is taken away from politics, a step towards reconciliation is taken.
