Comment by bryanlarsen
2 days ago
And the 0.1% ruin it completely.
It takes only one bad apple to spoil the entire barrel. (Literally: the bad apple produces ethylene which spoils the rest of the apples in the barrel).
Examples of this phenomenon are everywhere. One bad cop makes the entire force untrustworthy, two to three unruly kids can make a classroom unteachable, et cetera.
And a 0.1% chance of a bad encounter with a stranger as a vulnerable person can make it not worth approaching strangers at all.
You're gong to throw away a life of living above fear if you focus on the 0.1%. And you'll never know what you were missing.
You can stay at home your whole life, avoid travel, avoid meeting people. From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances".
Me too. But is it the privilege of being large, male and white with a small but real family safety net? I specifically specified "vulnerable people" in my comment.
That's fair—and it's true I wasn't addressing them. Although I feel like vulnerability, in my experience, is a thing that absolutely elicits sympathy, compassion from strangers.
Part of why hitchhiking works is because you are putting yourself out there at the mercy of a stranger—making yourself vulnerable as it were.
I know several women who've travelled alone at various places in South America.
My sister had her credit card blocked by her bank while travelling in Belize just before coming home. She got a ton of help from locals who understood her predicament.
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Not traveling alone on foot in a country in which you barely speak the language does not mean staying shut in your house and never traveling at all and never meeting people. There is a middle ground.
Everything you said here is selfish, do you understand that?
"From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances"."
You are not focused on giving, it is all about getting. And why is staying at home your whole life something looked down on? Just think of all the carbon it saves going into the atmosphere, if you can that is.