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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   2921 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 14, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Anyone have any experience with getting dual citizenship (US adding EU)? I'm looking at the "Slovak by Descent" program as a bit of a lark, and was wondering if there were any pitfalls (aside from the obvious "no longer able to apply for jobs that need a US security clearance"). Seems to me to be all upside, no downside.

This isn't likely to be persuasive to someone who doesn't feel it in their bones, but I don't think you should hedge when it comes to the land of your fathers, and I don't want to live in a nation surrounded by such hedgers. A class of trans-national elites with no particular loyalties to hearth and home is a bad thing in and of itself, and you shouldn't participate in its propagation.

I recognize this is probably at least partially a result of a character flaw of mine, but I'm viscerally disgusted by the idea of dual-nationals and think we should amend the constitution to explicitly prohibit American citizens from being citizens of any other nation.

It makes travel significantly more convenient depending on where you're going. A proper third-world passport is actually more useful than EU for this, since countries who have beef with one tend to have beef with both. And even if you're purely a US citizen you need two passports to travel to both Israel and much of the Middle East. Also worth doing if you're wealthy and have a second home outside the US, tourist visa limits can get inconvenient and citizenship can make dealing with homeownership bureaucracy easier.

Am I one of the only people out there that thinks traveling just fucking sucks ass? Straight up. I mean yeah, I’ve always wanted to visit the morbid, desolate and forbidden stay away zones your mother would never want you to go to as a sense of adventure, but not as a way to marvel and mull over the fact that they have toilets and take a shit “just like we do!,” all the way in China. I mean it’s more or less “like this” almost anywhere you go (where you don’t want to put your life at risk).

I mean it’s more or less “like this” almost anywhere you go (where you don’t want to put your life at risk).

Out of curiosity, where have you actually been? I grew up in Malaysia and now live in Australia, I've travelled all over Europe and Oceania, been to North America and most recently have been exploring Asia, and could not disagree more with it being "like this" almost anywhere you go.

To be blunt, I find many westerners to be overly scared by countries that have been marketed to them as "third world" and as such overwhelmingly travel to a restricted range of relatively culturally similar places, though I actually often find them (particularly the Asian ones) safer and more pro-social than much of the West is today.

I mean yeah, I’ve always wanted to visit the morbid, desolate and forbidden stay away zones your mother would never want you to go to as a sense of adventure, but not as a way to marvel and mull over the fact that they have toilets and take a shit “just like we do!,” all the way in China.

"Morbid, desolate and forbidden" are the last descriptors I would apply to China, and I am going again this year. You're not going to be arbitrarily detained unless you want to sell drugs or something. There's extremely rich history, fantastic infrastructure, some really great food (outside of Beijing at least), it's very safe and cheap, albeit the digital ecosystem there can be a pain and people there smoke like it's 60s America.

Frankly, out of all the places I've been I would use that word to describe urban Canada. In other words, there's a lot of places I would deem as viscerally different while still being very safe.

I think you’ve got a fairly wild interpretation of my remark. Here in the US it’s a common characteristic you’ll often find among parents, “learned people,” and the elite or “sophisticated” social classes of society that “traveling” and “experiencing the world,” is something only a healthy or well formed individual does. So much so in fact, that others will patronize and condescend to you endlessly and pathologize the type of person you are if you express no interest in it. It’s why you can find pockets of introverts, eccentrics, “shut-in’s” and autists (naturally, people who don’t enjoyably leave the cave) so hostile to the suggestion because of all the people it reminds them of.

Yes, it’d be cool to take a stroll across the Great Wall or visit the Forbidden City once in a lifetime. I don’t mean that kind of thing isn’t fun; that isn’t what I’m responding to. But traveling for the sake of traveling because you’re a rootless hobo who loves getting mistaken for some kind of bum urban nomad is my insult and giving of the finger to those the megaphone who always wants to tell me there’s something “wrong” with me because traveling isn’t a basic cornerstone of my life.

My description you cited wasn’t aimed at China. I was thinking of North Korea (which I do want to visit, so I can say I’ve been to the world’s last Stalinist dystopia), but in China, people eat, people take the train, people enjoy the night life, just as they world anywhere else. That’s my point.

I think you’ve got a fairly wild interpretation of my remark. Here in the US it’s a common theme among parents, “learned people,” and the elite social classes of society that “traveling” and “experiencing the world,” is something only a healthy or well formed individual does.

This is certainly a thing, and there are people who are extremely pretentious about it sometimes; I don't think there's something particularly wrong with someone if they don't want to travel. Just pushing back against the notion that things are broadly similar wherever you go or that it sucks ass. And the "I find many westerners to be overly scared by countries that have been marketed to them as 'third world'" wasn't exactly specifically directed at you, that was meant to be more of a tangent about other people I know.

I mean yes, there will always be similarities between people and places you come across based on the fact that ultimately everyone is human and will share basic human traits; you're never going to meet the heptapods from Arrival. But the specific differences have actually become incredibly apparent to me as life goes on, especially after having moved. I've come to believe that places in the world are not nearly as interchangeable as I would have initially thought, and that "settling in" culturally to a totally new country is in practice more difficult than it initially seems. "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy" kind of deal. And all of these differences really matter to your QoL.

But traveling for the sake of traveling because you’re a rootless hobo who loves getting mistaken for some kind of bum urban nomad is my insult and reversal for the megaphone that always wants to tell me there’s something “wrong” with me because traveling isn’t a basic cornerstone of my life.

Thing is, I don't think this is a good mental conception of the people who really enjoy travelling for its sake. It really is just a difference in novelty preference and openness-to-experience. At least personally speaking, I find life gets extremely, painfully dull day-to-day, and while travelling isn't the only way to shake somebody out of one's routines and established mental patterns that get canalised, it certainly is a very effective one.

Some people don't feel the need to do that, some people enjoy the comfort of the daily routine and their familiar environment, and that's fine! But some people really prefer novelty, and perhaps they're typical-minding when they try to push others out of their comfort zone, but they're almost certainly not doing so out of malice or necessarily even superiority, and that retort is going to come off as needlessly hostile.

The way I see it you can choose breadth or you can choose depth. Choosing one means foresaking the other.

What can be problematic is when travelling broadly is presented as demonstrating one's depth. It's akin to stolen valour - the thing that makes those places exotic and interesting is that the inhabitants have spent their lives adapting to it and adapting it to themselves. On the flip side the thing that historically made travellers interesting was that they lived lives that necessitated travelling. The travelling was a means, not an end in itself. In both instances the origin is a type II or sometimes type III activity that is being repackaged as type I fun while clinging to the cachet of being type II/III.

Also I feel like seeking novelty by partaking of foreign people's native mundanity contributes to the starving of novelty in one's own culture. Cultural output requires the boredom and appetite for change that motivates people to organise and take action. If that's dissipated into activities that occur elsewhere it diminishes the energy available to produce or support the production of local cultures both old and new.

The travelling was a means, not an end in itself. In both instances the origin is a type II or sometimes type III activity that is being repackaged as type I fun while clinging to the cachet of being type II/III.

But leisure travel is old, it has been an end in itself whenever conditions became stable and there was any slightly sizeable middle-to-upper class; ancient Romans travelled all through Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt for fun (and sometimes left reviews of their experiences on the historical sites). Tourists would travel to the pyramids and the ruins of Troy, motivated by the concept of otium, or "self-realisation time". Temples would derive significant portions of revenue from tourism; they charged fees, contained artefacts for sightseeing and often claimed to house some legendary figure's remains. There were tourist resorts in Baia and Naples. This isn't particularly limited to Rome either, Chinese literati engaged in landscape tourism, going to mountains to gather herbs and appreciate scenery.

I'm also not certain the "stolen valour" hypothesis works very well here to explain the cultural cachet travel currently holds. Merchants who would have travelled heavily in the course of their work were not considered particularly high-status people in many historical societies (Greece, Rome, China, early medieval Europe all considered them a disreputable, parasitic nonproducing class). A lot of times travelling becomes vaunted once it becomes a pastime that the wealthy are willing and capable of participating in, when the empire is stable and it can be portrayed as a form of self-cultivation and source of worldly enlightenment instead of a job performed by the lowly for money.

Also I feel like seeking novelty by partaking of foreign people's native mundanity contributes to the starving of novelty in one's own culture. Cultural output requires the boredom and appetite for change that motivates people to organise and take action.

That is quite the opposite of my take. Cultural exchange has shaped societies in many novel ways over the years; it's far more often that novelty via partaking of foreign people's native mundanity results in that novelty being exported back to one's own society and syncretising in interesting and new ways. To continue with the Roman example from before, after the annexation of Egypt and significant travel there Roman Italy gained a large market for Egyptian-looking artworks and syncretic pieces of art that the well-to-do put in their homes. And while not so related to travel, the development of European chinoiserie largely was caused by coming across porcelains and textiles from China, in other words partaking in "foreign people's native mundanity", and it resulted in many new art styles such as Rococo.

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