Travel Then and Now: We don't think much about it ... but travel has changed a lot over the decades, centuries, and millenia.

     Once upon a time, about the only way people could travel was by putting one foot in front of the other. Oh, occasionally, they might fall into a river and grab hold of a log and hope to get off before the river led to some rocks or a waterfall. That may have been their encouragement to learn to swim. Oh, swimming, you say. How ordinary! But, even today, only about 44% of the human population know how to swim unassisted. (Most can float if they don’t panic.) Dreams of personal flying (without assistance) was a long held dream — but I think most have now decided to allow mechanical assistance.

Technical innovations

     Humans are curious and good observers. A rolling log eventually got fashioned into a wheel, though there probably never was a stone wheel with a stick in the middle as you get from the comic “B.C.” or with a wooden axle as in the “Flintstones”. The log that they clung to in the river became hollowed out for more room, speed, and stability. People learned to use the wind with sails on boats, then for energy in windmills. Steam from a boiling vessel of water could push like the wind. So the power of wind was emulated with artificial “wind” in the form of steam. Eventually, people had many choices for movement — walk, swim, wheelchairs, hot air balloons, row boats, sailing boats, power boats, trains, automobiles, spaceships. Quite a journey through history.

Organizing for travel

     Many methods of travel have been used — new ones developed and ways, still only dreams, that have yet to be developed. But being able to move is only a small part of travel. Daily travel has been, and still is, the most frequent reason for travel. Go out to the fields to work. Go to the savannah to hunt. Go out to sea to fish. Go to the local factory, or office, to work. General purpose containers such as pockets, purses, billfolds, backpacks, and tucker bags were created for carrying the needs for the hunt or the office.

     Going farther, and for longer periods, was often a matter of income. People with little income would either just put their bag on their shoulder and move along — or, if it was a family, belongings would be loaded onto a mule or perhaps a cart. Carts were (and still are) pulled by dogs, horses, and humans — depending on resources.

     Ah, but the higher income folks. If you’ve ever watched “Joe vs. the Volcano” (one of my favorites with Tom Hanks), you’ll see him go into a luggage store and come out with four huge steamer trunks — each big enough to serve as a room for a small child (I’m exaggerating a tiny bit). Upper class, royalty, the local “big wigs” relied on others to make themselves comfortable and move whatever they might think they “might” need on a voyage or at the other end of the travel. The various travels of Isabella L. Bird throughout the Americas and the Pacific are fascinating. She “roughed it” but she also had a lot of extra human labor assisting her.

     Even today, you can occasionally spot a family with the very latest-fashion clothes with a MOUND of luggage queueing up at an airline counter to check their dozen suitcases and valises. I have yet to see them with the steamer trunks of yore but I will bet they still occur.

Borders

     Ah, borders! Those artificial lines on the maps that indicate “ours” and “theirs”. It’s a concept that less complex societies don’t understand (because it doesn’t really make a lot of sense). It hasn’t been that long — perhaps only a couple hundred years (not sure exactly) — that people could just move around unimpeded. No passports, no rites of visas and papers of entry. Perhaps much of this fluidity arose from the fact that almost the only ones who traveled voluntarily were the rich. The poor more often were fleeing war, disease, floods, or some other reason why they just couldn’t stay at the place they were leaving. The poor usually didn’t do it willingly.

     An exception was the pilgrim journeys. I am using the word “pilgrims” on the more generic level — people traveling to a sacred place for religious reasons — and NOT the more specific folk who arrived at Plymouth Rock in the Americas. No matter how they traveled — they did hope to return (healthily, if possible) back to their origination point. As part of their religious sense of duty, pilgrims often had very few possessions with them (possibly even gave their possessions away) and felt it made them more worthy if they suffered more.

Security

     I have absolutely no idea — nor do I think there is a way for anyone to know — whether airline security makes us safer. I have a reasonable idea as to how it evolved. Humans (especially in the US) have a desire to “feel safe” in a world that doesn’t really care if we are safe. I can think of all kinds of ways to get around security measures (and have NO desire to try them) and I am sure that people who seriously want to get around them can figure out ways. We see these things in movies. Movies are not meant to be instruction manuals (usually) but they give sufficient hints for others to follow in the scriptwriters’ footprints if they so desired.

     I do know that airline security makes air travel much less enjoyable for me. In our busy busy type-A society, however, we often have to do things the fastest way possible — and that is usually by air.

     Once upon a time, when we didn’t have the large travel security infrastructure built up (it hasn’t been that many years), I booked a flight to Hawaii. But — silly me — I got the flight number and departure time reversed in my mind. I don’t really remember the precise numbers but the flight was something like 0205 and the departure time was 01:10. But I THOUGHT the departure time was 2:05pm. I got to the airport believing that I was still an hour early. The ticket agent laughed and told me to run for it. I did and I made it — because all I had to do was to arrive at the gate and show my ticket to the gate agent. This scenario may seem like a total fantasy to all of you who are under 50 years of age. But it was real and it was normal (except for the misreading of the flight information).

     I am unwilling to pay for the comfort, and privilege, of not being treated like a sardine in a can. But, it is easy to understand the profit-motive for the airlines in configuring the planes in this way. The security requirements are just an additional overhead that one must SILENTLY (you dare not say a word about it while in the airport) anticipate and permit.

Summary

     Each of us will make many journeys in our lives. Most have daily journeys. These may be to work or the grocery store or to our yoga class. We also have more serious journeys that may take days to complete and may be for stays of long duration. There are different ways to travel and different ways to take along that which we feel we might need. Some ways are faster and some are slower but we choose between trade-offs each time we travel.

I can imagine, however, a world of much easier travel — it wouldn’t be that hard.

Thanks for reading Ideas & Interpretations! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Ideas & Interpretations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Going to Waste or Going to Waist: the dilemma of food distribution

     For many in my generation, our parents (usually mothers) implored us to "clean our plates", people were starving (at that time, "in China") and would love to have the food on our plates. Although not inherently a bad thing to not waste food, such requirements often caused problems by teaching us to ignore our body signals as to whether or not we were hungry. And thus, by trying not to waste our food, it often accumulated around our waists.
     Another aspect of this (which occurred to myself and, I am sure, many other children) is how did my finishing up my food help those in other places who did not have enough food? Portion control (especially countering the economics of supersizing) is an excellent goal to achieve -- eating the amount that is best for our health and with the correct composition and nutrition. But portion control only keeps us more likely to have healthy bodies (exercise and general lifestyle still factor in). It does not allocate more food to those who do not have enough.
     Assume that we each eat only what we healthily should. In the U.S., that would mean a net reduction in the average amount of food eaten. Less food eaten means less food purchased and a surplus of food produced. That surplus can be addressed by reducing the amount of food produced or by finding other markets for the food. Reduction of food production hurts the farmers (though many have already been shoved aside by the mass food producers) -- much better to find other markets.
     After correcting our portion sizes, we now have additional (the U.S. is already a net food exporter) food to send out to those who do not have enough. Raw food items, which are globally produced and imported and exported, are considered to be commodities. The price of commodities goes up and down but is about the same all over the world. However, the price of prepared food sold to people varies tremendously around the world.
     On December 31, 2018, the price of wheat in Kansas (in the U.S.) was about $5 per bushel. One bushel of wheat produces about 60 pounds of whole-grain flour or 42 pounds of "white" flour. Each pound of whole-grain flour is about 3 1/2 cups which is about the amount needed to make one loaf. Thus, each bushel of wheat can make about 60 whole-grain loaves and each loaf would have about 8 cents ($0.0833) of flour in it. If you insist on white bread -- it will have about 12 cents ($0.12) of flour in it.
     Eight cents of flour in a whole-grain loaf! Do you pay eight cents for a loaf of bread? Probably not. There are a number of factors that increase that price to what you pay. First, of course, a loaf of bread is not JUST flour. Depending on the recipe, there may be oil (or butter), yeast, salt, sugar, milk solids, and whatever. In addition, there are also equipment, labor, fuel/energy, and time needed to convert the ingredients to the loaf of bread. Second, the price of the raw material is not what you will pay at the market (either used within a product or by itself). There are transportation costs added, profit margins for each person/company which handles it, and storage costs.
     Of these costs, labor is the most variable between countries. Also, the general cost of housing, fuel, and taxes will vary. So, a loaf of white bread in Nigeria will cost about 1/3 the price in the U.S. In France, that loaf of white bread will cost about 40% of that of a loaf in the U.S. In Sweden, the price is about the same as in the U.S.
     Okay -- we have (in possibly overly verbose detail) shown that bread costs different prices around the world. It ranges from 1/3 to the same as in the U.S. We now have to compare world income. Bread costs 1/3 in Nigeria as compared to the U.S. but average household income in Nigeria is 1/28 that of the U.S.. This means that that loaf of bread has an effective cost (amount of household income) of 28/3 (9 1/3) of that of the U.S. In other words, buying a loaf of bread in Nigeria takes the share of average household income as equivalent of those in the U.S. paying $10 to $40 for a loaf of bread (lowest cost white bread is around $1 and higher, fresh-baked, bread may cost $4 for a loaf). On the other hand, average income in Sweden is about 90% of that in the U.S. so the difficulty of buying a loaf of bread in Sweden is fairly close to buying such in the U.S.
     We have now achieved a general knowledge of both cost and affordability of food within the world. How do we transfer that surplus of food from the U.S. to other countries (in particular, to those with low average household incomes)?
     In brief (finally, you may say!), the food must be either sold or given to the people. Selling to people in a higher income country is not a big deal. But those people about whom our parents referred when we were urged to "clean our plates" are much less able to purchase it. Many worldwide charitable organizations donate food to where needed in such cases but the food reaching the people in need usually depends on political stability and honesty.
     So, it is a significant problem. The people most in need have the least capability to purchase and, often, political obstacles to receiving it even if it is given to them freely. Cleaning our plates does not help them. It also does not help us if the portions are not appropriate. The problems and solutions about getting food to those who need it are primarily at the desired receiving end.