What is home?
Having seen different landscapes and encountered strangers of various ethnicities and religions, the book focuses on “nationalism.” In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari elevates humanity’s “ability to imagine” to an extraordinary level, suggesting it is the key distinction between humans and animals. This idea runs throughout this book.
Although I often wanted to criticize the author, Liu Zichao, for merely rehashing information from Wikipedia, it’s still impressive how he managed to convey a subtle sense of emptiness in a travelogue. People are willing to pay unimaginable costs to construct a self-identity from nothing, and this identity is merely a fragment of historical truth, sometimes even distorted to maintain the interests of a few.
Traveling to more places and meeting more people, perhaps we get a little closer to our true selves through the reflection of the outside world. Put on Chen Qi Zhen’s The Meaning of Travel!
何以为家?
看过不同的风景和不同民族、宗教信仰的陌生人,书里把重点放在“民族主义”。《人类简史》里把人类“虚构”的能力拔到特别的高度,简直就是人和动物能区分开的关键。这个想法在本书里贯彻到底。
虽然我读的时候经常想吐槽作者刘子超是在搬运维基百科,但能把一本旅行文学写出淡淡的空虚感还是很厉害的。人为了从虚无中构建出的自我认同,可以付出难以想象的代价,而这种认同只是来自历史真相的一个切面,甚至为了维护少数人的利益遭到过扭曲。
走更多地方,遇到更多的人,在外界的映照下,或许离真正的自己更近一些。陈绮贞《旅行的意义》放起来!