Hedonism Abroad: Natural or Nefarious?
When you’re abroad buying too-expensive clothes and losing sleep for another night out, hedonism doesn’t scare us—but should it?
By Layan Boulon
Graphic by: Yeyoung Chang
I gambled my savings at a cafe. A quaint London establishment with specialty chai and a cardamom bun started everything. I knew the pound-to-dollar conversion was extreme, that I had only budgeted for the occasional cafe outing in my six-week study abroad. But when you visit the city of imperialism’s favorite flavors, budgets become the extra work shifts and credit card plans of tomorrow.
Hedonism won’t pay for your overweight suitcase. It doesn’t outline how long-term happiness can be. Nietzsche contrived the “Last Man” to warn us of “invented happiness,” but the four thousand miles between you and your problems are very real. Plus, Nietzsche reinforced “natural” hierarchies through the “slave vs. master morality.” The West uses this framework to legitimize imperialism. Rudyard Kipling explains this as “the white man’s burden,” framing violent territorial and economic occupation as “saving” the indigenous people. From a Western-imperialist standpoint, traveling manifests progress.
In 1992, Saudi Arabia celebrated its sixtieth anniversary of nationhood with the slogan “Sixty years of progress without change.” As a country that has cycled between perceptions as a western oriental, neo-oriental, tourist-consumerist, and holy site, the change is glaring. Travel plays a role here, too.
As Charles Roche notes in “From Hedonistic Extraction to Human Flourishing,” capitalist industries “pursue profits and promise development.” Research in Papua New Guinea (PNG) highlights that an “abundance of mineral wealth” has not led to developmental outcomes from the extractive sector. Looking into the funding of PNG’s mining industry, we see that BlackRock Inc. owns part of the stock. Unsurprisingly, the corporation pours massive investments into companies that make weapons for the Zionist Apartheid Regime, Israel, to commit an ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Travel evades hedonism’s bloody implications. And as Audre Lorde notes in “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” women have been taught to “vilif[y], abus[e], and devalue” our “resource” of the erotic. This power in the “unexpressed or unrecognized feeling” broadly embodies hedonistic pleasure. The negative connotation of not getting “enough” work done, or seeing the sunrise before you sleep the third night in a row, might be rooted in both these patriarchal and imperialist structures.
A friend who also studied abroad notes that, “smoking too much and clubbing too much provided the opposite of a scarcity mindset.” She says she’s living a “totally different life.” The fear ingrained by Western productivity culture–get that internship, that GPA, join another club, get another job, work 2 more hours a day, and you’ll have managed your time right– stops when you let hedonism book your next trip.
My close friend in Budapest introduced this a little differently: “Let’s sit outside the Parliament and smell the sage–wait, let’s taste it!” (Warning: don’t munch on manicured sage leaves). When we return from travels, the problems propagated off exploited hedonism don’t stay behind on the tarmac. But then I taste that painfully bitter, fuzzy and fragrant piece of sage–I’m back. I’m laughing on a too-expensive last-minute visit which left me essay writing on a nine-hour bus ride. Hedonism abroad isn’t natural, and your overspending isn’t what’s nefarious, either.
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