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The Purpose of the Ideodyssey Project
The purpose of the Ideodyssey project is to explore the following question: “How do different philosophies, ideologies, and religions affect communities, and how do they inform how individuals act?”
I intend to answer this question by travelling to help or visit different people and communities around Asia and North America.
Before I can continue, I must acknowledge the suffering that I am inflicting.
My decision to travel causes a number of harms. While the list of harms may be many, there are four big harms I want to acknowledge here:
1. The Extensive Use of Fossil Fuels
I really wanted to avoid flying on this trip. Unfortunately, a lack of infrastructure and some visa requirements make avoiding all flying almost impossible if one wants to travel to Asia from North America. The only method of getting to Asia that doesn’t greatly increase my carbon footprint is to sail. Unfortunately, I have never sailed and do not believe I have the ability to cross the Earth’s largest ocean in a safe way.
2. Spending Money That Could Go To Better Places
I have spent money to travel. If you read Peter Singer’s “The life you can give,” then you know that if I were to give my money to charity instead of traveling, then I could save many lives. Instead, I travel.
3. Traveling Can Have An Adverse Social and Economic Impact to The Communities I Visit
I recognize that over tourism is causing significant social and ecological issues in many places. For this reason, I am intentionally trying to stay out of areas that receive overtourism (i..e. Bali and the coasts of Southern Thailand).
4. Wastefulness
I make an effort to generate as little trash as possible. Unfortunately, in some of the Countries I will be travelling to, it may not be possible or feasible for me to avoid generating all kinds of waste if I want to stay healthy.
Consequently, I expect that although I will continue to try my best to generate as little waste as possible, I will like to generate more waste going on this trip than if I were to stay home and garden.
Clearly, my trip will cause many harm. In addition to this, I must confess that one reason I am doing this trip is out of my own selfish interests. I do want to see what other ecosystems and cultures are like. Despite this more selfish wish of mine, I do hope that I can use this trip to better serve the world. Below are my reasons why I want to travel and blog.
Reasons For My Trip and For The Existence of This Blog
1. To learn how other people and places handle issues (or avoid issues altogether)
One of the main reasons I want to explore the question, “How do different philosophies, ideologies, and religions shape the way individuals or communities interact with their society and/or environment?” is because there seem to be many possible approaches to how one can live. Every approach seems to present its own set of problems and solutions to problems.
In a world plagued by warfare, sickness, ecological destruction, greed, anger, etc, it seems worthwhile to examine how different peoples and societies handle these problems, and what we may (or may not) be able to learn from them.
2. To learn how people and places think about problems.
In the last paragraph, I make a massive assumption: things like warfare, sickness, and greed are problems. But what is my basis for assuming this?
I suspect that along my journey, I will come across different groups who have different ideas of what makes something a problem, what makes something desirable, and what makes something ethical. Perhaps these different viewpoints can help us to assess our own standards for making such judgements.
3. To make my trip productive
I already stated all the harms this trip will cause. Since there are so many harms, I hope that what I document from my travels can help future research and/or help people understand the world better.
4. To make some money
Although I don’t expect these articles will take more than five U.S. Dollars, it would be disingenuous of me to claim that I do not hope I can make a little extra cash from this blog. Traveling has expenses and after I leave my job to embark on this odyssey, I will have no income. For this reason, I must be smart about how I will use and make money during this next year. It is for this reason, why I will put most of these articles behind a pay wall. Not because I expect to make lots of money, but in an attempt to make a little money.
My trip causes harm, but I hope I can produce material that makes up for some of these harms. I hope you enjoy thinking about how different philosophies, ideologies, and religions shape the way individuals or communities interact with their society and/or environment.