Disclosure: I’ve traveled and I’ve lived abroad in two different countries and been dozens of places outside of my ‘home’.
But I don’t get this obsession people have with travel being the uber alles thing you can do and how if you don’t do it all the time or as much as possible you are a ignorant incurious person. I don’t see my travel as being this amazing thing… it was just a nice thing that I did and frankly I don’t remember very much about it and what I do remember I don’t think is a more important memory than lots of other things I did in life.
I don’t think I am superior or ‘worldly’ because of it compared to someone who has never traveled abroad. But it is an extremely common belief/attitude I encounter on a regular basis and it confuses the hell out of me. I’ve met plenty of people that just go on the attack when you don’t want to ‘exchange amazing travel stories’ with them or daydream with them about all the places you’d like to go. There are some places I’d like to go, but again, it’s not a big deal to me that I see it as some big important part of my life and I certain do not condescend towards people who aren’t as ‘well traveled’ as I am like it’s some contest or achievement.
The sentiment you describe is based on a true story but as with most things taken to an extreme.
In general, people tend to only understand that people are different by direct experience. Actually traveling and seeing other cultures or even just other slightly different ways that people live is eye opening leads to both understanding and empathy for people different than themselves. City folk going to the country and country folk going to a city frequently causes them to reevaluate their assumptions. People having experiences with people other than themselves often makes them question their prejudices and what they have been told. It doesn’t always lead to a positive outcome, but the odds are higher!
That of course leads to people thinking that there are specific experiences that people must have to reach those points on a personal level. They think anyone who hasn’t been to all of the places they think are important to experience won’t be able to understand things or that not having certain experiences is a negative thing, which is basically the travel version of gatekeeping.
It is kind of founded on something real, but taken to an extreme because a lot of people are vocal about things. I was a rural white kid in a city that was 95%+ white as a kid and barely met anyone who wasn’t white as a kid and Sesame Street was enough for me to understand that people who didn’t look like me were also people and that where they lived had a bigger impact than skin color. Watching was still an experience, but not quite the same thing, and some people just think that everyone needs to literally experience something to ‘get it’ despite the fact that a lot of people who do experience something still don’t ‘get it’.
Travel is great and all, but it also isn’t the same as living somewhere and to be honest people are people and while significant cultural differences exist people everywhere tend to be pretty darn similar except when they are conforming to social norms.