Travel and personal advantage over public good
Individualism in Overdrive
By FRANK BRUNI, NYT
Having exhorted Americans toward six-pack abs and schooled them in 15-minute orgasms, the personal improvement guru Tim Ferriss turned his attention more recently to travel advice. It appeared in The Times on Sunday, and it said a lot about what’s wrong with our country.
Ferriss is the self-anointed superhuman who hawks not just the possibility of perfection, as defined by gobs of dough and a godly physique, but the speediness of it. Just heed his mega-selling books and you too can attain “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “The 4-Hour Body,” thus having quadruple or quintuple that time left over for self-adoration.
And for trips! Ferriss apparently jets around a whole bunch, a guru being only as good as his frequent-flier status, so his dominion extends to the heavens. He is master of air as well as earth. One of the tips he shared in The Times was this: if you must a check a bag, pack an unloaded starter pistol in it, so that the Transportation Security Administration will flag the piece of luggage, thus diminishing or altogether eliminating the possibility of its loss. It’s extra work and fretting for them but, hey, you get peace of mind. Isn’t that what counts?
To Ferriss’s thinking, yes, and I fear he’s not exotic in this regard. While I doubt there will be a rush on starter pistols by airline passengers — it’s just too much trouble, and too bizarre — his overarching interest in gaming the system at hand is mirrored in other Americans’ behavior. So is his emphasis on personal advantage over the public good, which would be undermined if every traveler did as he counseled. There’d be bedlam in airport security operations and a ludicrous number of people carrying around what could be mistaken for lethal weapons.
(More here.)
Having exhorted Americans toward six-pack abs and schooled them in 15-minute orgasms, the personal improvement guru Tim Ferriss turned his attention more recently to travel advice. It appeared in The Times on Sunday, and it said a lot about what’s wrong with our country.
Ferriss is the self-anointed superhuman who hawks not just the possibility of perfection, as defined by gobs of dough and a godly physique, but the speediness of it. Just heed his mega-selling books and you too can attain “The 4-Hour Workweek” and “The 4-Hour Body,” thus having quadruple or quintuple that time left over for self-adoration.
And for trips! Ferriss apparently jets around a whole bunch, a guru being only as good as his frequent-flier status, so his dominion extends to the heavens. He is master of air as well as earth. One of the tips he shared in The Times was this: if you must a check a bag, pack an unloaded starter pistol in it, so that the Transportation Security Administration will flag the piece of luggage, thus diminishing or altogether eliminating the possibility of its loss. It’s extra work and fretting for them but, hey, you get peace of mind. Isn’t that what counts?
To Ferriss’s thinking, yes, and I fear he’s not exotic in this regard. While I doubt there will be a rush on starter pistols by airline passengers — it’s just too much trouble, and too bizarre — his overarching interest in gaming the system at hand is mirrored in other Americans’ behavior. So is his emphasis on personal advantage over the public good, which would be undermined if every traveler did as he counseled. There’d be bedlam in airport security operations and a ludicrous number of people carrying around what could be mistaken for lethal weapons.
(More here.)
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