Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the indoor seating area next to the Your Independent Grocer with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches (pic) at 7:00 pm for 20 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at the front door of the apartment at 7:30 instead.
Discussion
When one breathlessly describes their travel highlight-reel, both listener and speaker lose touch with the reality of each experience, because the grind of living day-to-day in a foreign land is so unlike a montage of victories, that to present it as one, however honestly, basically amounts to a lie. And I don’t want to lie. Every YouTube video, travel blog, and social media post is already lying in this way, and realistically, that’s how most people learn about the world. I, even more than I want to seem unpretentious and unaffected when I talk about my exuberant Eat Pray Love days in Asia, or my folksy, brandy-swilling nights in Europe, just want to tell the truth.
So then I better start with the bad.
Because the world, in short, is very, very bad, and you can stop reading here, if like most review-readers, all you’re interested in is the rating. I’m not shy about it. This is a review, after all. And you’ll know exactly what kind of review it is going to be from the fact that I unabashedly give The World as a Whole (as viewed through 28 years in five places) a 3/10.
The third meetup of each month is traditionally dedicated to an EA topic. This is one such meetup.
This week, we'll be reading a sprawling essay about the world that we live in. This will be accompanied by a short essay Peter Singer wrote fifty years ago about one way to orient to that world.
As always, these should be taken more as starting points for guiding discussion than an agenda.
In your time on this planet, what is the worst suffering that you have seen, and where was it?
What is the best thing you've seen, and where was that?
What is your rating of the world as a whole?
How much do you think we can increase the rating of the world in the next year? In the next decade? In the next fifty years?
What would have to be true for you to give it a 7/10 rating? What about a 9?
Whimsi describes comfortable Western lives as "made possible by people much like the poor Guyanese farmer", like there's a causal chain from their suffering to our comfort. Singer frames giving as preventing bad things, not as repaying debts. Do you think of giving to global poverty like paying back what you owe, or like preventing a drowning, or something else?
Have you felt anything similiar to Whimsi's experiences, either abroad or at home? What experience triggered that feeling? Examples:
Watching Thai sexpats buying drinks for girls in braces and feeling a "collective shame"
Coming to a realization about a truth, but having scales accreting again over your eyes after returning to a more familiar and comfortable circumstance
Any experience that can be described as "three months of Eat Pray Love" followed by diminishing returns and creeping dread
Having a specific language, place, or context that makes it easier for one to dump out one's feelings and speak of shameful things
Whimsi says the only solutions they've actually seen work for keeping kids from going off the rails are either "endless regimented extracurriculars" or "total buy-in to strict cultural customs." Do you think he's right?
Do you identify as "off the rails"? If not, which solution were you raised in? Or were you raised in a way that isn't available anymore, for some reason?
Two failure modes for travelers are described: "genuflecting" types who won't form judgments, and "ugly tourists" who see the world as an annex of their local pub. Which failure mode are you more prone to?
Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the indoor seating area next to the Your Independent Grocer with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches (pic) at 7:00 pm for 20 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at the front door of the apartment at 7:30 instead.
Discussion
The third meetup of each month is traditionally dedicated to an EA topic. This is one such meetup.
This week, we'll be reading a sprawling essay about the world that we live in. This will be accompanied by a short essay Peter Singer wrote fifty years ago about one way to orient to that world.
Readings
My Review of the World as a Whole - Whimsi (2025)
Famine, Affluence, and Morality - Peter Singer (1972)
Question List
As always, these should be taken more as starting points for guiding discussion than an agenda.
Supplemental Readings
More Drowing Children - Scott Alexander (2025)
How Bad Are Things? - Scott Alexander (2015)
Matt Lakeman's travelogues - Matt Lakeman (2020 - Present)
Notes on Taiwan - Daniel Frank (2025)
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