Humanity is narcissistic. We all seem to have an obsession with our own endeavors and achievements as human beings. A great example is the thousands of tourists that each year flock to places like the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall of China, or even more modern icons like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Even the cities that we build over generations have come to be revered as magnificent feats of the human race.
Okay, let me back up a little bit. What got me thinking about this topic in the first place was a recent article on National Geographic (read it here), which was about how tourists are flocking to Pripyat, a city located in Ukraine. For any of you that do not know, this city was located very close to the Chernobyl power plant that suffered a catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986. Due to this, Pripyat was evacuated and subsequently became a ghost town, where no one returned due to the lingering radiation in the area. But now, apparently, tourists are starting to trickle back into this town.
So, I got wondering why this was happening. Why exactly do so many people have a hankering to go see a town that was destroyed by a terrible disaster? I think that it is directly related to what I was talking about in the first paragraph of this post. Along with our utter fascination of human glory and achievement, we are as equally, if not more fascinated by the downfall of humanity as well. Ghost towns, disaster zones, and other similar locations are becoming tourist destinations because we can't seem to bring ourselves to look away. Anyway, let me know what you think about all of this in the comment section.
No comments:
Post a Comment