Sunday, March 26, 2017

The feel comes from knowing and realizing that you're physically there (and being there), and not just because of the quality of the view

A related idea about the mental effect of physically being in a remote geographic location.

Is this place/view of Mars by itself more beautiful than similar places/views on Earth? No. It's more beautiful because we know it's Mars. If we're told that it's Earth, it'll immediately become "ordinary". Similarly, standing at this place, one person is told that it's Earth and the other told it's Mars. The Mars guy will get a great feeling knowing that he's on Mars. The Earth guy will get good - but not great - feeling.


The idea is that the same place/view becomes much more interesting when we realize that we are physically standing at that remote, far-off place, even if the raw quality of the view isn't so good.

Another example. Standing in the middle of a desert in the UAE and standing in a desert in Rajasthan. The deserts look identical, but when you're [an Indian] standing in the UAE desert, there's this exciting, exotic feeling that you're standing in this remote part of the world, the Arab world. Not so exciting back home at Rajasthan, even if the views are identical. Conversely, for a non-Indian, India might feel exotic and exciting.

Two [related] generalizations that can be derived from this:
  1. "Being there" and realizing that "I'm there" creates the excitement, even if the view isn't as spectacular.
  2. A good thing in someone's else hands/land will usually feel more exciting/exotic/attractive than a good/great thing in one's own hands/land. So if I am A and I own X1 and there's a B and he owns an equivalent X2, then it's possible/likely that I'll find X2 more attractive/exotic [than X1] while B will similarly find X1 more exciting/luring than X2, merely because they're "remote" and "different" for both A and B.

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