Andrew Solomon on Violence, Isolationism, and the Art of Travel

In part one of their conversation, Paul Holdengraber and Andrew Solomon discuss American isolationism in the context of global unrest, the need to engage with the international community, and the difference between travel and tourism.

Andrew Solomon on the state of “the world” right now…
I think the world is very hurt and vulnerable. What I’m always afraid of is that the violence we read about in the newspaper, which is so dramatic, will invoke a similar response of violence, perhaps less obviously dramatic. And I feel as though the world feels precarious on both sides, on the side of the attacker as well as of the attacked.

Andrew Solomon on what can be done in the face of such violence…
The most urgent thing that can be done is to try to understand the other side. The assumption and way it’s presented tends to be that we are leading pleasant and peaceful lives, and these crazy and inexplicable people from someplace else are trying to destroy us. We have to recognize that sometimes our peaceful lives come at a cost elsewhere, but also to try to engage with the people who hate us. There’s a sort of tyranny in the American system at the moment, in which people think that we can achieve true isolationism. That if we can build enough walls, and if we can prevent enough people from coming into the country, and do all of those other things, we can make ourselves safe, we can put ourselves into a fortress. What we’re actually doing is putting ourselves into a prison, and it’s a prison constructed partly out of ignorance. What we need to do when we are under attack from the world, is not to hide from the world, but to engage with it, and to look at it, and to see other points of view, no matter how obscure, or difficult they may seem.

Andrew Solomon on listening…
My mother used to say, a good listener is always more interesting than a good talker. And here we are, you and I, and we talk for a living.

Andrew Solomon on listening to people who are different than you…
I think a journalistic interview should always be, in effect, a conversation. There should always be two people who are in dialogue. One of them telling the other, as much as the other is telling them. As is we said, it’s about listening. But it’s also about communicating, and about responding to what someone has said, rather than coming with ideas about what that person is going to say and asking questions on the basis of those assumptions. People surprise you. They are able to express things you wouldn’t have thought they were able to express. But most profoundly, you can’t understand how bewildering your way of thinking is to someone else, until you’ve allowed yourself to be bewildered by that other person’s way of thinking.

Andrew Solomon on travel versus tourism…
Part of the difference between tourism and travel, which is a distinction I make at great length in Far and Way, is that tourism usually involves going to a place you have previously chosen, to see things you already know about. And that can be very illuminating and very educational and I would never wish to disparage that, I’ve done a lot of tourism myself. Traveling involves going to someplace because some odd set of circumstances has propelled you there, and you don’t know what it is you’re going to find, and you have to open yourself to very new experiences when you will arrive.