I wonder...

Francis Bacon wrote that "wonder is broken knowledge."

I've been thinking of travel and difference in light of this idea.

In short, I think there are only a few modes available to travelers when confronted with difference.

• Wonder, where the traveler allows for difference and is able to appreciate it on its own merit, not for what it resembles in her own home environment.
• False wonder (or exoticism) where the traveler is determined to like or appreciate something because it is so different, regardless of her actual feelings.
• Dismay, where the traveler ceases to be able to process the difference around her and seeks out what she considers normal.

But if wonder is broken knowledge, an imperfect understanding of what is perceived, is it only an superficial appreciation of difference? Is it an purely aesthetic as opposed to an intellectual mode, where the experience is understood in the context of the culture and the history of that practice?

But then again, what do we know about our own traditions and customs? We sing nursery rhymes whose origins are in industrial-revolution England without knowing that they contain warnings about the plague. The sounds, the rhyming and nonsense words, paired with the pleasure of tradition, the memory of them being sung to us, supercedes the meaning...

It occurs to me too that broken knowledge is better than no knowledge. I would rather travel and experience something out of context, understanding that it is different from what I am used to and not being threatened by that, than to stay at home and convince myself that my way of being is the only way. Travel may not provide opportunities to understand the complexity of the world but it lets the traveler know that that complexity exists.

Maybe that's how we live anyways; we have experiences that we only understand in a limited way when they happen. A deeper understanding might come with time and further half-understood experience but even that isn't assured.

Maybe the sound of the nursery rhyme is as much a part of the tradition as the meaning.

And so I say to you: Husha, husha, we all fall down.