Why Malaysia Became Truly Asia

“Paris is always a good idea” - Audrey Hepburn

It was Hepburn’s quote that got me agitated about the difference between what tourist destinations are, and what they are made out to be. “Paris isn’t a good idea for the bold and fun-loving”, I thought. Paris was quaint, and romantic, and idyllic. But why would Hepburn pick Paris, and I pick Rome? What would you prefer? Are the destinations you like sophisticated or are they exciting, are they intelligent or are they charming? Much as you and I (and Hepburn, for that matter) would like to believe the answer to be something deeply personal about ourselves, it more often merely reflects a booming industry capitalizing on something called destination personality, and creating a destination brand.

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”- Truman Capote

A destination brand is the consequence of the media-driven hype around a location. Think relaxing backwaters for Kerala, rave parties for Goa, and royalty for Rajasthan. This is what is sold to you, this is who they say they are, and it is what you eventually sign up for. A destination brand is, very simply, a concept that is supposed to summarize what a place is. A destination personality, on the other hand, represents a more emotional, personal aspect of a tourist destination. It encapsulates the human characteristics associated with the brand and is a culmination of the thoughts and feelings a location is said to embody. A destination personality, thus, is what makes a destination brand.

“Travel is impossible, but daydreaming about travel is easy.” - B. J. Novak

A destination personality is what ‘hooks’ a traveller into selecting a location. Stripping traveling of its romanticism, travel is simply a consumer market. And like any consumer market, buyers turn to characteristics of goods to determine how useful they are. In this case, destination personality becomes especially indicative when it comes to tourism. Most often, one has never visited the intended destination earlier, and is suddenly confronted with a host of novel experiences – new tastes, people, languages, directions, thoughts and ideas; layers of complexity making up the location. A brand personality therefore becomes a translator of these layers.

“Travel is very subjective. What one person loves, another loathes.” -Robin Leach

Destination personalities, by virtue of being a ‘personality’, do not have the same influence on each of us. The congruity between the tourist’s desires and the destination personality is what determines satisfaction with a trip. In other words, if you’re a Tokyo kind of person, the backwaters of Allepey might not cut it for you.

“Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.” – Francis Bacon

Another factor influencing the affinity to a destination personality is the individual’s social group. Younger, international travellers navigate towards exotic locations, and place an emphasis on ‘experiencing’ locations. Preferring exciting or rugged options, this group is aptly named ‘Novel Travellers’ by a recent study. Older travellers who rely on clear-cut information from official sources are called ‘Escapers’, as they tended to frequent places that they had previously visited. A jolt back to earth at this point - for both groups of travellers, even if there was a match between the brand personality and their needs, the decision to visit depended on other resources – such as money, distance etc. Traveling, therefore, is not all desire and personality, but is equally determined by the financial capacity of the traveller/s.

“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love” - Ernest Hemingway

Next, the relationship you share with the people you are traveling affects how you feel towards a place. The greater the quality of intimacy with your partner, the more the destination is enjoyed. This also guides the way destination personality is marketed – some places are marketed to be more intimate, and thus attract those kinds of travellers, Paris being a prime example.

“Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

Finally, the way a destination personality is humanized is important, as destination personalities are very much a manmade concept. What creates a brand personality are 3 broad dimensions – sincerity (a place as being trustworthy and dependable), excitement (a place that evokes daring, spirit and is original) and conviviality (a place that is friendly, family-oriented and charming). With more places being ‘discovered’ and shown into the limelight, looking at how we create destination personalities is helpful in comprehending how we further the mass consumption of destinations.

“People don’t take trips . . . trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

If the boom of destination personalities has taught us anything, it is that tourist destinations ultimately have to sell an experience to the customer – travel has stopped being about ‘places and things’, and more about ‘who’ the place is. So, before you book your next tickets to ‘escape into undiscovered areas’, ask yourself what you really know of the place, without its personality.

Sneha Mani

The Fear of Being Happy

Leo Tolstoy once said, ‘If you want to be happy, be.’

On being asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, John Lennon simply replied, ‘Happy’.

It is often taken for granted that happiness is one of the most vital guiding values in people’s lives. After all, who does not want to be happy? It is perceived as a universal need. The United Nations celebrates this with the International Day of Happiness on 20th March, stating that ‘the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal.’

It may then be unsettling, shocking even, to think that people can be afraid of happiness. The feeling of happiness can stir feelings of fear in some, something not conventionally anticipated. What does it mean then, to be afraid of happiness? How can this fear be explained?

In a pioneering study to understand this phenomenon, Joshanloo and Weijers found three primary reasons why people experience this. First, individuals come to associate their feelings of joy with a sense of a something bad about to follow. Second, there exists a belief that happiness can make one a worse person. And finally, expressing as well as pursuing happiness is perceived as hurtful and harmful to both themselves and others.  

Where do these ideas and beliefs come from? Surely experience plays a major role but a primary factor is the cultural context. Every culture across the world holds different cardinal values, ones that colour every experience of individuals.

The study found that given the importance placed by Western society on happiness, fewer individuals within these societies displayed such a fear. Conversely, non-Western societies, which do not place equal value on personal happiness, showed a greater prevalence. These societies, particularly East Asian ones, emphasis more on communal harmony and togetherness, which can be at conflict with personal happiness.

Another important factor within this reasoning is the varying definition of happiness across societies. Uchida, Norasakkunkit, and Kitayama found that American culture defines happiness in terms of personal achievement while East Asian cultures define it in terms of interpersonal connectedness. Here, personal happiness is not given primary importance, to the extent that the Japanese often believe that expressing happiness is harmful because it might make others envious. Given such a cultural climate, being wary of being happy may not seem so surprising, after all.

Yet, in spite of Western societies’ acceptance and emphasis on personal happiness, individuals living in those parts of the world experience this fear as well, which points towards the important role played by individual experiences and differences. Irrespective of cultural background, Joshanloo’s study found that one major cause for this fear is the notion that happiness will be followed by something bad. Imagine an event in your life when you were perfectly happy but it was followed by something bad. Certain individuals perceive this pattern to be persistent in their lives and consequently develop this fear. Sometimes, traumatic experiences follow the same pattern. Individual accounts throw light on how traumatic experiences have made them sceptical about feeling happy.

Individual differences in self-esteem have also been found to play an important role. Wood et al. (2003) found that individuals with high self-esteem were more likely to savour a positive, happy moment whereas those low in self-esteem were more likely to dampen their mood following a happy moment.

Given how important happiness can be, how does this fear affect the lives of the individuals? Gilbert et al. (2013) found that the fear of happiness correlates highly with depression. Individuals with depression will often avoid activities that could make them happy, fearing that it would be taken away from them and would lead to further disappointment.

On a more general level, a study found this fear to significantly impact overall life satisfaction. This fear significantly biased individual responses on the Life Satisfaction Scale, implying that even if two individuals were leading a similar lifestyle, the person with the fear of happiness would indicate lower life satisfaction.

This brings an important issue to the fore. Countries are increasingly adopting the Gross National Happiness Index as a measure of national progress, with the U.N. even releasing a World Happiness Report. Within India, Goa has pioneered in adopting this model. But can it be perceived as a true measure, if a part of the population is simply afraid of it? The fear of happiness can be an overwhelming experience for the individual, one that deprives them of perhaps the best of human emotions. It is important to recognise this fear and help those in need. After all, happiness is a fundamental human goal. 

Chinmayee Kantak

A Perspective on the Refugee Crises

Human suffering is at the heart of all refugee crises.  And the Syrian refugee crisis is by no means different. Over 200,000 dead, over 6 million displaced, and only 4 million Syrians registered as refugees by UNHCR. Images of people protesting, over-crowded railway stations and rubber dinghies cramped with people however bear a striking resemblance to the 1939 Jewish refugee crisis. History is often the best teacher, and it is not surprising that the world is looking for historical parallels in attempts to understand and rectify the crisis.

Refugees are born out of political disharmony. Nobody would voluntarily leave behind their homes, braving dangerous and often deadly situations unless they were out of options that would guarantee their safety. A refugee crisis, has at its core, a common “us” vs “them” perception. And this perception lowers the odds of refugees being granted asylum. Most often, the West European continent and the USA are popular choices for such displaced individuals.

However, the political conflict that has caused a refugee crisis, often gets overshadowed by issues of race, religion and gender. The Syrian crisis in this regard shares similar tones with the Jewish Refugee Crisis of 1930. Jewish Refugees in the 1930’s were accused of being anarchic, communists, and were despised as they were believed to “taint the Aryan stock.”

Unfortunately today’s Syrian crisis is no different Facing the same xenophobic attitude, Anti-Semitism has merely been replaced by anti-Muslim bigotry. In drawing comparisons between the two crises, critics are quick to point out that the Jewish one was more “genuine”, seeing as the Jews did not have any safe alternatives unlike the Syrian refugees, based on their religious affiliations have many places to go. Furthermore, Jewish refugees already shared the democratic values of the West unlike Syrian refugees that are possibly more radicalized having been exposed to extremist tendencies of terrorists.  These critics citing security concerns as the primary reason for rejecting the Syrian refugee experience (valid as they may be taking into account current security concerns), fail to recognize that at the time Jewish refugees too were treated with the same hostility and fear. The rejection of Syrian refugees and their experience is apathetic to say the least. It took the death of an innocent boy for the world to sit up and take notice.

Invalidating the sufferings of the Syrian Refugees is equivalent to denying basic feelings of humanity. Yet in the age of free information, people continue to show ignorance towards the situation. Critics are protesting the idea that Syrian refugees are genuine. The assumption being that they are merely illegal migrants that are using the current world situation to manipulate and encroach upon jobs in the liberal and evidently richer countries. Citing images of refugees texting on smart phones and updating Facebook accounts (apparently only the right of rich white people), the critics assume that only “visibly poor” people could be refugees. Another failure of such critics is that they ignore the respectable status held by refugees in their countries of origin – specifically that the now-displaced individuals once enjoyed comfortable lifestyles, held stable jobs and were contributing members of society. Volunteers working at the Syrian refugee camps (the few that there are) bear witness to this fact.

One cannot justify stereotyping the ‘refugee experience’ However, in drawing comparisons between the two refugee crises, one can only hope to learn from past mistakes and thus avoid another a situation like the one involving the St.Louis ship.  The world needs to realize that the Syrian Refugee crisis represents a global problem. Every person deserves the chance to have a better life. Developed nations who have the resources to accommodate asylum seekers can be a beacon of hope in this grim situation and prevent the possible extinction of generations of families. 

Kimberly Rodrigues