Learning What We Do Not Know—About Other Worlds, About Ourself, & About Human Nature.
As I write this post I am on a plane headed for Manila Philippines for the 2026 FLUXX Asia Leadership Conference where I will be delivering the opening keynote. I am so excited to have the opportunity to interact with people from over 70 different countries. I am also super excited to immerse myself in the Filipino culture. As I thought about this I was reminded of C. S. Lewis’s essay, “De Audiendis Poetis”. In that paper he gave a genius analogy between traveling to a foreign country and reading old books. He gave really good advice about both. Here I’m going to focus on the traveling part.
I’ll use myself as the example here for Lewis’s analogy. If I were to be the one type of traveler Lewis described, I would have tried to find the most American hotel I could and when I arrive would look for all of the most American restaurants and stores. I would also seek to hang out with attendees from the United States. You probably know people who would do this – I hope you are not one of them. Boring! And not to mention a wasted trip for learning! Lewis argued that this traveler would come home unchanged. Again, what a wasted opportunity.
I always strive to be the other type of traveler Lewis described. I want to eat the local food, try the local wines, and share in the Filipino culture, plus learn about the cultures of the other attendees. Remember I’ve also got 70 other countries to learn about. By immersing myself, I can begin to see other foreign countries and cultures, not as a tourist, but how those countries look and feel to their citizens. By traveling in this way and with an open mind to learning other cultures, I can come home modified – thinking, understanding, and appreciating as I did not think, understand, and appreciate before. Hopefully I return home a better human being than when I departed.
Byron's Babbles 
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