...where would you like to be?
I think we in the “west” or the “global north” or the “core”—whatever you want to call the more privileged nations where we like to enjoy having options in our lives, things like traveling to see the world for example—are spoiled. I’d been thinking of Phil’s stay in Punxsutawney as horribly isolating geographically. But, I realized a couple things recently: 1. It’s a limited perspective to assume that geographic isolation is such an aberration as to be horrible. So many people in this world spend their entire lives within small areas. Whole cultures are so geographically isolated that they are still only barely getting infected by the so-called modern world. 2. That being said, Phil’s story could only take place in such isolation because the culture that produced the story is just the type of culture that would find said isolation scary. I think, in fact, that Phil’s visit(s) to his mother in Rubin’s original—after he steals a plane and flies through the blizzard—for example, would ...