I would say it’s much more common for travel to inspire me to read a particular book than the other way about. I can’t think of a case in which reading a book was the prime mover in a decision to travel to a given place. But I do try to read some literature from every country or literarily active city that I visit.
I’ll preface my comment by saying this kind of thinking is fraught with peril. The law of unintended consequences makes knowing whether one’s counterfactual would produce the intended results impossible.
For example, in the US (and some other countries of the developed world,) there has been a proclivity to run up massive debt — both budget and trade. In the US, servicing debt has passed defense spending and (given current trends) will surpass entitlements to become the largest component of the Federal deficit. I am among those who think this will probably end catastrophically, given the complete lack of effort to correct the situation. (Jaw-jacking and firing civil servants whose salaries make up a pittance in comparison to interest payments — while building yet more debt-inducing budgets — has [unsurprisingly] not proved useful.)
So, this is definitely a trend I wish didn’t exist, but almost certainly the American and world economies would not be as well off to date as they are had this trend been kept in check, and it’s possible something might be figured out that allows a softer landing than I presently expect. The old man lost his horse. Good news? Bad news? Who’s to say?
We’d be better off if the bleeding edge of weapon technology were the pointy stick — not just because of atrocities averted. Also, we’d all have to be more capable in such a world — there is no imposter syndrome among people who have to kill a deer or fish with a spear they hewed themselves. Also, if you are cheesed off with one or more people (or the world,) it is entirely different (and more calming) decision space if one has to go out spearing them individually than if one can spray them with automatic fire from 50 feet away. You’d still have the option, but you’d have to want it more and to accept the inevitability of consequence more fully. Finally, it is quite hard to run an authoritarian dictatorship if your army has weapons of similar capability to any random person.
I don’t know for sure whether “an armed society is a polite society,” but I suspect it is if the pointy stick is the pinnacle of armaments.
I know this makes it sound like I was around in the pre-Bronze era. I was not.
“I was tossed by a bison.”
Tiger Riding for Beginners 