The Tourist and the Tortoise

I hear it being about us, as people, being materialistic, arrogant, and ungrateful idiots. "Such a wonderful trip ahead," then going (wherever) and the 'tortoise' representing our past, our rich history and all that our ancestors/parents suffered to put us here - being simply killed for it's 'jewels'. Perhaps the shell even represents our beautiful world and how recent generations essentially just destroyed it for resources and our materialistic obsessions. Of course the man/tourist represents society - although it doesn't say "tourist" I think it's implied since most people live rather useless lives just doing what they're societal roles say they should do - i.e. wandering around, clueless, lacking wisdom, and not knowing "how the universe ran" because we killed the tortoise and took it's shell instead of learning from our past.

Then there's the "toss the map on the ground ... It isn't accurate anyways" part about our dangerous arrogance and thinking we know what we're doing these days, even though we clearly don't. But to me the strongest message is in the album title mentioned here, "we are strangers to ourselves" - like we don't even remember WHY we're here, nor who we are (instead we as individuals have become the center of our own world) and again, tourists in our own heads. And that's reiterated in "I think I feel ready to go," meaning as cocky and arrogant as we are - we've been dumbed down to the point of not truly knowing what we want or if we even want to. An utter lack of self-awareness, if you will.