“Two drifters, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see…”

MOTUS A.D. ^ | 8-14-48 | MOTUS

[NOBO2012]

On August 7, the New York Times ran a story by Rukmini Callimachi about Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, a young American couple, both graduates of Georgetown University, who decided to quit their humdrum office jobs and go on an epic bike ride and camping trip that would take them all over the world. “I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige,” Austin wrote. “I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned.” - PJMedia

Thus wrote Jay Austin who, along with his girlfriend Lauren Geoghegan, quit their jobs in July of 2017 and set out on a round-the-world bicycle trip. They had many adventures across Africa, Europe, Turkey, Greece and Kazakhstan before landing in Tajikistan. Austin kept a blog along their route that reads like a social justice warriors guidebook.

“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” Mr. Austin wrote. “People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.

“I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own … By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.” - PJMedia

There, on day 369 of their trip their were run down and stabbed along with 2 other cyclists by  5 men in a car who swore allegiance to ISIS and promised to kill all “disbelievers.” I suppose you could say that they were myopic and self-interested but clearly they held values and beliefs and perspective different from the group of western cyclists they mowed down. That’s the point, Evil is real. It cannot be reasoned with or wished away. Ignore it at your great peril. As stated in the PJMedia article: “Their naivete is nothing less than breathtaking.” Austin’s worldview was summed up in his blog:

“with...vulnerability comes immense generosity: good folks who will recognize your helplessness and recognize that you need assistance in one form or another and offer it in spades.”

The moral of the story? From the article (read the whole thing):

In the last analysis, it's a story about two young people who, like many other privileged members of their generation of Americans, went to a supposedly top-notch university only to come away poorly educated but heavily propagandized – imbued with a fashionable postmodern contempt for Western civilization and a readiness to idealize and sentimentalize “the other” (especially when the latter is decidedly uncivilized). This, ultimately, was their tragedy: taking for granted American freedom, prosperity, and security, they dismissed these extraordinary blessings as boring, banal, and (in Austin's word) “beige,” and set off, with the starry-eyed and suicidal naivete of children who never entirely grew up, on a child's fairy-tale adventure into the most perilous parts of the planet. Far from being inspirational, theirs is a profoundly cautionary – and distinctly timely – tale that every American, parents especially, should take to heart.

Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

[American in Israel]

I have counted the risks and seen the dangers. They obviously were oblivious avoided no dangers and entered the lions den to pet kitties.

[Steely Tom]

I hope someone at the funeral said they died doing what they loved.

Yeah, virtue signaling right up to their final moments.

[rlmorel]

I know. I got angrier and angrier as I read it.

I know for a fact no matter where you go on this earth, you will find good people everywhere, that is indisputable.

What is also an indisputable fact is that no matter where you go on this earth, you will find evil people who want to rob, hurt, maim, or kill you.

It is YOUR understanding of this second fact that is your personal responsibility to understand and take into account.

You know, I take an analogy of crossing the street as a reasonable way to view it, and also an example of where conservatives and leftists differ.

If there is a crosswalk, a conservative understands that the law may be on their side, but that people are flawed and may, for a variety of reasons ranging from inattention to criminal malice, not observe the law and stop to allow a pedestrian to cross as the law requires. So we, as conservatives, stop, wait until we are sure the oncoming vehicle is going to stop or there is a break in traffic...then we cross. Safely.

Leftists, on the other hand, will often enter a crosswalk and simply step into the roadway in front of an oncoming car, filled with the reassuring (to them) knowledge that they are protected by the law, and the vehicle has an obligation to stop no matter what. Sometimes drivers who don’t see them have to jack on their brakes as the leftists saunter in slow motion across the roadway. But sometimes...the driver cannot stop in time. And then the leftist is injured, maimed, or dead, and the driver of the vehicle, no matter if it was dark and the leftist was dressed in black, or the sun was shining in their eyes, or...whatever...will have to live with that for the rest of their life.

But hey...the Leftist died with the law on their side.

[DCBryan1]

2018 Darwin Award Co-Winners!

[HotHunt]

Their world was all creme puffs, unicorns and utopia....

....until reality hit.

May they RIP.

[rlmorel]

This is not meant as a rebuke to you for pointing out there are people who didn’t read the entire article. I read down to the point where “evil is a construct” was mentioned by the deceased, and recognized this is a fundamental problem and posted something to point that out, and sadly, I was entirely correct without knowing what eventually befell them. This post is to make a couple of points:

These “crazy kids” were not “naive and misguided”, though I have no problem characterizing them as stupid.

These were fully grown wealthy, and “educated” adults who made a conscious decision to prove a leftist ideological point while seeing the world and having a good time. They should have done that in Canada, Japan, or Singapore.

I do not take joy in their demise.

But I am also relieved that we weren’t subjected to years of press coverage of their imprisonment as Western hostages, casualties suffered in military operations to retrieve them, or outright video of them being beheaded on a stage.

They weren’t kids. They were foolhardy, ideological, smug, virtue-signalling leftist puritans out to prove a point, and they paid a price for their stand.

They found out the hard way that not all cultures are equal.

[Hulka]

“It’s not a bad idea” . . .then they have no right to cry and whine about their student debt, after all, traveling the world costs bucks, no matter how cheaply they try to live. If they are rich enough to travel the world for a year, let them pay for it, but first, pay off student debt.

If some snowflake debt-ridden graduate wants to travel the world, great, let them join the military and get to see some very unique places that “normal” tourists don’t get to see. . .and they get paid to travel.

[rlmorel]

Agreed, but...it won’t serve as a warning to a number of them.

Granted, there are leftists out there who will fully recognize that even if they sign on to all other things on the left, they aren’t willing to back up that with their exposed necks.

They know enough to stay out of South Africa, Tajikistan, Beirut, or the mountains of Iran.

[butlerweave]

Oh well ,there goes that book deal

[Charles Martel]

At the very least, they should've chosen the proper bike:

[BwanaNdege]

When we lived in Kenya back in the 1980’s we’d often see “European” (white) young women backpacking around the country.

They were ruled by Emotion over Reason,

Ivory Tower education vs. the “University of Hard Knocks”,

Political Philosophy instead of the Biblical understanding that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

“But Jesus ... did not trust himself to them—for he knew them all. He did not need anyone to tell him what people were like: he understood human nature.” John 2:24-25 JB Phillips

[hinckley buzzard]

”Trusting in the kindness of strangers...” OK Blanche, we see how that works out.

[Campion]

Leftists believe this crap, that evil is a "construct", all people are good, and only Poverty, Ignorance, and Disease (PID) cause people to do things that we see as "evil". If all those things could be fixed, there would be no evil.

This explains their obsession with gun control as well. Guns are one of those "things" that make otherwise-good people do evil.

[gnarledmaw]

I read the whole thing and still find it funny. If I tell you not to pound nails into your head, and you call me a (insert sjw insult here) and then do it anyway, then dont be surprised as I laugh when you hit the floor.

[rlmorel]

You would probably like this, from one of my all-time favorite conservative pundits, Bill Whittle on this very subject, how leftists want to blame the gun or the SUV instead of the person shooting it or the person driving it (about six minutes):

It's The Steel

[rlmorel]

Hahahaha...that is great!

[Snickering Hound]

Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I'm interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it's a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.

Stanley Kubrick

[Calvin Locke]

...then seven years after graduation...

He got a masters from Georgetown. So five years, most likely.

Probably an MPA or urban planning, given HUD.

As a voter, the last thing I'd want running an organization, muni, whatever, is some MPA, let alone a moonbat MPA. (tiny house, etc. The unibomber had a tiny house...)

As somebody pointed out, "emotion over reason".

[rlmorel]

Yeah. Those “tiny houses” are a dead giveaway indicator to me.

Granted, I wouldn’t mind having one in my backyard or out in the woods. But not to live in full time. That doesn’t seem healthy, especially when using it to make a political statement as he seemed to do.

Perhaps he should have stuck to those types of political statements.

[HollyB]

I read their IG posts this morning along with those who they met along the way. They really were having a great trip for a year and experienced quite a bit doing what they wanted to do- Travel the world via biking.

It’s very sad.