Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

“Two drifters, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see…”
MOTUS A.D. ^ | 8-14-48 | MOTUS

Posted on 08/14/2018 5:54:18 AM PDT by NOBO2012

lauren and austin

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.


TOPICS: Politics
KEYWORDS: isis; propaganda; socialjustice; terrorism
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061 next last

1 posted on 08/14/2018 5:54:18 AM PDT by NOBO2012
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Just call it “Evolution in action.”


2 posted on 08/14/2018 5:57:10 AM PDT by Little Ray (Freedom Before Security!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Little Ray

The Eloi were highly evolved, but not evolutionarily fit. Tasty, too, according to H. G. Wells.


3 posted on 08/14/2018 6:00:04 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine ("It's always a party when you're eating the seed corn.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Little Ray

Excellent post, which will be shared throughout my extended family. Thank you.


4 posted on 08/14/2018 6:02:35 AM PDT by Always A Marine ("When you strike at a king, you must kill him" - Ralph Waldo Emerson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Hike in bear country, expect to see bears.

Bike in islamonut country, expect to be a target.


5 posted on 08/14/2018 6:03:41 AM PDT by TADSLOS (ThereÂ’s a tear in my beer...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Reminds me somewhat of Chris McCandless and thinking he could survive alone in the wilderness of Alaska with no help whatsoever. Even the legendary Richard Proenneke took help and measured risks.


6 posted on 08/14/2018 6:04:09 AM PDT by BBQToadRibs
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Add it to the list: the girl who tried to hitch-hike to Syria to show us, show us all, that those poor muslims were just misunderstood, and ended up raped and knifed in a ditch in Turkey. The girl who married a “refugee” somewhere in Scandinavia, and ended up dismembered. And on and on and...

Leftism is a symptom of a pervasive mental disorder, which has as a main characteristic a profound developmental paucity. A major component of this developmental lack is the type of egocentrism found in typical 7-year-olds i.e. the idea that everyone thinks and feels exactly like the subject does.

There are an increasing number of studies managing to make it past Leftist-academic censorship, which provide evidence that those whose beliefs lean Left, are in fact mentally deficient in some manner. If I worked in the mental health field (and could be sure the paper would be published), I think there was a good subject for a monograph in there.


7 posted on 08/14/2018 6:04:38 AM PDT by Little Pig
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

My favorite story is the snowflake who hitched around the ME to “prove Arabs were not violent”. LOL.


8 posted on 08/14/2018 6:04:53 AM PDT by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

The liberal mindset only flourishes in places that conservative values keep Evil men in check. Liberalism is a self correcting problem as this story demonstrates.

Everybody that voted socialist should be required to spend 6 months in a socialist country, and everyone who has a coexist bumper sticker needs to spend two months in each region that each symbol represents.

But... none would survive.


9 posted on 08/14/2018 6:06:21 AM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012
...went to a supposedly top-notch university...

Georgetown stopped being top-notch when it, a Jesuit school, hired Drinan, a pro-abortion priest and former Congresscritter.

10 posted on 08/14/2018 6:07:03 AM PDT by Calvin Locke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Staggering naivete.


11 posted on 08/14/2018 6:07:57 AM PDT by Sans-Culotte (Time to get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Great post.Sums it up very well. The poor sad starry eyed worker drones...didnt have a clue bout real life and when they were disappointed in their working conditions went on a mindless adventure...paid for it by their lives.


12 posted on 08/14/2018 6:08:31 AM PDT by Getready (Wisdom is more valuable than gold and diamonds, and harder to find.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: American in Israel

The dead’s comments seemed to be aimed at people who have counted the risks and seen the dangers. I hope someone at the funeral said they died doing what they loved.


13 posted on 08/14/2018 6:11:21 AM PDT by healy61
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Live and learn. Or, as in this case, die and learn.


14 posted on 08/14/2018 6:11:29 AM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

A lot of fresh college graduates take a year to see the world while they are still young before embarking on their careers. It’s not a bad idea - the young can experience travel in a way retirees will never be able to. But taking some common-sense precautions is a good idea, and pretending that all people everywhere are well-intentioned is a bad idea.


15 posted on 08/14/2018 6:13:19 AM PDT by AnotherUnixGeek
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

>>“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.”<<

Well, you showed US.


16 posted on 08/14/2018 6:13:19 AM PDT by freedumb2003 ("Trump is such a liar. He said we'd be tired from all this winning" (/dfwgator 7/27/18))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012
"...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...

And, there you have it.

I saw this and thought "Hey, that is great. I love it when people can do things like that..." but then I reached that quote, and saw that these people are seriously deluding themselves.

That is a fundamental cleavage point between Leftists and Conservatives.

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.

Conservatives believe that evil DOES exist. And the founders believed that too, which is why they constructed the Constitution the way they did, in an attempt to account for that.

These people are deluded. I hope for a safe journey for them, but for that to happen, they need to take evil into account...or be lucky. These are the kinds of idiots who think hiking mountains in Iran is a wonderful thing, and are surprised to find out that there are people who want to do them harm.

17 posted on 08/14/2018 6:16:54 AM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: They believe in the "Invisible Hand" only when it is guided by government.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Sigh. I couldn’t even finish the article before posting.

Now I see I didn’t have to.


18 posted on 08/14/2018 6:17:39 AM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: They believe in the "Invisible Hand" only when it is guided by government.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: NOBO2012

Evil is very real. Hope these crackpots don’t have to find that out the hard way.


19 posted on 08/14/2018 6:20:09 AM PDT by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TADSLOS
Yes. You said it in a nutshell.

Bears are great, wonderful expressions of nature and God's creation, but if you meet a Grizzy in its habitat, you best meet it with your eyes wide open and prepared.

The closing paragraph of the linked article said it all:

"...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..."

20 posted on 08/14/2018 6:28:15 AM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists: They believe in the "Invisible Hand" only when it is guided by government.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson