Adventurous couple killed by IS militants in Tajikistan

[pr126]

Adventurous couple killed by IS militants in Tajikistan

Their world view was fundamentally at odds with what Ms Geoghegan and Mr Austin believed â€" they saw the world as a warm, welcoming place where strangers would commit random acts of kindness every day.

“You get a feeling of wanting to give back, not just to this person who has welcomed a stranger into their home, but to the wider world,” Mr Austin wrote on his blog. “You become someone who wants to welcome others into your home. You become a merchant in the gift economy.

“You’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. ‘People,’ the narrative goes, ‘are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.’ I don’t buy it.”

Darwin Awards.

[Munch]

First comments one I agree with:

Some readers called the couple heroes. No, the heroes are not these poor fools who stumbled into an ISIS-controlled area; the heroes are the soldiers from the U.S., Australia and elsewhere â€" most of them a decade or so younger, and centuries savvier, than Austin and Geoghegan â€" who, while the two 29-year-olds were on a year-long cycling holiday, were risking their lives to beat back ISIS. What, then, is the moral of this couple’s story? 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 â€" 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 Western 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 â€" and distinctly timely â€" tale that every American, parents especially, should take to heart. And bet that there will be Isis video of their last moments. Pity the fools.

Another example of people who have it so good where they are but don't even realize it. People having this starry eyed view of the world outside their own place of living, maybe they should watch more nature documentaries and understand the concepts of how people operate.

When I think about how beautiful the night sky is, or how pretty looking a meadow might look, I don't forget the fact a black hole might pass on by and suck up our solar system, or the sun would explode one day, or a bee sting would send me into a coma, or their might be a snake in the long grass, I don't forget these things, while still appreciating when something is nice to look at.

Appreciate the good stuff, but always be smart enough to know the dangers of something, its a lesson we teach children.

[SGOS]

Sad.  Sure they were absurdly naïve, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.  It's a horrible way to be shown reality.

[Jason78]

Reminds me of these people that think that animals are like the ones they've seen in cartoons and are all just cute and fuzzy.    Until some idiot climbs into the enclosure and gets mauled to death.

[Atheon]

Just so you know, they had no idea that the area they were traveling through was dangerous. The reports that the couple went to that area to "prove" that even ISIS militants are kind-hearted are false.

Fact check:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/millenial-couple-isis-tajikistan/

Do also keep in mind that ISIS practice is to claim responsibility for any successful attack, whether they are involved or not.

[SGOS]

Sad.  Sure they were absurdly naïve, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.  It's a horrible way to be shown reality.

Fact check:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/millenial-couple-isis-tajikistan/

I feel so stupid and ashamed when I get sucked in by fake news. But it happens from time to time.

[Shiranu]

A good rule of thumb is anything pr posts, fact check it... not because I think he is inherently and intentionally lying, but because he never actually fact checks anything he posts himself.

I think that rule is certainly applicable to everyone, even people we agree with, but particularly with him it's useful to do.

Either way, Tajikstan is probably not my first choice country to go hiking. It is a bucket-list goal to travel across the Mediterranean and Middle East to see where my ancestors, and the founders of "Western" civilization (everything West of India/China), built their first civilizations... but I also am not in the mood to get decapitated by some nutjob or caught in the crossfire of radicals, or even arrested and disappear in a prison run by the "good" guys in the government.

Hopefully the Middle East will regain it's stability and prosperity as the crossroads between East and West like it has had off-and-on throughout history, but there is a good chance that won't happen in my life time. It sucks, but that's life.

[Cavebear]

Idiots in war zones are unhappy when the brutality of war overcomes them?  I cannot be surprised, even if they were.

[Baruch]

Idiots in war zones are unhappy when the brutality of war overcomes them?  I cannot be surprised, even if they were.

The whole planet is a war zone for the last 5000 years now.