https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Bushby
Still very impressive, but a little less impressive than I first thought.
I realize that a lot these days. People are not inherently so bad but greed is a nasty drug that has the potential to ruin the best.
When you have nothing to offer but kindness and compassion, it is very simple to see the humanity side of things in this world and it can feel really amazing.
> Due to visa limits, Bushby has had to break up his walk. In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days before leaving for 90, so he flies to Mexico to rest and then returns to resume the route.
Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order to avoid Russia and Iran because of legal issues, nevermind bring imprisoned in Russia due to what sounded like bureaucratic BS, it's more impressive than I first thought.
Noraly, the motorcyclist, has already traveled through South and North America, Africa, and Asia, some multiple times. Currently, I believe she is in Tajikistan about to enter Kyrgystan.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIs9nkveW9WmYtsOcJBwTg
Max Roving, the cyclist, has already cycled through Afghanistan and he is currently trying to ride Africa north to south. He just completed Algeria and is about to enter Morroco.
Of course he may have been indoctrinated by 27 years away from home but I thought it was more likely that he’d been misquoted / adapted for the WP audience.
Anyway, it wasn’t a serious point, just a light hearted one. As you were ;-)
This reminds me of an adventured died just a few months ago at age of 40 after suffering insult. He has crossed ocean on a rowboat and more.
https://boredofborders.com/adventures/
DeepL Translation of wiki:
Bardel's largest and most notable expeditions involve crossing oceans and traveling around the world without external assistance. On May 4, 2016, he and his traveling companion Gints Barkovskis set out to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Namibia to Brazil. After 142 days, they safely reached the coast of South America, becoming the first two-person crew to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a rowboat. [6] During the voyage, both men encountered serious health problems (vitamin deficiency, skin inflammation) and Barkovskis broke his ribs, but neither wanted to interrupt their journey, and the expedition ended successfully. [6]
After crossing the Atlantic, Bardelis continued his journey in South America and began a new stage in 2018. From Brazil, with the support of Gints Barkovskis, he traveled by tandem bicycle through South America to Lima, Peru, completing the approximately 5,400 km stage in 102 days. [7] Bardelis then set out alone in a rowboat to cross the Pacific Ocean in June 2018. He covered a distance of approximately 26,000 km from South America to Malaysia, spending a total of 715 days on the journey; with this achievement, he became the first person in the world to cross the Pacific Ocean from South America to Asia in a rowing boat. [7] During this sea expedition, he had to overcome several stormy periods and was forced to stop at islands, but in the end, Bardelis became known worldwide as the first ocean rower in this direction. [7]
Just as in history we learn of emperors and kings instead of the common person, most digital content is about the modern day lords, barons, emperors, and kings. They call them billionaires, presidents, CEOs, prime ministers, etc now, but they are the exact same as they always have been.
If you turn the screen off and take a walk, start talking with real people that actually provide value to society, the world is much kinder than we've all been made to believe.
The real people are a good people, as they long have been. Their stories may not be written, but the Earth itself carries their memories.
There is a kind of psychological pain of cognitive dissonance when we discover this "Wait, but they are meant to be ${group_member} why are they so nice and kind to me?". But one can only experience (e.g. via travelling) and learn from these experiences, it's hard to convey to others that the world really is __much__ more kinder and nicer than our preconceptions demand it should be.
It's easier and less painful to box away people into nice and not nice groups. And it's often most common to label people similar to ourselves in the nice group. It's a narrow view of the world. Travelling opens up our preconceptions of people, the opposite of a narrow view: travelling broadens the mind.
They get to write the narrative.
We can analyze just one small tool in the belt of narrative control: censoring. If you've been warned or banned on Reddit, you can imagine how this works. If you've said something against the mold of what they allow, you will get censored. With so many people commenting, some subset of people will always say what you want to see. You censor or derank opinions you don't want, and boost opinions you want. This is a defensible form of writing a narrative without actually having to artificially write anything.
Of course with AI, you can now just write anything and seed ideas.
Give such sick people the reigns, and you get a false reality has little connection to what's really happening.
Good teaching moment for why estimates of big endeavours tend to be off, too. He appears to have slightly overestimated his average walking speed and greatly underestimated breaks (only some of which were by choice from what I gather).
The total journey appears to be 58,000 km (36,000 miles).
Expectation: 8 years, which translates to a daily average of almost 20 km (~12.5 miles). That's about 4-6 hours of walking time at my speed. Every. Single. Day. In sickness or in health, on country roads or through frozen wastelands. Seems optimistic even without anticipating any delays?
Reality: After 8 years, he had actually finished about half the distance, which I already find impressive. As of October, he has 2,213 km (1,375 miles) left. That means he traveled 55,787 km (34,664 miles) in around 27 years. That puts him at a daily average of almost 6 km (~3.7 miles), so probably 1-2 hours of daily walking time. That's actually not bad considering all the delays, but quite a bit less than anticipated.
New estimate: He expects to be home "by 2026", let's say January. Based on that premise, his new estimate is that he will walk 2,213 km in ~4 months. That's a bit more than 17 km (~10.5 miles) per day. Relatively close to his original, comparatively uninformed estimate, funnily enough.
All that said, I don't think I'd have the willpower to see this through, especially considering all the setbacks. Mighty impressive.
Aside from that, I'm not saying you're wrong or right about that theory, I'm just wondering how it falls down around that idea.
On this topic of interenet behavior, maybe I'm not really sure or maybe I am, but my view is it's less about some sort of diempowering imposition of external/elite evil upon a innocent and good mass population, but rather about the medium itself enabling latent negativities in the populus to surface. Which doesn't mean the population is itself not good and innocent - it is also multifaceted. Thus, such dynamics might operate in a "Stanford Prison Experiment" kind of "cover and permission" way.
My view of many of these dynamics are its more about emergent self-regulating properties of a system than it is about top-down control. In a sense, that's a lot more liberating and empowering for people, because then they are not cast as victims of some evil from on high, they are the architects of their experience, for good or bad.
The view you espouse, while seeming to empower the downtrodden by taking aim at hidden sources of evil power, I feel in fact disempowers by playing up the fake victim narratives that disempower and confuse people. In other words, your idea, while seemingly edgy and incisive, may in fact be what any such extant "evil elites" would want you to think, if they hope to have control! Haha :)
Anyway, I'm not trying to cut down your idea here in this topic - personally I believe people are very much in charge of their experiences, that's what I've found in my life - but in this kind of mass topic, who knows? Anywa, thanks for responding. Just some food for thought and maybe discussion. Have a good one :)
That reminds me, I'm making a text-based terminal browser. It might achieve that! Haha :)
Unfortunately there are some exceptions and I believe the highest risk area is India. A lady vlogger on motorcycle was recently gang raped there by 7 men.
I did not understand what was meant with "suffering insult", so with the help of DeepL and his wikipedia page I could determine that he passed away due to a brain tumour.
An other link:
https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/19.11.2025-farewe...
EDIT: Yeah same guy, this was posted to Reddit a while back. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1pfdkfs/...
He walked a bit, but mostly sailed though.
The book (Equator) worths the read. Especially the part in Africa.
For many years the prevailing notion was that anonymity turns people into dickheads. But they did studies on this, and it turns out it's just that the real-life dickheads just dominate the discussion and the reasonable people post way less
The societies we humans build always allow such persons to rise to the top - it doesn't matter if market democracy or brutal communism, fascism etc. The last type that didn't work well was some sort of feudal kingdom style where power was shared among elite across generations, inherited and rarely claimed by more competent, ambitious and vicious folks from lower ranks. But this is also how we got most of the progress in past 150 years, so its a double-edged sword. I wish I had a solution, maybe some Deus Ex-style of neutral AGI, but who would build such an AGI when everybody competent wants more power and manipulate others to their favor.
Heck, we often celebrate them by looking at their achievements, conveniently ignoring what utter piece of shit they are as humans (Ford is a prime example - a great inspiration for Hitler among others, and musk doesn't go far and look how uncritically he was celebrated also here for a long time and often still is... but the list is very long, basically almost all billionaires and high power folks).
With great power comes great impact even if they don't try, and who doesn't like some ego boost. People imitate them, follow them, subconsciously accept their values more easily. They literally imprint their values on rest of the world and we allow it due to our laziness, convenience and inherent sheepish mentality of masses which we are part of whether we like it or not - just look at how most folks need some form of a role model.