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The fearless stupidity of youth I came across this story in the Mail on Sunday today. It is very sad - the pain of a mother whose nineteen year old son disappeared without trace two years ago while on a journey in Cambodia. It’s a story that we hear rather too often now. Not enough attention - in fact, probably no attention - is paid to the causes, and to the potential great peril in which we blithely place our most treasured possessions, our children. I blogged about it in February of last year, following the killing of a young British girl on the beach at Koh Samui in Thailand. In the Mail article today, the mother of the missing boy has been made to understand in the cruellest way:-
There was never a time when independent travel to Asia or Africa was safe. But in the age of Empire, travelling Britons enjoyed a certain privilege and authority. No doubt, they fully exploited their position, and made no bones about demanding deference from the natives. Sahib might have seemed insufferably boorish to us from a modern perspective. But his status offered a certain protection that today’s starry-eyed One-World egalitarianism absolutely does not. And then there is impressionableness. The Mail story reveals that the missing nineteen year old was not on a trip during his gap year. But it was his gap year that caused him to take off again.
So his gap year had not equipped him to return to the rigours of full-time study, as advertised on the can. Here’s why, probably. The fearless stupidity of youth. I don’t really know what one should do about all this - save to make sure that these big kids understand something that might protect them from real life. One can’t ask the educational authorities to be responsible in what heady expectations they engineer - they are all One-World fantasists anyway. Nor can one turn to the travel industry for help - too self-interested. That leaves government, and they are all liberals too, and the FO has some very pressing reasons for keeping the local pols sweet. No wonder there are those among our children who wind up alone in some not-so-picturesque Third World shithole, learning when it’s all too late that naivety and hedonism are not universal values. Comments:2
Posted by Sal on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 04:48 | # Reading this story reminds me of what happened to Amy Biehl (I think I have the name right). She was a white girl from the US who went to South Africa to help the oppressed blacks fight apartheid or some such nonsense. In any event she was run down and killed by a mob of Bantus for the crime of being white. I think they pardoned her killers in the “new” SA (but I hope I am wrong). Her parents are typical love the world, multiculti types who can’t even blame the savages for what they did, after all the oppressive apartheid social construct they lived in made them do it, or some other liberal, lefty excuse when a band ofcolored tribesmen behave like the animals they are. God knows that is what the usual excuses are in places like New Orleans, LA, New York or Detroit when the savages living here behave true to form. 3
Posted by Al Ross on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:58 | # KM is right about gap year’s being a waste of time. I offered the opportunity of such a hiatus to both children but they refused and my son commenced his American tertiary education before his 17th birthday whilst my daughter started her English university education at age 17, thus saving both time and money. Some parts of Asia are safe enough for guys but I wouldnt recommend backpacking as mode of travel for a couple of girls. 4
Posted by Johan Van Vlaams on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:09 | # Another victim of the “good news show” about South Africa in the Western media (in Dutch): http://www.john-vrancken.org/zuidafrika/zuidafrika_index.htm A 17 years old Belgian fair haired virgin who, in the framework of an exchange program, went to Soweto. Unfortunately she was gang-raped. The five perpetrators say that she did it by consent. Let’s hope that she didn’t contract aids… 5
Posted by VanSpeyk on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:08 | # Ehh, actually I thought of going to Cambodia next summer. And I’m 22 (and a guy of course). Maybe I should reconsider. Al Ross, what kind of places in Asia do you think are safe? 6
Posted by Al Ross on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 15:34 | # Van Speyk Singapore and Hong Kong are, of course, very safe and Malaysia’s hazards are certainly far less threatening than those prevalent in American cities. I have spent the last 26 years working in South East Asia and I would always be careful in Indonesia and definitely wouldnt drive in the Thai countryside after dark. 7
Posted by R CROSS on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 16:00 | # Education ill equips young people for travel today,they fill thier heads with one world multi culti bullshit,and these young people really believe that everywhere has the same morality and virtues as thier own society,even the young women in England think that they are perfectly safe walking about in the early hours,accepting lifts from foreigners and nothing will happen to them.I did my traveling in the sixties, it was dangerous then,but at least the wogs knew that we had no money,or so little that robbery was pointless,i met a young man and his girlfriend one night on the docks in tangiers, trying to change a one hundred dollar bill,the next morning , bloodied and bruised i had to direct him to the british consulate as he had been robbed. 8
Posted by Andy Wooster on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 16:18 | # I find the concept of the “Gap Year” to be a joke. It’s the equivalent of Americans trying to pass off spring break in Cancun as something more than an exercise in debauchery. 9
Posted by James Bowery on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:00 | # Steve, do you have a working hypothesis explaining the stark contrast in morality between Viet Nam and Cambodia? 10
Posted by Sal on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 21:12 | # I can attest to the law-abiding nature of the Vietnamese. I never felt threatened there, even like one would in say Newark, Philadelphia or some other US urban area after 6pm. Then again, I was not smoking dope and walking around drunk acting foolishly as some do when abroad. 11
Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:10 | # James, they’re different races: there’s absolutely no doubt it’s at least partly genetic. 12
Posted by karlmagnus on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:08 | # It’s also partly economic; Vietrnam has ttruned itself into a serious growth economy, albeit a poorer one than China. Countries growing their GDP at 10% a year have neither time nor need to assisinate foreigners. Also, the place is full of useful foreigners trying to get rich, not just worthless gap year hippies. 13
Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:26 | # I’m sure KM is right in saying that “it’s partly economic”, although the Baltic states are growing fast (thanks, inter alia, to wise taxation policy) with concomitant high homicide rates (10 per 100000 population) in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. To put that figure in context, Hong Kong’s homocide rate is 2.4 per 100000, Singapore’s is 4.3 per 100000 and the Nigger-infested US capital’s is 69.3 per 100000. 14
Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:28 | # ‘homocide’ was obviously an anti-gay Freudian slip showing. 16
Posted by PF on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:37 | # As far as going abroad for spiritual growth, it seems like the experience gained is proportional to one’s prior knowledge of the customs and language, the contact had with locals on a daily basis, and the willingness to forgoe any intermediary support structures (i.e. traveling with a group, tour guides, etc.). Its really irrevelant where these gap-year kids and spring-breakers actually go, its arguable whether we should acknowledge that they have even been to these places. What they actually experienced was scenes from the local landscape imposed on the surface of a moving debauchery bubble. And the more money they have and the more help, and the less knowledge, the more all these experiences sound alike. If you sit down and have a conversation with one of these kids about their experience, its inevitably… “We had lots of fun,” “The people there were so cool,” “We spent so much time lying in the sun,” “Its so warm there,” “It was great.” I am now experiencing feelings of anger. 17
Posted by cognitive elitist on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:41 | # http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/01/courts_slam_doo.php Hey! You white guys afraid of the competition? Let this fellow sue for his rights, just like everyone else! 18
Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:46 | # That last comment by Steve is extremely interesting (9:33 AM). Extremely so. The next question is, of course, what makes the difference? Very, very, very interesting question. I wonder, btw, if Al Ross, who’s worked in the Orient the past 26 years, agrees with Steve’s assessment? 19
Posted by Al Ross on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 15:34 | # Fred, I havent visited Cambodia and my only Vietnam experiences have been short business trips. Steve Edwards’s observation about Vietnamese crime in Australia vis-a-vis their domestic behaviour was brought home to me by several Chinese Singaporean acquaintances (temporarily resident in Australia) who were sometimes embarrassed at being mistaken for Vietnamese by retail staff during their sojourns ‘down-under’. The Communists came quite close, at times, to success in Malaya and the ‘Emergency’ there from 1948-60 (so-called because a ‘war’ designation would have invalidated insurance claims) required drastic action such as forced population removal and was won by Gerald Templer’s brilliant execution of Harold Briggs’s strategy . I feel the same way as Steve Edwards does about the collectivisation of the West and one of the many things I enjoy about life in South East Asia, albeit on a full-blown expat package, is the respect that local service people have for Europeans; a respect that is often resented by local citizens who dont receive similar deference. 20
Posted by Steve Edwards on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:50 | # Once you understand that Marxism is nothing more than a messianic religious cult (in many more ways than one) aimed PRIMARILY at the West, and only using “the workers” as a convenient alibi, then you’ll see why it really has no practical application in Asia - it has nothing to do with Asians, because Marxism was never intended for them. When you sift past all of the dissimulation, it is perfectly clear why Marx openly anticipated the United States as the headquarters of “Marxist” revolution. Today, this is undoubtedly the case. 21
Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:55 | # ... it’s now firmly embedded at the PSYCHOLOGICAL level. As I repeatedly try to suggest: Man is suggestible! At the end of his interview with me Soren employed a Crowley quotation that bears repetition:- Any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year, no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see everyday in politics, in business, in social life masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points. However, suggestion is a condition of sleepfulness. The awake, the free cannot be owned in this way. We have to believe, you and I, that speaking our truths is a freeing act, and the greatest service we are currently able to perform for our own brothers, as others performed it for us. 22
Posted by VanSpeyk on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:21 | # My thanks to Mr. Ross and Mr. Edwards for their insightful comments. I must confess I didn’t know about the deep penetration of Communist culture in Cambodia. Although I had of course heared of Pol Pot but thought him typical of communists everywhere although a bit more extreme. In Eastern-Europe, where I do have some small experience, there too can be noticed a difference between those countries that have been thoroughly communised (Romania) and thos who retained more of their original culture (Serbia). I will definitely take into consideration what I’ve learned now. Also, if we’re talking psychology I could add my two cents. I’m currently preparing for a test in political psychology and I’ve read a lot about groupthink, which is the process whereby people go along with decisions made by other groupmembers because they believe that’s the consensus. I think groupthink definetly explains a part of the prevalence of the suïcidal-thinking so lucidly described by Mr. Edwards. Because so many people, foremost our media, political, business and intellectuel elite, espouse this nonsense a lot of people simply follow in line. What if those same elites, but this time in Vietnam, would start acting the same? Would it be the case that normal Vietnamese will accept it as normal? 23
Posted by Steve Edwards on Wed, 17 Jan 2007 06:31 | # There was an element of groupthink to it, but one cannot forget that the process of mass-immigration was usually also accompanied by Thought Crimes laws to prevent any serious opposition to both the process and consequences of replacement “migration”. Keep in mind also that there was already fertile ground in the West for such madness, due to the guilt-ridden legacy of World War II, the ridiculous misplacement of “Never Again” onto the shoulders of all Europeans everywhere, and of course Christianity itself with its divinely-sanctioned lemming-advocacy. None of these conditions are present in Vietnam, nor anywhere else in the Far East. 24
Posted by VanSpeyk on Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:43 | # You are right of course, there is no real room for a comparision However, its interesting to look at Germany and Japan, and especially at the different paths they’ve taken since WW II ended. Both countries lost the war and were later blaimed for millions of deaths and cruel occupation. Eventually, as we all know, the Germans cracked under the pressure and became a bunch of effeminate whimps who gave up their country and dignity. The Japanese took a whole different approach despite the many similar starting points. But maybe that’s not right to say, they did not start out the same. For instance, the Japanese never were Christians and so did not live in a Christian culture that might have critically contributed to the Germans behavior. Also, the Japanese didn’t have to deal with Jewish pressure. Heh, I noticed there were a lot of question marks above, sorry for that. You don’t have to answer them all of course 25
Posted by alex zeka on Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:01 | # Given that the Chinese government is still carrying out its draconian one child policy to limit population growth, they might well consider a sex imbalance a positive blessing. They’ll get the male workers now, w/o having to worry about childcare, etc. Obviously, the situation won’t appear quite so rosy for those Chinamen surplus to rumpy pumpy requirement, but the Chinese gov’t has never much cared about the satisfaction, sexual or otherwise, of individual citizens. Besides, all that wasted energy has to be sublimated somehow, and cold showers, morning runs and fanatical loyalty to party (often characteristic of those who haven’t got a person to love) will be great for a warrior state. As to the divergent German and Japanese responces to defeat, island peoples have always been an independent lot, what with most serious threats coming from the elements rather than other nations. It’s a sort of low level national autism - remember that actual autism is sometimes caused by continuous isolation - and can be very useful when avoiding racial extinction. 26
Posted by ben tillman on Thu, 18 Jan 2007 02:07 | # “I’ve read a lot about groupthink, which is the process whereby people go along with decisions made by other groupmembers because they believe that’s the consensus.” You will want to read some of Boyd & Richerson’s stuff on imitation, conformism, etc. 27
Posted by ben tillman on Thu, 18 Jan 2007 02:12 | # Robert Boyd, Peter J.Richerson, “The Origin and Evolution of Cultures”: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=3241 An original and compelling picture of the evolution of our species emerges from the book. Culture is at the heart of this picture. Boyd and Richerson characterize culture in ideational terms: For the most part, culture consists in the beliefs, values, norms, desires, techniques, and so on, that people acquire by social learning. Cultural transmission is not always faithful: Cultural items may be modified, for instance because of transmission inaccuracies or individual innovation. Moreover, not all cultural variants are equal: Boyd and Richerson emphasize various biases that favor the transmission of some cultural variants over others, particularly conformism, compliance to social norms, and imitation of prestigious individuals. Culture is thus a system of inheritance with modification, in which various forces (conformism, etc.) determine which cultural items are preferentially transmitted in a population. In other words, culture evolves. The general outline should be familiar enough, given the (already fading) popular success of memetics. But, despite a family resemblance, Boyd and Richerson’s framework has little to do with memetics. First, and most important, memetics has usually very little explanatory power. Too often, memetic explanations boil down to the uninformative claim that a given meme has spread in a population because it has reproduced itself successfully. The essential issue, What makes it the case that a cultural variant is preferentially transmitted?, is often dodged, or, when it is not, is addressed with sheer speculation. On the contrary, Boyd and Richerson ground their views in the contemporary psychology (but see some reservations below). Mathematical models that describe the spread of cultural items in a population are based on specific hypotheses about people’s minds, primarily, the nature of human social learning. To capture the population-level properties of cultural evolution, Boyd and Richerson have adapted the mathematical models of population genetics. They have developed an exciting toolkit of mathematical models that describe various aspects of cultural evolution. 28
Posted by Steve Edwards on Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:48 | # My assessment has long been that China’s surplus male population will become a major threat to regional security. I believe that the Chinese government will undoubtedly put diplomatic pressure on its neighbours to accept mass male emigration from China, or perhaps some kind of scheme to subsidise the passage of foreign brides into China. This will be very unpopular with non-Chinese (because it is a zero-sum game which can only redistribute, not eradicate, the instability), which may produce a diplomatic standoff; I would predict that the Chinese government, being an expansionist ultra-nationalistic dictatorship, would not think twice about invading its neighbours for the single purpose of facilitating mass rape. Give them 20 years, they’ll get there eventually. Post a comment:
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. I was just thinking out loud.
Posted by karlmagnus on Mon, 15 Jan 2007 04:32 | #
The main thing is to make it very clear to your daughter that she is NOT going to have a gap year, one of the most worthless and damaging social constructs ever devised—if she wants to go to university and to be supported there, she goes there straight from school. Obviously a percentage will still drop out or get into drugs, but FAR fewer than with the gap year nonsense. Asking parents to support you for an extra year while you fool about is in any case a disgrace.
The Young Master knows that he will have my full financial and moral support for whatever college and degree he wants to study, but NOT for a worthless and damaging gap year in between. Thanks goodness, they’re slightly less common here than in London—I too have UK friends who have lost a daughter to a gap year (she found a boyfriend and emigrated to Australia, not quite death, I grant you, but close enough.)