I no longer want to read about this person's journey or care to, because this is exactly the kind of person we need to stop hero worshipping. The irreparable damage to society from child abandonment is so large, that whatever he accomplished(?) by doing his stunt is negated.
I'm going to be unapologetic in saying that because this is irresponsible, immature behavior. He had a child, and then decided to leave for 20+ years to pursue his selfish interests while 100% abandoning his family and spouse to raise the child themselves. It's 100% trying to run away once he saw how difficult raising a family is and turned it into some BS stunt. That is also a relationship and pain and suffering that should never be forgiven, not during this immature person's lifetime.
Advice to others when you're thinking of doing this sort of thing where you abandon the people that love you to pursue some extreme interest. You may get exactly what you're looking for, with the cost of people never being close to you ever again.
As a point of interest, the English do have a sort of stiff upper lip thing going on since forever. It's normal in English upper class families to send kids to boarding school. This was partly enabled by empire, but seems to have persisted. I have English friends who think nothing of living on another continent to their children.
On the mental bearings of extreme travelers, I used to do some long distance (multi-week) cycle touring and offered accommodation to others through platforms for this purpose while living in China. They say you have to be half-mad to get in to cycle touring in the first place. Some of these people were very much in a weird mental place. After a bad experience with a German woman I stopped participating in these systems. Some of them would turn up broke with no shoes really in need of help. A subset of the people who finish go on to become motivational speakers. Most of them probably wind up happy, but grizzled and impoverished with more physical than mental health.
Politeness, queuing, etc all poppycock and not applicable as general rules.
There's far more depth and mystery to be explored in raising a human than there will ever be as a tourist. The deep stupidity it takes to think otherwise is depressing to behold.
edit: and yeah, i got the ick from the walking guy too
I won't pass any judgement either way, but it's an interesting perspective.
With 100+ Million orphans in the world, having your own kids is anti-humanitarian (not anti-human) anyways, so why is being a corporate climber relevant?
i think it should be this way. but what happens when you got someone pregnant by mistake? it can happen even with people taking secure measures... but then the man doesn't want but the woman do. she has the right of having it but the man shouldn't be obligated "on being a dad". maybe i think in a country that has abortion legalized the man also should abstain from paying pension. the otherwise should still depend on the woman decision, after all is her body and any consequence of pregnancy falls upon her
> With 100+ Million orphans in the world, having your own kids is anti-humanitarian (not anti-human) anyways, so why is being a corporate climber relevant?
yes, i would love a law punishing people (higher taxes maybe?) from having children when there are anyone for adoption in the country :P but i was just trying to show a case where it's somehow valid to a man simply walk-away (no pun intended, i really didn't sympathized with the plot of our corporate climber here nor the walking guy)
And this is the problem, your exact phrasing. You get her pregnant. A man gets a woman pregnant. It's putting all the onus on the man in an activity that requires two consenting participants (rape is obviously excluded for this argument).
It's kinda sexist because it diminishes the responsibility of the woman involved and strengthens the responsibility of the man involved, both bad things and everpresent through many aspects of society.
have you read what i typed? where do i diminish the responsibility of a woman in my comment? i literally typed i'm against any decision on having or not a child BY MEN
Women: 12-15 contraception types; 4 mitigation types; 4 cancellation types.
And still it is men who are being blamed, despite all the power being in women' hands. Men often only wanted sex, not the child. And yet, if pregnancy happened, there is nothing he can do about it, even if he was tricked or lied to.
If a woman gets gets pregnant, she has all the power. She is the sole decider what to do about it. Therefore, if the child was born it was always because the woman decided to do it.
If the woman decides to abort the child, she can also do it, without the guy/husband having any say.
This is the reason why I think that the abortion rights should be extended to men as well. If women have rights to be the sole deciders in getting the children aborted, then men should have the right to a financial abortion (she can decide what to do with the child, he should decide whether he wants to be financially participating in the woman's decision; her body, her choice. His money, his choice.). Not only would that be fair and balancing the reproductive rights, but would also greatly decrease the baby trappings and the number of single mothers.
And while we are at it, make paternity tests mandatory after each birth (before taking upon oneself a 20-year financial burden for the kid who is very often bot yours). This would greatly decrease adultery and paternity fraud.
There aren't enough kids to be adopted in Western countries, even for very small number of people who would want it. The formal requirements, time and money expenses, as well as reliance on a huge amount of luck is often an insurmountable obstacle. My friends tried for many years, but were forced to abandon the process. This was incredibly sad, knowing how great parents they would have been.
I believe the law should be changed; if an unintended child is unwanted by the Father and the mother does not want to get an abortion (which is her choice) then the Father has the right to refuse contact with the child as well as refusing to support the child.
Cause straight men: at the moment, as soon as you stick it in you have zero choice, zero rights, even if you're using protection and there's been no agreement that you're doing it for fun or for reproductive purposes. But then none of you seem to care about it so...?
I understand why men feel this way, but realistically when a woman is stuck with a child she didn't want, which happens more often than people admit because of so many factors and systems set against the idea of abortion, she never gets to walk away.
It is just a day or two at a time but I realized at some point that this is what I have to do to be able to be a caring husband and father. If I don’t I will become depressed and miserable and no amount of loving them will overcome it. I am much more useful as a happy and functional human being 350 days a year than a miserable one for 365.
“what was the mom like?”
He took the family's money, bought a plane ticket to south america for himself and a bunch of gear for himself. Who knows what he actually left them with. And then disappears for 20+ years.
I honestly hope that before this whole thing happened he was on his way towards a divorce so this abandonment was expected.
Some of these “make the news for being extraordinary” obsessions really seem to be something where the person in question should be talking to a therapist/psychiatrist before undertaking them.
Any of those types of “solo sailing the Pacific Ocean” or “performing [repetitive task] [longer/further] than anyone else” or “knitting 300,000 scarves for every sick child in the country” or “visiting every Rainforest Cafe” come across as untreated mental illness when you step back from the inspirational journalistic tone that these stories often take.
I always wonder what hole in people’s lives they’re trying to plug when they do crazy stuff like that.
> He found refuge, at first, in family life. In his early 20s, while stationed in Belfast, he met a local woman and had a child with her, Adam. In 1995, though, the marriage crumbled while the Bushbys were living in Hampshire, England. Adam and his mother returned to war-torn Belfast, where Karl, as a British soldier, was forbidden to visit. He found himself “alone, wondering where my life was going.” He created for himself the ultimate challenge: a journey that would show his paratrooper mates he was no runt.
He didn't leave until 3 years after he'd already been separated from them.
I'm not saying it's good that he didn't try to have more of a relationship with his son, obviously not. But it seems like it was already a complicated and broken relationship with the mother, across countries. Going on his trip wasn't walking away from an otherwise functional family.
https://archive.md/20250528132130/https://www.washingtonpost...
It’s remarkable how eager people are to jump to conclusions about the role of the mother in the estrangement.
In my observation estrangement of fathers from children is usually forced by mothers who don’t want strings attached. I’ve been in the periphery of several such situations, and never in one where the father walked away… but that also probably has to do with my cultural background. I have heard it is alarmingly common in some cultural circumstances.
https://refuga.com/karl-bushby-the-man-who-chose-to-walk-aro...
This is how much he had to sacrifice. Leaving his only son when he was just five and not being able to watch him grow up like any other normal father. He also sacrificed a father/son relationship that may never be restored. “Out of everyone I knew in this world, I knew my son least of all.” Karl didn’t have any means of communication with his son for years but managed to reach him after contacting one of his friends on Facebook. While he was away, his son was suffering from depression and self abuse and had to use medication and therapy.
That's not sacrifice, that's abandonment. I have a young son not far from that age and trying to imagine how he'd feel if daddy just walked off nearly brings me to tears.