I'm kind of developing my response along the way as I hear the video by Brett Cooper.
I know some have considered me in terms equivalent to those she uses to describe the behaviour of Karl. If in 2004 I had stayed in Sweden or returned to Sweden, I would not have had a good chance of getting married, and my mother could have been used to humiliate me in ways painful to her, I actually bought her freedoms by getting and staying away. She bought me freedom by not directly telling me to get back, even if presumably she'd have been happy at least the first month just for being able to see me.
He Left His Son Behind for a 28-Year Journey Across the World
Brett Cooper | 6 Nov 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR_1MmmjnCQ
7:08 Given the divorce had already taken place and his ex-wife had custody, I think Karl Bushby may have missed less of his son's life than other dad's in similar positions do, while being less remarkable and trying to keep visitation rights.
Each time Karl had a girl friend, this was a mortal sin of adultery.
If Adam got a stepfather, the mother would have entered a mortal sin of adultery.
If during visits Karl would have approved of that relation, he would have made himself complicit to mortal sin of adultery.
Mortal sins aren't worth it even to keep seeing your own flesh and blood.
I find it possible, if his ex-wife didn't remarry and for the time they both spent on the internet together, that he provided for his son and his wife better than many other divorced dads would have been able to do. BECAUSE he did something remarkable.
8:30 Quoting the man himself: "It has been a purely selfish way to be"
So?
To Kantians, selfishness is the root of evil. To Christians, it isn't.
8:44 It seems one should be worried about Bushby's soul.
Shackleton and Cook, looked them up, were not horrible other than by definition, i e by being away some time.
On that view Hindus would have to diss Yudhishthira and Rama, who were absent from wives Draupadi and Sita (when it comes to Arjuna, he seems to have been a horrible husband to Draupadi) (Or, that could be the opinion of the girl who wrote the prose version of Mahabharata I read and based on this, but I did come away from the reading with a sense that he was a horrible husband — though it was Yudhishthira who played dice! — as well as a great warrior) (That 12 year old girl was a diplomat's daughter, daughter to an Indian Ambassador, she summarised Mahabharata as an assignment, and did it so long that it reads like a novel ...)
No, there is no reason to take explorers as being ipso facto bad fathers.
In this case, I think he may have made life better for Adam than by staying home.
But self denigration and playing to the public are a dangerous way to go, unless he's genuinely hurting from a remark his son made.
The logical sequence of this "idealism" (if anything more than personal) is stating that people with any kind of special mission should have no wives or children. Did Bushby watch too much Game of Thrones?
The logic is epitomised by "Night's Watch" and their oath (as a conlanger, I have seen more than one translate it into their respective conlangs, I have refused to follow the trend).
9:36 James Cook changed the world for the worse by making Australia English ... only recently have Aborigines started to regain some dignity.
It would have been better for them to have come under Spain.
Now, proving the Bering Land Bridge and the extent of the walk certainly is part of the greater good of knowledge.
12:13 Like the men on the Kon Tiki expedition, I've been in love with the grand daughter of the Swede on board, but she didn't like me (that way at least) ..., he was proving a prehistoric traval physically possible.
12:23 Yes, he wanted to. And the guys had not taken the steps to show the prehistoric passage possible, as far as he knew, so he did. Even if they had been there before.
Doing a thing you want is not the definition of crime or of vice.
12:30 "He didn't have to"
Most good things we do are things we didn't have to.
At the age of 26, Cook was offered a promotion to captain of Friendship, but he declined and instead joined the Royal Navy at Wapping on 17 June 1755. He entered the navy when Britain was expanding its naval forces in anticipation of the conflict that became known as the Seven Years' War. ... The Treaty of Paris – signed when the Seven Years' War ended in 1763 – enabled the Royal Navy to redirect resources from warfare to exploration. Britain soon dispatched several explorers to the Pacific Ocean, including John Byron, Samuel Wallis, and Philip Carteret.
John Byron was the father of many children, Samuel Wallis as far as I can see unmarried, Philip Carteret married after his discoveries.
Bushby was pushed to make a blanket statement covering all of these guys and so far it fits none of them.
OK, if he meant Edward Shackleton ...
In 1938 Shackleton married Betty Homan, and they had two children, Alexandra (born 1940) and Charles (1942–1979).
Just two children? Sounds like they were tampering with fertility, that couple. On top of that, he was a Labour Politician ....
13:21 Have you forgotten that Karl was divorced both from responsibilities to his wife and to his son?
By the way, not all travelling is comparable. I quite Sweden in order to settle in France, not in order to simply have a high life as a vagabond here.
I've been in Paris since 2009, with surrounding region. I have time after time stated my occupation, writer, and goal, to get a publisher, and time after time been met with "so you are travelling around, how romantic!" and "let us help you some way on your road!"
I have lived a settled life as much as I possibly could, except I could have settled (ha ha) for a probably demeaning life of people "taking care of me" because obviously, if I had been so long without a home, I couldn't be all right, could I?
Now, Karl didn't have a settled life to break up from. It was already gone, since three years.
He joined the British Army at the age of 16 and served with the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment for 11 years, serving in Northern Ireland during Operation Banner, where he met his wife Angela in Belfast. They married and had a child, Adam, before divorcing in 1995.
I looked up Operation Banner:
In May 1992, there were clashes between paratroopers and Catholic civilians in the town of Coalisland, triggered by a bomb attack on a British Army patrol in nearby Cappagh that severed the legs of a paratrooper. The soldiers ransacked two pubs, damaged civilian cars and opened fire on a crowd.[72] Three civilians were hospitalized with gunshot wounds. As a result, the Parachute Regiment was redeployed outside urban areas and the brigadier at 3 Infantry Brigade, Tom Longland, was relieved of his command.[73][74]
Well, there seems to have been spiritual causes to his divorce, since he was technically a persecutor of the Catholic Church.
14:01 OK, seven years Catalina + three years Rika = ten years in adultery.
Tried to look up his wife Angela, but only found his mother, also named Angela.
14:55 OK ... back and forth to Colombia ... normal travel ...
Seing his son same way? No.
The best excuse I can find, it's not a justification, is, seing his son was the long term goal, as well as seing his mother. Seing Catalina was a dissipation, so it didn't count ...
15:38 Those situations in the son's life could have coincided with times when dad was legitimately walking or legitimately held back by red tape.
And the option of always being with the son until he left home was gone in 1995. Well before this journey.
Now, some people think army discipline is what you need to be a responsible parent. Karl Bushby had lots of that in Operation Banner.
Given some on the Protestant side in the Six Counties are Masonic (Orangist Lodges), I'm not sure he wasn't pushed into this kind of parental betrayal by Freemasons.
17:54 The celebrations are definitely part of Adam's reward, not just Karl's.
Read the Odyssey.
Adam, like Telemachus, had been mocked about his father. The celebrations were clearly needed for the son as well.
I am not bitter against my father for being absent (except one time I saw him at age 4). I am not bitter against him for not supporting me with 50 SEK, when that ferry-ticket could have spared me a second trial (between Germany and Sweden at the time, fugitives were sent back, but people who had been acquitted once weren't for a second trial).
I would be much more bitter if he had after that meddled in diverse ways to keep me back from what I have been trying to do, including effectively leave Sweden. Not just physically, and Swedes still pulling strings to the right and the left. It can be bad to be forced to be a grown up when you are a child or even to be forced to "grow up" when being naive. It's worse to be forced to be a child, when you are grown up.
Insofar as Karl didn't hamper Adam from marrying and staying faithful to his wife, or force him to anything like Operation Banner, I think Karl is a better father, than what in some dark moments I suspect my dad to have been. Especially if he's a Freemason and hopes to make me one.
18:55 He's confusing individuals from all over the world, with "the world" ...
God bless them who helped him, of course!
That doesn't mean God bless each of these countries in their total ramifications.
Calling the world "a big team" may have some truth to it, on that individual level, but it also has some unpleasant globalist connotations.
20:17 In German, RZ is not pronounced like in Polish, basically ZH, but it's R + the German value of Z, which is TS. Like in Italian if you have ever ordered a PIZZA.
20:38 Grandfather, I hear you.
Being a father for Adam .... I think he did alright already, given he's married and a father since 12 years at least.
Hope he's had other children since, family planning is a horrible vice ...
20:50 I think there is some reason to celebrate his achievement though.
- 1) As he shares traits with Ulysses, he reminds that Ulysses is a prophecy about the end times. Pagan prophecy, but still. Antinous = Antichrist. Penelope weaving = Harlot. Penelope taking the wooft apart again = Faithful Church. Routing of the Suitors = Armageddon. (Ramayana also has some vibes on these themes).
- 2) But he's also done Young Earth Creationism a favour:
He left Hull on 5 October 1998 and originally expected to finish the trek of 36,000-mile (58,000 km) in 12 years.
So, let's suppose the Behrings theory is correct and the Spanish priest and scholar who thought ancestors of the Peruvians crossed Atlantis before it sank was wrong ... 12 years after the Flood, or so, Armenia was no further from Behring's part time (in the post-Flood Ice Age) Landbridge than England is, so he helped to answer a question that is sometimes thrown out against adherents of the actually global Flood.
21:56 The lifetime with his family was already gone.
It was not his for the staying back. I don't know who brought up divorce in 1995, but the divorce happened that year, and in 1998, divide that by three by the way, we can't know that Karl could have repaired the marriage. If he can so, now, great.
