Day 369: Notes on the Case of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan

Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan 

The case of Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan - two young American cyclists murdered in Tajikistan by Islamists who first drove into them and then stabbed and shot them - is tragically fascinating for what it tells us about evil and the naive optimism of those who foolishly deny the existence of such.

According to the above, the reason so many people believe that the world is a scary, dangerous place inhabited by monsters, is due to a conspiracy; the powers that be want to keep us all afraid and mistrustful of one another.

In a blog post published shortly before he and his girlfriend were slaughtered, Austin wrote: "Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own ..." People are, he insists, mostly generous and kind.

Now, that last part might of course be true and I'm not one of those conservative commentators who wish to frame this event in Little Red Riding Hood terms, i.e. as a cautionary tale against straying too far from the safety of home, or messing with strangers, etc. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people are not entirely generous and kind.

And some, indeed, are malevolent and cruel; particularly when motivated by a religious ideology and deep resentment towards privileged Westerners who think the whole world is their playground - from Iceland to Timbuktu - round which they can pedal in perfect peace and harmony, admiring the views and patronising the locals, blogging and Instagramming as they go. 

But just like tourists and travellers, terrorists too like to use social media. And in a video released after the couple's death, the group of men responsible are seen pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and vowing to kill the infidels who have overrun their land. As Baudrillard said, the world isn't dialectical. It's a place of violent extremes and radical antagonism; not reconciliation or synthesis.

In other words, it operates according to a principle of evil ...

In Defence of Trivia

Thou, Trivia, goddess, aid my song: 

through spacious streets conduct thy bard along

  John Gay (1716)

This just in by email, with reference to a recently published post:

"It's bad enough when writers like you try to persuade us that superficial and boring phenomena, such as fashion, have great import or interest. But what is worse is that when you do decide to discuss serious topics, such as cultural appropriation, which involve issues of class and race, you invariably reduce them to questions of style or semantics in a manner that is disingenuous, disrespectful and disappointing. Surely philosophy - even of a postmodern variety - should do more than trivialise everything with an ironic smirk; particularly things that have real consequences for real people in the real world." 

There's obviously quite a lot here to which I might respond. But it's the idea of trivia that I think I'd like to address (briefly and obviously not in depth; nor with the appropriate gravitas that my critic seems to expect).

It's clear, is it not, that those who hate trivia do so from a moral position that is thought superior, but is in fact only snobbish and judgemental.

For what constitutes trivia after all other than forms of knowledge believed to be of lesser value or commonplace; fine for those of limited education or intelligence (and postmodernists), but not for those who have greater intellectual gifts and who, like my critic, prefer to discuss important issues from a serious perspective and not waste time playing language games or worrying about aesthetics.   

The Romans used the word triviae to describe where one road forked into two. And this too provides a vital clue as to why people such as my critic hate trivialisation.

For rather than being a reductive process, it's one that adds complexity and ambiguity; multiplying alternatives and proliferating difference; demonstrating that there is no single, super-smooth highway to truth, just a network of minor roads and what Heidegger terms Holzwege - paths that might very well lead nowhere and cause the seeker after wisdom to get lost. Ultimately, my critic is frightened of losing their way by leaving the straight and narrow. But I'm more like Little Red Riding Hood and prepared to take a risk; I might miss the point - but, on the other hand, I might meet a wolf (and there's nothing inconsequential about that).

Alternatively, I just might encounter a deity ...

For Trivia refers not only to fun-facts about popular culture or the minutiae of everyday life, but is the name of a goddess who, in Roman mythology, haunted crossroads and graveyards and was the mother of witchcraft and queen of ghosts, wandering about at night beneath the harvest moon visible only to the barking dogs who told of her approach. Again, one suspects all this rather frightens and repulses my critic, who would doubtless dismiss it as superstitious nonsense. But as the former editor of Pagan Magazine, the thought of encountering such a figure continues to secretly enchant.   

And so, in a nutshell, it's better to trivialise than to moralise and be forever bound by the spirit of gravity.