The Metaphysical Files

But I bet you live in denial.  I wanted to talk about so much today, but now that I'm here and typing, I'm just drawing blanks.  That's okay though, we'll just plod along as usual.  What I'm concerned about in this day and age is education.  There's so much emphasis on the wrong things, and the actual way we learn and assess things is completely wrong.  The tests for intelligence are completely arbitrary and culturally imperialistic.  But picture this, we study for things that we have covered over that learning period, but then come exam time, we are usually tested on something we've never covered before.  If we haven't had time to evaluate how other principles can be related or tested in other settings, then of course nobody is going to do well.  And then come the inevitable bad marks, and people lose motivation for studying.  So many people drop out of school in High School and College, and it's terrible.  The will to learn, the drive and innovation and creativity and inherent curiosity of their nature has been beaten out of them through attrition and bad teaching.  Learning is mocked, treated as the 'nerd's game' while others chase frivolous pursuits.  I think society would be better served if we changed how we view education, and how children are taught.  Learning should be for learning's sake, not for assessment and rankings.  Then comes the other end of the spectrum, where schools progress people without proper teaching.  There's so many adults out there who lack basic literacy and numeracy skills.  How could this not have been picked up or addressed when they were still in primary school?  The system has failed them.  Let's not talk about the bridge between private and public education, but there's something wrong.  Class sizes are too big, teachers are underpaid (and they're usually not entirely skilled).  And disruptive students rule the roost.  This is probably different in the US, where I imagine the drunken jockocracy rules the roost.

If it's a lie, then I'll believe the lie, but at least I'll feel better.  I wanna get metaphysical, metaphysical, I wanna get!  Well I did, until I totally forgot what my point was going to be.  Things seem to alternate between guitar, politics, and education on this blog.  Well they're pretty major themes in my life, aren't they?  Well that and whole load of other crap.  Am I stronger now than I ever have been?  There's no way of knowing that.  In fact, there's a whole lot of things I don't know.  The clock is winding down and I wonder if it's all just a bunch of idle loose change, just stuck in a maze.  And there's no way out. 

Is there a greater purpose?  Who are all these people?  Sometimes my life just feels like less interesting version of the Truman Show.  None of this can be real, it feels like a big hoax, but I sort of know it is?  How can that be right?  You can explain what something is, very easily, but you can hardly explain what something means. 

It would be better to not be connected to anything, because you must let everything go at some point. 

There is an easy middle ground in Australian politics.  The Conservative party here is just whacko, and they are the absolute worst of 1950's conservative tropes.  Women as housewives, poor as useless slaves, and minorities/ethnic people as enemies to be feared.  The issue with the current 2 party system is that the liberal party (which is comically known has the Labor party) is so aligned with the Trade and Worker Unions, that it cannot be objective in workplace issues.  All of the big wigs from that party are all former Union heavyweights, and when they retire, they handpick others from past jobs to take their place.  This leads to a very 'friend for friend' attitude, and of course the best person for the task never gets the role.  So when their reputation is preceded by their work in the unions, how can they effectively govern?  Besides Criminal Law, the next cornerstone of a society in an industrialised world is Employment and Workplace Law.  It governs how all workers operate in light of their employment.  Employees already have the upper hand, because they're the ones paying the cheques, overworking employees and in other cases, underpaying them.  But sometimes unions go too far in terms of what they want, so who will protect the employer and provide a common sense approach?  Certainly not the Labor government.  And certainly not the Coalition, who seek to protect the employers at all expenses of the worker.

Ahh here's the metaphysical!  It struck me while I was out at lunch.  Is there an inherent balance to life?  Just say you had the power to bring the dead to life, would something else need to die in order to maintain that balance?  We operate in such a narrow field of view, we can only see such a slim shade of reality (that is our own), and there's still so much out there which we're not aware of.  If you could reverse time, would it need to be fast forwarded somewhere else, considering it's a circular concept?  But all of this is predicated on there being balance.  What if there is none, and this is all just a random collection of events and memories that are all just doomed to be lost in the ether?  How terrifying. 

In all cultural portrayals of Death as a humanoid figure, it's almost always evil.  Why is that?  Death is a natural part of life.  It belongs with life.  Life cannot exist without death.  Are the answers in my memories?  Where is home?  Some weird things are going to happen, I suspect.


Joaquin out.

Should Have Known

Should have grown.  But left looking clueless anyway.  You just have to speak up when you get the opportunity, or at least create your own.  I've cut my nails and I'm playing like a genius.  I'm scaring myself with my own creativity here.  Whenever I've picked up my guitar, something new and interesting is coming out.  I've never been so productive or prolific on anything besides blogging!  It's good to see.  I guess all that practice is paying off, considering I've been playing for a pretty long time now.  Though, considering how far I've come, I don't think I would change a thing about my practice schedule or methods.  I guess I should have just started performing in public much earlier.  Damn it, I just remembered that last night before I was drifting off to sleep, I came up with the best lyrics I've ever thought of, and I thought to myself that I should write it down.  Alas, I did not, and now they're lost in the ether. 

I get in to work and realise that I don't have a lot to do today.  So let's see how much I can blog.  For those of you who think Australia is a bastion of freedom and fairness and laid back goodness, think again.  Australia is a ridiculously expensive place, that it's so tough for those who are just below middle class to survive.  I've talked about health care and taxation and the inequities built into the system (which are indicative of any Western nation).  What kind of system is fair where the biggest earners are the ones paying the least amount of tax?  CEOs and Managing Directors of massive companies pay less tax than their Secretaries, is that right?  Then the companies themselves, who flaut international laws and tax regimes in order to pay minimal tax (if they even pay).  Let me use a common example here, car registration.  Cars are expensive enough on their own, but registration itself is ridiculous.  You'd think renewals would be cheaper for registration, but the silly system in place in some jurisdictions just makes it insane.  If your car is insured for comprehensive stuff, which would cost about $650 per year, approximately, you have to pay additional compulsory third party coverage in addition to your registration.  Registration itself is okay, it's usually in the realm of $350 per year, but the third party stuff is insanely ridiculous - it's an additional $550 per year!  So for insurance, registration (with the third party stuff built in) it's $1,550 per year!  You can buy a second hand car for that kind of price!  It's absolutely stupid.  I could live with it if there were actual other side benefits, but the cost of public transport always rises (for a service that is not effective), and the state of the roads (at least in my city) is horrible!  There's always roadworks, traffic backed up everywhere and the roads are degrading.  And they're taking my money why?!  And it makes no sense, because a car depreciates in value as it ages, but the renewal cost will always be the same (or it will increase with the insurance premium).  Let's add to that the stupid idea of stamp duty (WHAT THE HELL) and concepts such as a luxury car tax!  That's right, in Australia, if you buy a car over $60,000, the government will charge you an additional premium because they think you're rich!  What gouging of the public.

This all harkens back to a bigger problem - just bad government.  I don't believe in a two party system anywhere, because that's not real democracy.  They conservative and liberal governments in Australia have stupid policies.  You just can't avoid them, there's no common sense or thought given to the long term.  Can we have better?  We deserve better! 

Damn, overall this has been a very lazy day.  Things are a little bit sketchy.  But let's call it a day.  I want to just turn to mind off and sleep.

Joaquin out.

Science v. Love

Does love conquer common sense or the bigger picture or the greater good?  I think so.  But we must be wary of how Hollywood and popular culture influences people's perceptions of love.  It's not realistic in the slightest, and I think it stops a lot of people from being legitimately happy.  Anyway, the thought struck me this morning about how Google's founders were working on genetic screening and testing.  That way you can see what sort of diseases and maladies you might be susceptible to.  The next logical step is screening at the pre-birth or even pre-conception stage.  To some extent, society already does that, you can get some babies 'made to order' so that you can have a baby with a certain eye colour or hair colour, or gender and what not.  So that brings me to this, there are so many people that are not genetically compatible.  So what do they do if they love each other?  Their children may have horrible genetic deficiencies that may affect quality of life.  My opinion is that society is messed up, science wouldn't normally be able to overcome things like genetic pre-dispositions to certain diseases, but in the situation where someone found a genetic incompatibility with someone, I bet you we would magically start to master genetic therapy.  That's a bit messed up, but I suppose it just follows that if there's no real impetus to make scientific leaps, nothing is going to happen.  It is also a bit weird and hard to measure because love isn't science, it's not logical, and the laws of scientific scrutiny don't stand up to it.  But that's a story for another time.

BNP Paribas (a French bank) was recently in a lot of trouble for banking within Cuba, Iran and Sudan, all countries subject to economic and trade sanctions at the moment.  I wholeheartedly disagree with sanctioning countries.  If you don't like how a Government is behaving, why are you punishing its innocent citizens?  Most of the time, it's places with corrupt political systems (and who says democratic countries aren't as bad), so the people don't even popularly vote for whoever is in power anyway!  Yet people are dying from starvation and what not because they can't get supplies in.  The bank was fined $9 billion USD by an American (!) court for banking with these countries.  Okay, I'll understand if they were dealing with the Governments, to prop up dictatorships or deal with weapons and all that, but if it was dealing with private citizens or on positive initiatives, then how disgusting!  That's no crime, it's almost pragmatic (in a heavily disjointed way).  And the nerve of it to be tried in an American court!  That's the thing, if you don't play by their rules, they will want to punish you.  Why don't the Arab countries band together and put an oil sanction on the Americans?  Or an Arab-Chinese alliance?  Woo, there's something to think about for future reference!

The Prime Minister recently made a gaffe regarding foreign investment in a speech.  Let's ignore the fact he said Australia was unsettled before the British invaded (ummm what were all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders doing here for the 40,000 years prior?!), because it sets a dangerous precedent about what that means for Indigenous land rights, but it just goes to show how dangerous and racist and unhinged these conservative people are.  They don't regard native populations as civilised or as humans.  They pass these ideas on to their children and the cycle of discrimination and hate continues.  But anyway, that's not the point I want to make.  He said that he has selfish views on foreign investment.  If he wanted to sell his property, he wouldn't mind selling to foreign investors, but if his neighbour wanted to do the same thing, he would take issue with that.  That right there is the epitome of conservative thinking and what's wrong with the Liberal/National Party Coalition in Australia.  One rule for them, another rule for everyone else.  Pure selfishness and greed.  Let's read between the lines here, he's referring to Asian foreign investment.  The Asian dollar is going a long way in Western countries because they are experiencing a great boom and the West is just commencing its slide into obscurity.  So Asians are buying large swathes of land in Australia and America and this has annoyed many local residents, as they are priced out of areas they used to be able to afford.  The Prime Minister doesn't want people to benefit from the same opportunities that he would have, and on top of that, he doesn't want to see Asians in his neighbourhood.  Well it works both ways, there's a lot of foreign investment running the other way.  Westerners are buying up large tracts of land in developing nations, often at a premium, and subject to shady practices from the local populace.  They're pricing the local population out of homes, and what happens when a local land developer just grabs the land, sells it to a Westerner for a tidy sum, and then somewhere down the line there's a local person who has a real claim to the land?  What happens then?  Ahh the unfairness of the system, but I've gone on enough about that for one week.

Goddamn, this has seriously been a productive week blog wise.  I'm very proud!  Cause at least I know not every week (or month, or even year) is going to be the same.  Got around to tabbing some of my new ideas last night, and a bit of guitar.  I'll need to cut my nails this weekend so I can get some good playing in next week.  I've also got a bit of work to do today, so I'll turn some attention to that and see what happens by the end of the day. 

Only 2 hours to go until I can get out of here, yes!  I can't wait.  TGIF and all that stuff!  I'm running out of things to say, but I'm also running out of time.  I think today I'm just going to go home and sleep.  I never really buy anything online except for books, but I do enjoy window shopping online.  It's amazing to see how much cheaper it is to purchase something online, compared to the rip off merchants operating in malls, especially in Australia!  I don't care if they all lose business and go bankrupt, in this crazy system, I'll decide who my money goes to.  And you can bet your ass it's going to be to the person charging the least amount for the same product.

Sigh, it's never quiet around here, is it?

None of this was an accident.  It couldn't be.  But what could be driving it? 

I think I'll call it a day, if not a week here.  It's been fun.

Joaquin out.

Lies & Misapprehensions

Look to the sky for your misconceptions.  With razored hands and a whole bunch of nothing, we continue on.  Not feeling 100% with the program, but at least it's Thursday and pay day.  Just experienced my first pay cycle with the new tax rates, which results in more money being withheld for tax compared to before, meaning I lose out from a net result.  I've explained it yesterday, so I won't go into it again, but it sucks.  At least my HECS debt will be paid off when I lodge my tax return.  That's an ordeal that should never have happened.  I've been technically losing money ever since I've been working to repay this debt that the generation above mine didn't have to pay.  They really did so well, free higher education, cheaper property prices, and wage increases were much higher than the cost of living increases.  Then they work to screw over the younger generation.  Things have to change.  I've just got this massive problem with so called democracy and capitalism.  We work in a rigid system of rules in which nobody is happy.  So many people are suffering and struggling, but there's no impetus to actively help them because things are distributed in such stupid ways by Government (not just Conservative ones).  Welfare is skewed to far to unemployment, and usually to people who want to stay unemployed, not those who legitimately cannot work.  Where's the assistance for youth, mental health, healthcare, and disability?  There is none.  It's all being cut and focused on silly infrastructure projects.  I'm telling you, none of it makes sense.  The rules need to be changed, things need to be more flexible, and there has to be more of a balance.

The world is being ruined by an over-reliance on military aggression as diversion, fear-mongering and stupidity of the majority of the population (with a mixture of apathy), and career made politicians.  There's no longer a cross section of society in politics.  You see political science people and political advisers and lawyers making up the bulk of Government these days.  They've been doing it for almost their entire lives, from their university days onwards.  And where's the recognition of society?  Of those who are not like them?  They are so far removed from society!  Yet they've set up a system where independent candidates have a difficult time getting in because they don't have the money to spend on campaigning.  That leaves the door open for only the mega rich megalomaniacs, and those the parties pre-determine as being okay to be preselected for party nomination.  That's not real democracy.  It's all a bunch of crap.  Add in the capitalist element, and these items work to screw over the majority of citizens.  Reliance on capitalism and this 'faux' democracy is a conservative concept that has no basis in reality.  It may sound good in theory, but the practical outcome (when you add in the outside factor of human nature), and everything only succeeds in being unfair and exploitative.  Tell me what's right about that.

We've got a real problem now with the transparency within Government.  Let's avoid the Snowden leaks and how Government is lying about its surveillance of people under the auspice of national security, and focus on something else.  The Conservative Government in Australia has recently introduced changes to the Freedom of Information Act which make it harder to get information out of Government if you are a member of the public.  That act is the cornerstone of democracy and good government.  Any attempt to restrict the freedoms it affords the citizens is an attack on free thought and true democracy.  The Government wants to be secretive and not tell the public the reality about any situation.  One aspect is the new policy on asylum seekers.  Since it's somehow a hot button issue for the public (for some unknown goddamn reason), the government has been unable to stop the boats, but instead just pretend they don't exist.  They don't tell the media or the public anything about any boats that have been picked up, or that are in distress and what not.  One boat apparently went missing and the Government won't tell anyone what's happened to it.  People's lives are at stake and the Government is lying to people and what's worse, is that the public doesn't care.  They want to be wilfully blind to the plight of people dying.  If you think people should remain where they are because of the 'luck of the draw' of being born into the 'wrong country' then fuck you.  You deserve nothing but pain and darkness.

Alright, it's been a busy day and now I've only got an hour until I'm done!  Not bad at all.  Let's call it a day.

Joaquin out.

No Longer Time To Play

There's no impetus to pray, either.  Time is a funny old thing isn't it?  It becomes so relative depending on your experience.  Boring times get stretched out into near infinite lengths, but the second you start having fun, hours pass by in the blink of an eye.  There's objective time, and then there is experienced time.  The brain is a powerful organ, and it is responsible for how your perceptions interpret the world.  Evidence is before us that the brain actively disengages with reality to focus on certain tasks, because if it really took in everything that was happening to you, the experience would be overwhelming.  So essentially, what you think is real may not actually be how reality is.  Isn't that scary?  None of what's around us right now could be real.  Haha, how very Matrix like!

So a new financial year is upon us, and with it, many changes as a result of the Federal budget.  Typically you would see changes to the tax brackets (or tax rates), but for the past 2 years, they have been exactly the same.  No better outcome, but technically worse.  Wages don't rise in line with cost of living, so when you don't get tax breaks year on year, it actually equals a worse net result for everyone.  The cost of living is just taking off, and it needs to be reined in.  Another thing that irks me is that this so called Conservative Government is raising taxes via the Medicare Levy.  Normally it's 1.5%, but they've increased it to 2% for the foreseeable future.  That's ridiculous, I have private health insurance, which doesn't even really cover all medical expenses.  I don't rely on the public system, yet I'm subsidising it, and I'm getting screwed because if I want to use the public system, I have to pay lifetime health cover loading, which increases several percentage points each year.  I lose so much more money as a result, and I'm in a relatively good financial position.  I'd hate to see what would happen to people who are struggling.  This Government fails on public policy, finance and foreign policy.  What good are they??  On top of that, they are phasing out offsets to net medical expenses.  Gee thanks a lot.  This isn't a government that supports people.

Wow, I can't believe it's only Wednesday.  I'd be able to live if it was Thursday, but we're not quite there yet.  Don't ever change.  There's still yet to be the comeback.

Over the entire industrialised world, we are seeing increased instances of superbugs and diseases that are resistant to drugs and antibiotics.  We don't live in a static world, these things are evolving, and this includes diseases and viruses.  It just goes to show you that nature wins out in the end.  There will be some point where we have exhausted every possible combination of useful drug and antibiotic, and nothing will prove effective against future diseases.  We will die, or some of us will adapt.  Maybe it's what's needed to kickstart evolution again.  Forgive me for quoting Iam Malcolm from Jurassic Park, but "life finds a way". 

There's no work to do so that gives me time to blog, which is a welcome relief from the monotony of life.  This seems new and exciting still. 

It is way too cold for any of this!  We used to have discussions that humans are very attuned to nature, and that we are dominated by the cycles.  Sun is up, we wake up.  Sun is down, and we go to sleep.  So in Winter when it's freezing, why on Earth would we stick to regular schedules and keep working normal hours?  It doesn't make sense.  People are tired, people are cold and they're just not productive.  I'm also a big believer in a 3 day weekend.  People can be just as productive in 4 days if they know 3 days will be used to recharge and relax.

Good grief!  It's only 11:50 in the morning!  There's still stacks of time before I can go home.  As I mentioned earlier about time being relative, it seems to be at a complete standstill for me now. 

Foiled like a zany plan of Batmanian proportions.  I've just coined a new term, thank you very much.  I just need some time!  That's the way to go.  All is not gone yet.  Did I make things too hard for myself?  Yes and no.  Who knows?  Not me, that's who.

Played some great guitar last night.  I don't know what the hell is going on, but just playing 15-20 mins a day only has improved my creativity.  Maybe cause I'm doing things to actively stimulate the creative centre of my brain, but I'm coming up with new and interesting ideas pretty much every time I lay a hand on the guitar!  I've never played like this before.  It's wonderful and I feel inspired to keep going. 

This is just not my day!  Can I be a person who just gets things done?  Wow, in hindsight, this has been one hell of a post.  That reminds me!  It's only 2 months to go until the blog's 10 year anniversary.  That's a bit creepy!  How life has changed since then.  On that note, I'll probably need to stop posting soon, to allow me time to read posts and tag stuff.

I really dislike how Apple prices its products.  The key difference is the iPhone 5S and 5C.  The 5S is meant to be the premium phone, but the 5C is still expensive, weighing in at about $740 AUD for a 16gig model.  That's premium price right there, so the fact the 5S is more expensive is more of a joke.  It hasn't had a full cycle, considering an iPhone 6 is meant to début in September, yet it's still operating at that price.  And the Galaxy S5 is even more expensive than either of them!  Upwards of $700 for a 2 year cycle is not worth the hassle to me.  It's not smart buying.  If you're going to use a smartphone, it makes sense to buy a phone outright and get a sim only plan, since at the end of a hypothetical 2 year period (on a contract plan with a phone), you're much better off.  Why let go of money when you don't have to?  You want a phone that's going to last at least 4 years.  So be careful when you have firmware and OS updates, because sometimes they will slow your phone down.  Sometimes you gotta give up a little bit of security and optimisation to make sure you get your money's worth out of your phone. 

Alright, 45 minutes to go until I can get out of here.  It can't come soon enough!!  But in the interest of brevity, I'll keep it there.

Joaquin out.

Best Of Intentions, Blurred Reflections

Because you can't see what's in front of you.  Not even yourself.  There's no bigger picture.  You just go from day to day, hoping to see out the week, for a weekend where you don't do anything anyway.  I never claimed to know what was going on.  People acting like they already knew.  SMH.  Hahaha, things don't make sense more often than they do actually do.  I've really gotta get out of here, just escape.  Got some guitar in last night, but not enough.  It was good!  Enjoyed playing, but I'm hoping my skills aren't disappearing with the lack of formal practice.  Is this a case of the grass being greener on the other side again?  Maybe I need to go back to the dark days and revisit some of those earlier posts.  I wonder what my frame of mind was?  Not good, is my guess.

What really irks me is idiots who wonder why people from third world or war torn countries want to create better lives for themselves in the West.  It should be a no brainer!  These places haven't had the same opportunities as the West to benefit from natural resources, trading, waging warfare against a technologically inferior people, to rely on.  Therefore, they are stuck in situations where governments are corrupt, or their lives are in danger for being voices of dissent, or just being individuals, and then people get annoyed when they dare to leave (often at great personal risk) and find a better life for themselves.  People are just not willing to share, unless it is with the same rich white folk they just implicitly trust.  Society doesn't move forward if we continue on this course.  I have to tell you that the world changes, it's not the same place it was 100 years ago, and this scares people.  But society changes, for either better or worse.  But it changes, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.  So why bother?  How about getting on with your life? 

What the shit is this fuck?!  2 hours until I can go home?  This is whacky.  Time is taking on interesting properties. 

Like how it's time to go right now!  Haha.

Joaquin out.