You have a hole in your mind

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 272011
 

It’s very likely that in 5 weeks from today, Darren and I’ll be wearily getting up, having slept on an air mattress overnight, and shambolically gathering our last remaining possessions – cats included – we’ll hop into the car and start the long drive to Melbourne.

It’s a funny thing; we’re now at that stage in the move where almost everything we do around the house to prepare makes an irrefutable change. A piece of furniture removed, or disassembled here, a bulky item we’re not taking disposed of there. The house is no longer being defined by what is in it, but by what isn’t.

You might think that with just 5 weeks to go we should have been further progressed down this stage, but we’re (for the most part) comfortable that we haven’t left our run too late. There’s been a lot of preparatory work involved: our life for years had been about hoarding our possessions like misers afraid to let go – as if the possessions themselves somehow held synergistic value. The first step was realising the value was actually in our memories – that letting go of possessions isn’t letting go of the experience, rather a simple acknowledgement of linear time. An acceptance that there are things in the past, and there are things in the now, and there are things in the future. And if you try to hold onto everything from the past – clutching it miserly and dragging it around with you, then it becomes dead weight.

The cleansing of that dead weight has taken time. But with it mostly done now, the real deconstruction is running in earnest.

And so we’re increasingly left with holes in our minds; not the memories – they remain – but the visions. You look at a spot that had a particular appearance for over seven years, but it’s now empty, and it’s jarring. Not in a good way, but not in a bad way either. A recognition that the past is being let go, in preparation for something new.

But we’ll be left with the memories. And sure, memories change over time – they fade, or they soften, or they accentuate in ways we don’t anticipate; but they synergistically form our lives. The move isn’t about leaving parts of our lives behind – those parts of our lives are encapsulated in memory, and so are intrinsically part of us, which means we’re taking the best of those times with us.

By the time we actually arrive in Melbourne there’ll be a lot of holes in our minds – memories lacking tangible association – but I’m not afraid or concerned about that, and I don’t think it bothers Darren all that much either. We’ll have cleanly let go of part of our past, holding onto the memories of those precious times, and ready to make so many new memories.

 Posted by PMdG at 6:37 am  Tagged with: , ,

General Offence vs Personal Offence

 Equal Rights, Morality  2 Responses »
Apr 182011
 

Last week in the UK, two gay men got ejected from a pub for sharing a kiss. As a result of that, a Facebook group was setup to organise a “kiss in” protest at the pub. However, Facebook appears to have deleted that group, and a photo that was posted relating to it, as being offensive.

As reported in the above link from Dangerous Minds, Facebook advised:

Content that you shared on Facebook has been removed because it violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content, are not permitted on Facebook.

Yet, plenty of my heterosexual friends have posted pictures say, from their weddings, where they happen to be sharing kisses, etc. That’s OK, apparently – it’s just when it’s two men that there’s a problem.

As a screw you to Facebook, I’ve changed my profile photo to one of my partner and I kissing. There was no sex, we were fully dressed, and if they remove it I’ll be rather annoyed.

Facebook is struggling to understand the difference between something being generally offensive, and something causing personal offence. If something is personally offensive, it means that one or a few individuals found it distasteful. That would be like where say, someone posts a picture of a particularly savage cut they just got. I find that distasteful. When they do, I don’t complain to Facebook that it’s offensive, I just hide the post and move on.

If something is generally offensive, it means that society as a whole views it as unpleasant and distasteful. Like say, pictures of bestiality, or other sick rubbish like that.

Facebook has failed to understand the difference between personal and general offence, and in doing so, has created general offence by responding to someone’s expression of personal offence.

Facebook needs to grow up, pull the bug out of its butt, and realise that same sex couples are allowed to kiss. Yet it’s this bigotry that shows how far we still have to come. Kissing in public, holding hands in public, touching each other’s shoulders or giving a hug in public – all of these things heterosexual couples take for granted, yet if we do it ourselves, we get branded offensive.

You know what I find offensive?

Double standards.

 Posted by PMdG at 5:34 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Mandatory voting

 Life, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 142011
 

A lot of democracies use this quaint notion that you only vote if you feel like voting. The United States, the UK, etc., have voluntary voting. Then people from those countries look at Australia and “Tsk Tsk” because we have mandatory voting, which is more akin to say, Iraq in the time of Saddam.

Personally, I find that a specious argument. It’s a bit like trying the reductio ad absurdam of Godwin’s Law. You can’t lump two countries together with wildly different cultures, policies and levels of democracies, just on the basis that they both do mandatory voting. (Or did, in the case of Iraq. I’m sure that’s been Americanised by now.) And if you want to, well, America and Venezuela must be exactly the same because they both have presidents!

I got into a discussion about Australian mandatory voting a few nights ago on the train with two people I know who happen to be from Europe. For both of them, their countries have voluntary voting, and they both hauled out the same argument I hear all the time – mandatory voting leads to a large number of informal (read: invalid, or in the Australian vernacular, donkey) votes.

According to Wiki, the current rate of informal votes is currently sitting at around 5%. So, 95% of people who vote don’t donkey vote. That’s pretty good. When we compare it to America, Answers.com tells me that voter turnout sits around 58%.

95% vs 58%.  Even if not a single American issued an informal vote, the per capita level of formal votes in Australia would significantly eclipse that of the United States.

So when people tell me that mandatory voting leads to a high percentage of donkey votes, and I talk about the actual percentages, I’m told that voter dislike to mandatory voting is hidden in valid, yet apathetic random votes. That’s where someone walks into the ballot booth, numbers a random box and hands it it. It almost reminds me of the Chinese Room Test.

My gut tells me this isn’t the case. If you had a sufficiently large proportion of the voting population doing random yet valid votes (one might argue syntactically correct yet semantically invalid), then this randomness should be observable in the election results. Even if the randomness is sufficient to avoid actually affecting the primary votes, it should show in crazy swings between elections in the minor parties or the percentage swings between the major parties. This does not happen.

So, the two “logical” reasons to avoid mandatory voting in terms of informal votes just don’t really stand up to the observable results.

What other arguments are there?

Well, the other core argument is that it’s a violation of human rights. That in a democracy, the option of not voting should also be an option. This gets hauled out frequently. Hmm, being a bit of a smart arse, I’d rather have mandatory voting instead of easy gun ownership and a violent popular culture, but that’s another argument to be had another time.

On the issue of human rights, I ask – do you accept that you have to pay taxes? If you feel you shouldn’t have to, then you either believe we should live in a utopian society without money, or you strike me as being amazingly selfish.

If you agree that people have to pay taxes and thereby contribute financially to the running of the country they live in, then that’s already a mandatory obligation. Or, to put it another way, it’s part of the social contract. We are helped by, and protected by society, in return for fulfilling some basic obligations. You didn’t sign it? No, they don’t tend to ask people to sign contracts as they’re born, but the simple fact is that while society is obligated to us, we too, are obligated to society.

Quite simply, we have freedoms, but with freedom comes obligation, and it’s disingenuous or selfish to think that you can have freedom without obligation.

I know people who have donkey voted all their adult lives; such things happen. And you know what I do whenever they start complaining about a politician? I tell them to shut the fuck up. I’m not interested in hearing them bitching about a premier, or prime minister, or minister for X, when they don’t vote. Blunt? Yeah, and deservedly so.

Mandatory voting is a valid part of the Australian political landscape. You know the joke that when you go to other countries, you shouldn’t discuss religion or politics? Well, in Australia you shouldn’t discuss sport or public holidays. Religion is an easy topic because Australians for the most part are happy to discuss religion without wanting to beat the shit out of you. Equally, Australians will discuss politics because they participate.

The final argument I then hear is that mandatory voting props up two party systems. Yeah, and having voluntary voting has done wonders in the United States on that front. You have the Democrats, and the Republicans. Let’s count them, hmm? One. Two. What about the Tea Party? Well, you’ll always get bigots with the IQ of a tea pot in any democratic election. And you’ll equally get people who rise above the two party system and want to pull the world into a utopia, too. You’ve got the same sorts of bigots and philosopher-kings in Australia as well.

I look forward to being required to vote for the rest of my life.

 Posted by PMdG at 7:52 am  Tagged with: , ,

Music and Me

 Music  No Responses »
Apr 132011
 

(…or knowing me, knowing you.)

It seems ironic that I come back to this old draft just as I’ve been introduced to a great band, Mumford and Sons. (Check The Cave.)

Music has a real power over me, particularly when combined with a secondary stimulus. I can watch a sad or poignant moment in a TV show and not be the slightest bit affected if it doesn’t have the right musical trigger. But once that trigger is there, it takes the most supreme of controls for me to not be deeply affected on multiple watches. One of the best examples of this came in “Vincent and the Doctor” (see here for the video of the section I’m talking about).

My first introduction to the power of music over me was in my teens. I was reading “Magician” (Raymond E Feist) for the first time … I can still remember it so strongly. I was house-sitting for an aunt, and indulging myself with some loud music through headphones while reading. And I reached the point in the book where Pug has had enough, and destroys the stadium. The raw power described was amplified by … Queen, “Was it all worth it?”

To this day, likely more than half my life later, I can’t listen to that song without almost eidetically remembering the scene painted by Feist; the music not only affected me, it burnt the images into my memory with a cathartic-inducing intensity.

Yet it doesn’t have to be stimulus linked with what I’m reading or watching; sometimes it’s a combined emotional or memory stimulus. In 2000, I worked for a brief time at a finance company with toxically unpleasant people. It was my first introduction to working in Sydney, and I lasted six months before I found the opportunity to move on. (In fact, toxic probably didn’t even come close to describing some of the people I worked with. It taught me a valuable lesson though that I later strived to remember as a manager: if you take out your bad mood from your personal life on your staff, you’re a supreme arsehole, and everyone knows it.)

I survived those 6 months, particularly the final 3 months, due to one song – Sarah McLachlan and Delerium, “Silence“. Every morning, without fail, as I got off the train at Wynyard station and made my way to the office, I’d slow down to an amble and listen to Silence. It allowed me to centre myself, and give myself a barrier against the toxic atmosphere I was about to enter. And every afternoon, when I left, I’d play the same song again, and wash away the day. It wasn’t always perfect, but it profoundly helped.

So, there are songs that I like, there are songs that I love, and there are songs that I have such a close connection to that they’re part of me. Or, if you saw me with headphones on and a smile at the edge of my face, or a tear in my eye, it’s likely I’ve just lost myself in one of those songs.

In particular these days, that’s likely to be:

Honestly, if you want to know me, then you can know me through those songs – they’re an intrinsic part of me.

So what song or songs teach me about you?

 Posted by PMdG at 7:49 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

7 weeks / 50 days

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 112011
 

It’s seven weeks today until the move. What we started planning for in terms of maybe 1-2 years, then cut down to six months, has now collapsed to less than 2 months. If we’re counting in days, you’d say there’s 50 days to go.

We’ve moved before, of course. But unless you consider my original move from Parkes to Newcastle for University, neither of us have ever moved more than maybe 100km in one hop. Around Newcastle and the Central Coast has been it. This move is one of around 1000km by road, or 750km by Scruff/as the crow flies. That’s a big difference.

This move is significant for multiple reasons; we’re changing state – for some that’d be enough to be classified as significant, but it’s just the barest tip of the iceberg. It’ll be the furthest Darren has lived from his family, but not much of a change for me on that front. No, this is a deep and fundamentally important move.

We were in a comfort zone on the central coast, but if there’s not enough stimulation then a comfort zone becomes a rut; once you’ve realised that, you have either two choices – to continue life as is and hope that retirement changes things, or actually pick up and move on.

We decided that picking up and moving on was the approach to take. Our close friends understand and appreciate this – they understand that our decision to move away isn’t a judgement on them, but a restoration for us.

And it is a restoration. I have a younger friend – he’s only 20, and last week he said to me:

I know what I want to be when I grow up

I joke a lot, and made a comic reference to my dream as a kid of growing up and becoming a mad scientist to take over the world. Then he floored me with his goal:

Inspiration

He shamed me. He still has that energy and drive I used to have, but somehow lost years ago. Hell, sometimes it feels like I lost it centuries ago. I grew old within myself before I should have.

It was a pointed and perfect summary though of what I’m looking for out of the move. I want that energy back. It’s a daily rut that robs you of that energy. I see it happens to people for two key types of reasons – you’re in a rut because you start to live to work, rather than working to live, or … well, the other reason is a more complex one involving a false sense of entitlement, immaturity and a belief the world owes you a living.

There’s a lot of different reasons I can give as to why the move will be important, but they’re actually all means to the end, not the end itself. And they’re fabulous means – amazing new friends, immersing ourselves in a community, and diving into culture. But the end, the goal is simple and profound: the move is about restoring our energy.

You see, our move isn’t about the people we know, or the work we do, or anything external to us at all. It’s all about us. It really is. Yet there’s not an ounce of selfishness in what we’re doing; it’s much deeper than that. We’re healing our minds.

What better reason could you have for moving?

 Posted by PMdG at 7:07 am  Tagged with: ,

The freedom rule

 Equal Rights, Life  No Responses »
Apr 052011
 

In an article in the Australian, “Julia Gillard reaches out to Christian Leaders“, I saw yet again the oft-repeated religious cry – this time from someone I wouldn’t piss on if he were on fire, Cardinal George Pell:

Cardinal Pell said the leaders told Ms Gillard: “We are very keen to ensure that the right to practise religion in public life continues to be protected in law. It is not ideal that religious freedom is protected by so called ‘exemptions and exceptions’ in anti-discrimination law, almost like reluctant concessions, crumbs from the secularists’ table. What is needed is legislation that embodies and recognises these basic religious freedoms as a human right.”

I want to claim that this creates a fundamental paradox, and I’ll suggest it necessitates the “freedom rule”, that is:

Your right to religious freedom should not come at the expense of another’s personal freedom.

This should be – this must be a guiding principle in determining rights and freedoms in the modern age. I personally have no time for religion myself, but I would not, under any circumstance, suggest that someone else has no right to believe in what they choose to believe in.

But the reverse must be equally required. No religious person, on the basis of their belief, should be able to dictate to society what should or should not happen within that society. This means that religious groups should not have the permission to discriminate enshrined in law – see “The immoral discrimination litmus test” – when they receive public money, or receive exemption from contributing to public coffers.

In short – if you want to discriminate, then you become a fully fledged member of society, pay full taxes like any other organisation, and apply for special consideration to discriminate.

If you want to talk about human rights (yes, I’m looking at you, George Pell), then you need to start thinking about the freedom rule, not the right to be a bigoted jerk.

 Posted by PMdG at 9:04 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Is Julia Gillard a hypocritical bigot?

 Equal Rights, Morality  2 Responses »
Apr 052011
 

It’s not a nice question to ask of a serving prime minister, but it occurred to me today:

  1. Julia Gillard chooses to live with a partner whom she is not married to.
  2. Julia Gillard insists she is an atheist.
  3. Julia Gillard insists she is against same-sex marriage because it’s contrary to what she grew up with.
  4. Julia Gillard contacts church leaders in Australia to reassure them that she’s all for traditional values, and notably to reassure them she’s against same-sex marriage and euthanasia.

That last one really sticks in my craw. Quoting the Australian, “Julia Gillard reaches out to Christian leaders”  (which I’m normally loathe to do), we’re told:

Ms Gillard repeated her personal opposition to same-sex marriage and euthanasia, while the church leaders told her of their concerns about changes to the anti-discrimination act that could make it more difficult for Christian schools to hire on the basis of religion.

We’re also told:

In recent weeks, Ms Gillard, who has publicly declared she is an atheist, has told parliament she can still recite scripture learned at her Baptist Sunday school and opposes euthanasia and same-sex marriage on the basis of maintaining traditional values.

Now, here’s what confuses me. She’s all for maintaining traditional values – yet she lives in sin. Yes, she lives in sin. Julia Gillard was born in 1961; her parents, obviously a generation before her.

I know when I was growing up, and I was born in 1973, that women and men who lived together in that era, without being married were being dirty sinners. Or at best, were likely to be sleeping around and that’s why they didn’t go through with getting married.

It didn’t matter that de facto relationships had been legally recognised in Victoria since 1958, or in NSW since 1984, etc., our parents – the people of Gillard’s generation and older – didn’t really approve of de facto relationships. They certainly “tsk tsk’d” behind closed doors, that’s for sure.

I bet you in her Baptist Sunday School lessons – which she claims to be able to still quote scripture with the best of them – she didn’t learn about the virtues and correctness of women who choose not to get married but still live with a man.

So I must ask – if Julia is against same sex marriage on the basis of maintaining traditional values, does that make her a hypocrite, given her personal arrangements?

And if she is an atheist – if she’s not some closet baptist who still prays but finds it socially awkward to admit – and therefore have no “religious shield”*, then does that mean she’s also a bigot?

I want Rudd back. At least he had the balls to present a logical reason as to why he was against same sex marriage. That’s easier to argue against than hypocrisy.

–
* FWIW, I don’t for a moment accept that just because someone has a religious belief about something it entitles them to get away with being a bigot.

 Posted by PMdG at 1:20 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

"You're evil, and must be stopped!"

 Life  1 Response »
Apr 042011
 

I still remember it clearly. Central Station Sydney, a mid-60s woman staggers back, as if physically assaulted, from the young man she’d been talking to, and shrilly screams, “You’re evil, and must be stopped!” She lets out a sharp sob of anger? frustration? horror?, and staggers away. People hurrying about their business stop for a moment, see that there’s nothing else to see, and keep going about their business. It’s a Sydney thing. It’s a city thing: unless you’re on fire, or being attacked, someone shouting random statements tends to be shunned.

It was either 1994 or 1995, making me around 21. I was not one of the observers. I was obviously not the old woman. I was, in fact, the young man that was the focus of the woman’s cry, “You’re evil, and must be stopped!”

What terrible, vile thing had I done? Had I actually assaulted her? Had I been rude? Had I bumped into her and refused to apologise?

None of the above.

I was sitting in the concourse, minding my own business. I’d been up since the wee hours of the morning, travelling from Parkes to Newcastle, and had a break at Sydney waiting for the next train. My eyes were sandy and red – I’d not slept much the night before. Maybe that increased my evil rating. I was tired, uncomfortable from travel and eager just to be back home in Newcastle where I’d be able to shower, grab something to eat, and have an early night.

In some ways I should be thankful to the old woman. I was just starting to doze. I’d waited almost an hour since I’d arrived, and if I’d fallen asleep I would have missed that next train to Newcastle, and my journey would have been even later.

“Ahem” – or something like that.

I blinked a few times, looked blearily around, and found a mid-60s woman leaning over me. At that stage, I’d not learnt how to quickly wake up – that wouldn’t come until after I had been doing on-call shifts for a while. So I smacked my lips once or twice – I was pretty thirsty, and didn’t have any money on me for a drink, and asked, “Hi – can I help you?”

“I’m wanting to see if I can help you”, she replied.

My immediate thought? I already knew by that stage that most times when I’m asleep I have nightmares, so I was already wondering whether I’d been looking odd while dozing off, and I discretely checked my mouth to make sure I’d just not dribbled in my sleep or something equally embarrassing. No dribble – didn’t remember any particular nightmares. Whatever could she mean?

And then she held out the pamphlet. A4, tri-fold. A big picture of some guy nailed to a cross on the front, with a bold headline, UNDERLINED TWICE, proclaiming “JESUS DIED FOR YOU”.

Sigh.

One of those people.

“Sorry I’m not interested.”

“Oh but you should be.” The pamphlet gets waved closer to my face. “Everyone should be interested in what their saviour did for them.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. Maybe she was the nightmare. Opened them again – no, she’s still there, still waving the pamphlet.

“Look, I’m really not interested. I’m just passing through, I’m not from here.” Why I thought not being from around here might send her on her way, I really don’t know. Years later I’d remember it and follow through with “I’m an alien, and I’m older than your planet”, and watched some Jehovas Witnesses scuttle back down the path to the front door as fast as they could.

But I didn’t there, and I really hoped that she’d go on her way. Some hints though can’t be taken, particularly by those who spend their time being obsessed with the state of other peoples souls so they don’t have to inspect their own. So the response was “You need to know how much Jesus loves you and wants to be part of your life.”

And so I pulled out the big guns. No, I didn’t swear at her. I was polite. I certainly didn’t punch her, or push her away. Instead, with the quiet dignity that can only come from a miniscule amount of sleep and a sore arse from interminably long bus and train rides, I simply replied, “Look, I’m gay, and I’m an atheist. I don’t think your Jesus is very interested in me, and I’m certainly not very interested in him.”

And so, that mid-60s woman staggers back, as if physically assaulted, from me, and shrilly screams, “You’re evil, and must be stopped!” She lets out a sharp sob of anger? frustration? horror?, and staggers away.

It was also the last time I travelled without headphones. Whackjobs don’t get far when you either can’t hear them, or pretend you can’t.

 Posted by PMdG at 4:54 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

So you've got a degree; big whoop

 Life  No Responses »
Apr 032011
 

I have a Bachelor of Computer Science degree, something which I find moderately pleasing, but doesn’t tend to be something I dwell on too often.

Lately I’ve been reflecting somewhat on the previous company I worked for, which collapsed in a screaming heap of debt. Someone senior at the company was – for want of a better term – a knowledge snob. If you didn’t either have 15+ years of industry experience, or an actual degree, then that person really wasn’t interested in what talents you may have had.

Now, I agree, in some areas a degree is important. I wouldn’t, for instance, go to a doctor who doesn’t have a degree. And I have no doubt that a degree can be beneficial in many other fields, including IT – but lets be perfectly frank; you can be as smart as possible on paper, but still barely one step removed from a gibbering moron in real life.

Knowledge snobbery is the assumption that the more letters you can add to the end of your name, the more important and more intelligent you are. While there can be a good overlap on the intelligence front, there there is no guaranteed overlap at all. Some of the smartest people I know have no formal qualifications what so ever, and some of the people with the highest qualifications I know I’d be reluctant to let scrub my toilet.

Or to put it another way: if someone tells me I should yield to their superior position because either they have more letters after their name than me, or because they have been working in the industry for longer than me — with that being the sole rationale — then they’re a knowledge snob.

Please, be as smart as you can be, but don’t let it turn you into a smart arse.

 Posted by PMdG at 1:23 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

The egregious incapacity of Telstra

 Data, Telcos  No Responses »
Apr 022011
 

Telstra, Australia’s number one phone/internet company in terms of market share, certainly has excellent signal strength, data speed (particularly for mobile broadband) and coverage. For those reasons, much as periodically they figuratively bugger me, I keep coming back. OK, so maybe I’m slightly masochistic, but when their shit works, it really really works.

But when their shit doesn’t work … well, let’s just say that they seem to have a customer call process that destroys a little more of your soul with each transfer.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent 2.5 hours on the phone to Telstra to find out one simple thing: what my current data usage was. The chunk of my soul lost in the experience was not insubstantial.

On the positive side, it did allow me to reverse engineer their flowchart for handling customer calls, and I present my observational findings below for your benefit:

Telstra Call Process

 

To make matters more fun, their “complaints” line now (“Call 132200, say ‘complaints’”) just simply takes you back through to billing and accounts, where they insist they will need to go through the entire process again before they can log a formal complaint. Hmmm, there’s no exit strategy. Yes, you’re fucked.

I currently have a formal complaint lodged with Telstra – and annoyingly, stupidly, moronically, the only way I could get such a complaint lodged with them was to actually lodge it with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO).

NB: I will happily alter the above image when it no longer reflects the significantly higher percentage of times when I have called Telstra for an issue.

 Posted by PMdG at 4:01 pm  Tagged with: , ,
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