Society – Coming to you live, 24 hour FEAR

Every channel in High Definition, all those in Standard Definition, coming in Stereo, Mono, televisual and audio, web-cast, podcast, newsprint, magazine, telepathically hooked into your nervous system comes... The News!

The bombardment of human existence by news broadcasts continues unabated today as the media continues to scour the planet for bad news. In every corner of the globe, on every continent, in every country, state, fief, and city fear is found and delivered to you. And you just take it all in. Absorb it visually, aurally, and by osmosis. You're hooked, addicted; a fear junkie and you probably don't even realise it.

Try something new, go without news for two weeks and see how you feel. Don't read the gossip magazine, avoid the daily newspaper, skip the hourly radio updates, avoid the dawn, morning, mid-morning, midday, mid-afternoon, evening, night, and late night news. I've done it and feel much better for it.

Do you really need to keep that up to date with things outside your control? Is the war in Iraq and Afghanistan really all that important to your daily life? Is the latest celebrity scandal necessary to your well-being? Does the latest anti-social allegation against a sports personality actually impact your home life?

So you need a weather report, try going to the Bureau of Meteorology website and getting the forecast without the unnecessary histrionics of the media.

Want sports news, use the internet to get your results or watch the match. Why take part in the gossip that surrounds the game, it doesn't add to the game itself.

It all comes down to your choice of tuning in, encouraging the creation of material for your consumption. Use your democratic right to not partake in this form of media and watch them change to get you back. It's a numbers game: subscribers = money. Take away the subscribers and you impact their ability to generate income.

It starts with a single viewer making the choice.

Do you want a fear driven media or do you want actual news without the added flair? Your choice. Your power. Use it.

So, why am I harping on about this? Well, it's Saturday morning, I'm a little fuzzy from the birthday I attended last night and I'm on a bus into the central markets, and there are a half a dozen people reading the newspaper, or rather the Advertiser, a rag tat passes for a broadsheet. Their faces are grim as they navigate the column inches. Is this their natural expression, I don't know. All I do know is that they are not happy people. Their eyes are sunken and hollow, the lines on their face makes them look like a bulldog, cheeks hanging loose and floating at the sides of their chins. I'm wondering if they have ever smiled, experienced any joy.

An old man matching the description above gets on the bus, an old white man with a gibbon throat and scratchy voice and starts talking to the driver. The driver is a Sikh, immaculately dressed with pants crease and pressed shirt, his turban a clean powder grey.

“Do you have one of these?” The man says holding out a bus ticket recently introduced that allows pensioners to travel free on weekends (an incentive by the state government to retain the grey vote).
“Yes sir” The driver replies, “may I see your card sir?”
“No. I just want one of these”
“I need to see the card sir, make sure.”
“No. The ticket.”
The Driver gives up and gives him the ticket and the old man moves to take his seat, grumbling under his breath something bitter.

This has got my attention. When I boarded the bus, I wished the driver a good morning and he cheerily responded. He pulled away from the curb gently. A few stops later he pulls in and informs a passenger sitting directly behind him that they have come to the stop he asked for. The passenger has a large bag which the driver helps him get off the bus. By all accounts this is a good bus driver – skilled in handling the large machine, polite and helpful. Why would anyone have an issue with him? Is it because he's a Muslim? Entirely possible.

The old man was carrying his copy of the Advertiser and is reading it as the journey progresses. Maybe he's just read another scary tale of Muslim terror, I don't know. I do know that I do not like this old man. I don't like anyone that can't spare a second to be polite. I don't like people that are bitter.

Years ago I dated this girl whose father was a news addict. He was retired and spent his days watching the news, keeping up with global events. He barely slept and spent most of his time digesting news. He was one of the most bitter human beings I have ever met – a man of the land, turned retired suburbanite, a fierce labour supporter his entire life until John Howard taught him to hate the 'free ride' the new generation has been given, a man who sacrificed for his family and swore to serve Christ but refused to attend church because that's where Satan gets you. This man had no good news in him, jut bad bitter racist information filtered through the television, radio and print media. Any opinion that ran counter to his was anti-Australian, anti-Christian. He was a terrible human being. He is not alone. I have met others.

After a small hiatus I'm back to complete my thought processes and publish this blog. It's Monday morning, for most it is the start of the working week and I'm sitting on a bus heading into the city. There are twenty people on the bus and none of them is smiling. There are only newspapers in sight but four of the 15 passengers look to working on school assignments – all but three of the passengers are high school students.

Without repeating anything previous, I'm concerned for my society, people should not be so unhappy with their existence. Their faces should not naturally be set to scowl or frown, because I am sure that nobody here is actually trying to be down. That would be silly and I just wouldn't understand it if that was the case.

I'm not in my best mood this morning but my I'm content because I know that htings could be a lot worse. When I have travelled, I have seen poverty that has ripped at my heart. When I move around South Australia I don't get the same hollow pain of our country's success over others when I see people in poverty. I wonder, what is stopping these people from being able to claim their place here. I do earnestly hope that we may be able to pull ourselves out of this and make a go at a positive future, but as I was reminded yesterday – People don't want to pay for things like health and education, they just want to earn all the money they can.

So please, remember the next time you watch or read something, you are using your democratic right to partake. If you are unhappy with what's being produced stop watching/reading and don't go back until it is what you want. This is you right and at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it is the last power you have as an individual.

A more coherent post next time I promise you.

Politics – Keep your click pure

Once more South Australia has come to Election Time. You can hear the people cheering throughout our state... Can't you? Well, actually no, you can't. Why? It's like a friend told me “Why vote, it just encourages them”.

I'm a big believer in democracy, in the right of individual determination through the collective. Still, I just can't seem to get enthusiastic about an election that offers little hope of positive change. In South Australia, we have a range of professional politicians who play to the media talking loud without saying anything.

The current administration has made many promises over the last eight years (is it really that short a time, it feels longer), very few of which have come to fruition. Soon enough they will start again.

One of the politicians that has really got under my skin the last few years is Michael Atkinson, Minister for Justice and the Attorney-General. Atkinson has spent a great deal of time trying to censor adult South Australians and restrict their access to such things as the internet, entertainment and anonymous political discourse.

There has been a push to have computer games classified in the same manner as film and literature, which Atkinson has opposed. He has pushed for a law to deny the right to anonymity when making political statements on the internet which he has promised to repeal after the election. It is just another case of our politicians not living in the current age of Information Technology and Exchange.

With the computer game ratings, it's another thing altogether. There has been a push from the gaming community to have an R18+ rating added to allow for some games that are available internationally to be made available in uncensored form in Australia. I don't understand the opposition to this, movies have had it for years and the rules on what is and is not acceptible under these ratings has changed over the decades.

The thing I find funny about the use of ratings and the availability of films with adult clasifications is that once classified it should be up to parents to control the information flow of these materials to their children. When I was younger, my father used to regularly hire R18+ movies for me to watch so long as he deemed the content appropriate. In this regard I was given a pretty wide range as his rule was “Anything but pornography”. This meant that in those formative years I saw a grand selection of films that were deemed unsuitable for my age group. Am I psychopathic, homocidal, suicidal? Do I beat on people (man, woman or child), rape, pillage, etc? The answer is no. I hold a steady job, pay my bills on time, have a credit rating, maintain a household, have a long term relationship, pay my taxes, etc. I am a contributing member of society at large that puts as few stresses on the system as possible. So, where is the damage caused by the movies I have seen and the games I have played?

I firmly believe that the politicians need to grow up a bit and start living in the real world. Each day the media broadcast horrific images of violence, report on all manner of depravity and horror that is far worse than any fiction I have ever encountered. This is not to say we don't need a ratings system at all, just that it should be fair and equal across the board. It wasn't too long ago in our history that banning books was commonplace, burning books, records etc.

Which leads me onto the Clean Feed, the government (federal this time) and their intent to censor the internet in the name of Child safety. I'm all for Child safety, but this plan will do nothing to help and won't even do what is intended. The clean feed will be easily circumvented by those that want to do it. All the clean feed will do is interfere with my right to access information of my choosing. I don't go looking for the stuff the government wants to censor, and as such I don't find it, but I will be penalised for being a citizen.

There are a number of other ways in which children can be made safe whilst using the internet, the first of which is education. Educate the user and the parents. Put the responsibility back onto the parents for maintaining some discipline. Also, there are a range of programs that can be purchased that allow some censorship controls by the user. The government can make a deal with an already established company for this or develop their own and make it available to parents. Makes a hell of a lot more sense than blanket censoring the web for all users in an ill-conceived bludgeoning manner.

Has society broken down because (insert controversial book here) was written? Did a generation listening to (insert radical band here) bring the world to anarchy? Will the world be safer by individual governments attempting to censor the internet? Will paedophilia cease or be diminished by a clean-feed?

The answer is no.

And the thing that really gets me about all of this is supported by the majority. It makes me wonder what my vote really means, if anything at all.

Has our vote become diminished by these professional politicians serving their own ends (I'm not so idealistic that I believe they serve the people although I wish they would)? Is there a way to make them more accountable to the public?

Here's a hypothetical for the figments of my imagination that read this blog:
Would you trust politicians more if all their property was held in trust by the Public Trustee (or other body) whilst they served their term, linking the growth of their personal to the prosperity of the state?

Society - Eye for Eye until we're all blind

So I've had this blog up for a month now and I'm only now publishing the 3rd entry. I'm rather disappointed in this, as I've actually been writing entries consistently throughout but just can't seem to get them into a state that I'm happy with. Each piece begins to meander from the original point and try as I might I just can't get it back on track. So I figure, what the hell I'm just full stream of conscious and see where the words fall.

As I write this I'm sitting outside my office enjoying my morning cup of coffee having just ridden the 10 kilometres to work and there are dozens of stray thoughts circling my brain. The ride is good, it gets me focused and calm so that I can complete the day with a smile on my face. Even the constant and continuous poor driving I witness on the ride doesn't diminish the therapeutic qualities of the ride. If anything, the rage of those around me makes me feel better because I already feel good and don't see the point in letting it get to me.

This morning though I have all those thoughts in my head, I'm still pretty much focused but they niggle at me. A big one is: Who gave these people a license and by what means are they allowed to keep it? It's there because this morning I was almost taken off my bike by someone not paying attention. Not an unusual occurrence, but one that aggravates me. I was in my bike lane (a novel idea that gives me one metre from the curb to cycle in) at the traffic lights. There are two options for traffic at these lights – turn left (into traffic) or right (across traffic). The bike lane has a turning line marked across the intersection for turning right which is what I planned to follow. The traffic lights also have a turn left symbol for motorists (if I press the bicycle button at the lights this turn symbol stays red to allow me to cross safely). I pressed the button, and the light remained red but the motorist turning left ignored it and almost slammed straight into me. Luckily I have enough sense not to launch immediately on a green light or I'd be paste now.

So, why would this motorist break the rules and almost run me down? Is it perhaps that they didn't see me? If they didn't that's ok, but running a red light is not. Maybe this motorist hates cyclists. I do get that. A lot of motorists hate cyclists. Sometimes with a good reason. But should they brand all cyclists as bad because of a few experiences? They shouldn't but they do. Like all prejudice it can be irrational and encompass others that are similar but not the original. For example, I do not dress in spandex when I ride and these are predominately the cyclists that people do not like on their roads. I dress like a normal person. I do not ride like the spandex clad cyclists raising their arse in the air to gain aero-dynamism. I do not weave in and out of traffic, I stay in the bicycle lane or on the yellow curb line.

The last time I vocalised this occurrence to someone in the lunch room they flat out told me that I wouldn't get any sympathy regarding this because they hate cyclists. Mind you, the person couldn't actually articulate why they hated cyclists, but it was clear there would be no changing their opinion.

It's funny, as I get to this point I'm reminded of what a friend of mine, who drives and cycles, says about motorists: Most people can't drive, they're just steering wheel attendants.

It makes me wonder, are we all as bad as the other? Judging the mass on our few experiences? And in the end, does it really matter? Probably not. We are what we are, and most of us will not even endeavour to alter our opinion, but they'll spend a great amount of time trying to alter yours.

Thanks for reading. Some real content next time, I hope.