Tony Abbott: The Regression Australia Had To Have

Mayor Quimby said it best on The Simpsons:

 "I've had it with you people, you're nothing but a bunch of fickle mush-heads!"

I've always loved that line. It rings true in the best of people. Many of us have deep seeded political beliefs, and a lot of us will speak at great lengths on those beliefs, but in a lot of ways... Quimby nailed it. We are a bunch of fickle mush-heads. Give us hell, Quimby!

Oh wait, you don't believe me? I have proof.

Bam. That's not satire, that's today's front page. I know, I was as shocked as you are. This was a newspaper I used to write, edit headlines and copy, and design pages for. It's fairly common knowledge that private newspapers are not held to bipartisan reporting standards, but the sheer... STRAYA-ness of this page just kind of hits you in the face, doesn't it? I'd say it's the most blatant of a series of pretty fucking blatant electioneering pieces the rag has run in this month's campaign. I can only hope that some of the low information voters that read the Tele follow the infographic above Tony's shoulder and put a tick in the box instead of a 1. That is what I've been left with. Hoping the people that think this guy should lead our country are also stupid enough not to work their pen properly. Sigh.

So ... how did it come to this, really? Less than a week away from the election and people are so confident that The Mad Monk is going to get in that they've started making some pretty extravagant bets. (This is also probably why Centrebet has stopped taking action on the election and paid out Tony already.) Julia Gillard was set for a blinding defeat by the LNP before old Ruddy wrested power back from her, but even Rudd has toppled in his popularity, shooting his wad a little early, if you will, announcing all his big election policies (membership voting, PNG solution, etc) too soon and having people get bored of him and remembering what they didn't like about him.

My friends are convinced I hate Tony Abbott, by the amount of news articles/memes I share which cast him in an unfavourable light. Others in comments sections accuse me of being a Labor Shill™ or a communist because I continually point out the flaws in LNP policy (the most common flaw being a lack thereof) and Tony's complete lack of political charisma or finesse. Yet despite being a self confessed political tragic, I would identify as a swing voter in most every way. I believe the reason why Australia has had such good political leadership during its history is because the population has, for the most part, held fairly decent governments to account if their standards slip even a little. 

 

One of my favourite blogs, (before I had this blog) was my rant about Kevin Rudd the day the first spill happened in 2010. It was a pretty typical example of how people were feeling after 3 years of Rudd's populist, please-everyone approach to politics.

 

What I'm worried about right now, is that us fickle mush-heads are really slipping in the scrutiny of Tony. It seems that the majority of Australians are bored of Labor's bland brand and are itchy for a change of federal government. As such, the rose-coloured glasses are well and truly being placed in front of our would-be PM. His 20 years in politics, for most of which he has been a Liberal party 'attack dog' of sorts, have been glossed over, repackaged and rebranded as the more moderate and reasoned family man he's been behaving as the last year. He's also been as closed mouthed as a politician can get for a large majority of the campaign, refusing serious scrutiny on shows such as Q & A for his more managed, prepared and scripted statements. After all, this is a guy who made it clear he could only be trusted to speak truly if his script was carefully prepared. Yet he marches to the polls like our lord and saviour, set before the Australian flag on our nation's most popular newspaper.

I know it's wrong to despair. I know it's the way politics goes, and the newspolls spazzing out over the last few weeks have done nothing but reinforce Mayor Quimby's point. In fact, even after slandering Tony and being less than impressed with Kevin 2.0, I still kind of feel a little fickle myself. The Green vote doesn't even seem like a great pick, despite aligning with my beliefs on almost every issue -- mainly because the minority Govt. they were a part of for so long has left its mark on the major parties, with both deciding that Milne, Bandt, Hansen-Young and the gang are cumbersome to the political process and not even worth preferencing.

"What do we do Willskis? Is it a douche and a turd again?" I hear you ask. Well, the short answer is yes. It is. But as for what to do, I think you know what you have to do, and you're not going to like it, you fickle mush-head.

Vote. Below. The. Line. In. The. Senate.

This year, I can't stress this enough. I know this year we have as many parties in the Senate as in 1999, where the ballot paper was affectionately dubbed: 'The Tablecloth'

 

 

 That means it's going to take a while. Maybe over an hour in that crappy little voting cardboard thing. "Ugh, but I have a Saturday to enjoy! I have alcohol/drugs/cake to ingest and TV/my cat/paint drying to watch! Why the fuck would I vote below the line?" Well, only because it is crucially important to a healthy democracy is all. No biggie. This year, a lot of minor parties have struck bizarre preferencing deals and that [1] you put for lolz next to the Australian Sex Party may have rolled its way down the preferencing line to One Nation. Do you want Pauline Hanson for PM, Hitler? (note for the dull: joking about the PM. Not joking about the preferences)

Unfortunately, as we all know, fickle mush heads don't understand the value of a healthy democracy. They weigh up the afternoon spent filling in a ballot vs a year of ensured proper, reasoned debate that they do not see, understand, or particularly care about, and a [1] above the line and an afternoon of Skittles on the couch will win every time.

So that leaves us, the people with a fucking brain in their nut, to do the boring below the line bit. If you're still not convinced I want you to read this list. It is a manifesto of sorts that the Institute of Public Affairs put to Tony Abbott to enact should he be elected. I want you to read this list and tell me how many of them you think are GOOD ideas. If your answer is anything other than 'none' then try slapping yourself and reading them again. Repeal, abolish, cut, rinse, lather, repeat. This is what the upper class of Australia want to see. I remind you, this is the wish list of people who claim to pay too much tax --  while the majority of tax is paid by MIDDLE income earners, or the proletariat holding up this vulture class. These rich players in the IPA want to see all these changes enacted in order to protect their established commercial interests in the name of the 'economy'.

Tony Abbott: "So, ladies and gentlemen, that is a big “yes” to many of the 75 specific policies you urged upon me in that particular issue of the magazine….but Gough Whitlam I will never be!"

 

This is why we need a strong, diverse, and above all LOUD senate this year. The plurality of voices in the Upper House will be the only thing stopping an Abbott-led LNP government from enacting legislation in the interests of the few, not the many. And because I really have to stop blogging and get back to my Post-Grad coursework, then I will leave you with this tip:

Voting below the line, every box has to be filled in. Three mistakes are allowed before your vote does not count at all. HOWEVER. This is a trick I have recently learned and HOPEFULLY it will help all you brainy non-mush-heads out there who are going to be political pros and vote below the line with me next weekend.

The trick is: Sometimes, you only want to preference certain parties and after that you don't really care. Well, make your preferences up to where you like, THEN make a deliberate mistake.

If you need this spelled out, here's an example. Let's say, you only want to preference 50 candidates. Once you finish the 50th, you make two '51' marks randomly on the page. You then continue filling out the rest of the paper in whatever order you like. Because you have made less than THREE mistakes (all boxes are filled, only mistake is the two 51's), your vote will still be counted. However, because your preferencing becomes unclear at the 51st candidate, any preferences after that WILL NOT be counted. Which leaves you all the more time to go home and eat skittles on the couch and watch the Mad Monk rise to glory.

ORRRRRR.... you could all vote Labor and watch Tony Abbott (and the punter who put $750k on him) go into a meltdown of Miley-level proportions. I'm just sayin'.

Until next time,

Peace and Love
Willskis

The Joy of Centrelink

I'm a simple man, really. I don't need fancy name brand clothes, I haven't eaten at a restaurant that doesn't have at least one 'mega value meal box' on the menu for quite a while, and there are definitely no holidays, iPads, or house deposits in my foreseeable future.

See, I am one of the 18.6 per cent increase in Centrelink recipients between March 2012 and 2013. I am still a freelance journalist, but as I've started a Masters degree my time for anything other than ridiculous amounts of textbook reading has gone down to close to zero and as such I am left to suckle on that delicious government teet.

But... wait. Is it delicious though? There is a bit of stigma around 'dole bludgers' in Australian society. Typically, they can be seen as lazy and directionless. They're known for mis-spending the little money they receive, usually on booze, ciggies or drugs. All I can say is, if they are managing to afford that... they must at least be some sort of economic geniuses. I'm a smart guy and I'm yet to figure out how to make the meager C-link payment stretch over the whole fortnight. I will have one week where I'm pretty poor, and one where I'm stony broke.

If this wasn't a blog post, and it was in fact just me crapping on in your ear about how much it sucks to be on Centrelink, this is about the point in the conversation where you would probably tell me to 'get a job'. Now, I'm not averse to jobs (OK, well maybe a little) but that statement is such an easy throwaway remark and really doesn't help the situation. Most people when they say that mean, "get a shitty job if you want money so bad". But the problem is, I don't want a shitty job, I want a good job. And so does everyone else. We're all taught in school, paradoxically, to shoot for the stars and think outside the box, yet that you have to 'start at the bottom'. The desire NOT to be a shit kicker is, however, one of the defining traits of Generation Y. I blame all that self esteem we were pumped full of as kids.

Consider an excerpt from a story a friend of mine told me on Facebook. To keep some modicum of privacy, I'll refer to him just as JP.

JP: So I've spent the last 6 years at uni getting two degrees, a Bachelor of Business with a major in Marketing and an Arts degree with a dual-major in Ancient History and Religious Studies. After getting my final results I realise I now have nothing to do and a crap load of debt, so it was time to get a job. 

Over the last 2 and a half weeks I've had 5 job interviews. A car dealership needed a Car Detailer, there was a part time position as a bank teller, Assistant Marketing Manager at a club, Assistant Manager at a local store, and a Customer Service guy at a different store in the same shopping complex (I can give you the company names but I didn't think it would be wise to point fingers.) 

The car dealership and the Customer service role told me that I was too over-qualified, and even though I assured them I had no problem with those positions as long as I was given opportunities to advance I still got nowhere. The Assistant Manager and the Assistant Marketing manager roles were denied me because I've been too long out of the work force while working on my degrees. And the Bank Teller role was the cherry on top. I got off the phone with the HR girl at lunch time. She told me that while I was a little over-qualified for the role, the reason I didn't get it is because of my lack of work experience over the last 5 years. In her words I "chose not to work while studying and now I'm paying for it". I was one of five people being considered for the role, and I met the others at the group interview. I was the most qualified and the most experienced. The others consisted of a German guy that spoke in broken english, a uni student in his third year of a Science degree that has never worked a day in his life, a hot chick that was wearing clothes that were three sizes too small because her resume consisted of working as a secretary for her daddy for six months, and an old woman 4 years off retirement who applied for the job because she's bored at home. The bank went with the hot chick. 

If this was all that I had to deal with I wouldn't worry too much and have a spoonful of cement. But when I relayed the above to my job search provider and asked if there was something different I should be trying they told me that maybe I shouldn't have gone to uni, or at the very least I should have done a part-time degree so I could have worked at the same time.

I really couldn't help but laugh at the end of that. I immediately pictured JP's job provider guy as something like this:

 Now, I can relate to JP's experience very well. I've been rejected from no less than 4 jobs recently for being 'too qualified' for the role, which I'm sure is just like the job interviewer's version of 'It's not you, it's me..." but the logic is that over-educated people tend not to be very good workers. Which, really, is just one of many problems faced by over-educated folks.

So for now, it looks like my second degree will be filled with more poverty than my first, as now I'm too educated for the shitty jobs, my degree takes up too much of my time for the full time jobs, and well, there's not that many journalist jobs at all anyway. So I'm making my peace once again with my governmentally-imposed minimalism, doing my Masters coursework on a shoestring budget, saying goodbye to festival tickets, imported beer cases, videogames and all the little luxuries that having that extra income provides.

Realistically, I'm blessed to have been born in a country that gives me welfare while I take my shot at Uni Degree 2.0. I could have been born in Syria, or in Australia in the 1910's or something. So I am grateful for that. Just remember the human when you think of Australia's 788,364 'dole bludgers' in future. A lot of us have become slaves to our own educations, victims of choices we thought we were making correctly in our teens. A lot of us have talents that should not be discounted. A lot of us have the capacity to become fucking amazing at what we try. Don't give up on us yet because we sit at home contributing nothing to society (except a lot of empty Mi Goreng packets) -- most of us haven't even got off the ground yet.

Well, the world didn't end. Now what?

Today, I have read.

Read and read and read like I've not read in an age. I don't know why I've read so much, though I suspect it has to do with the isolation of my temporary pastoral setting; house sitting for my mother in my hometown of Werris Creek. I read mostly articles, IM's, Reddit and facebook statuses, although there was a book in there as well (which I am reading as an Adobe PDF).

There's not a lot to do here. Besides taking the dog for a jog and a few chores, all I've done is sit on this laptop reading like a man possessed. Like a vacuum for the words that scroll onto my screen. And there were a lot of words.

It's been a strange day. A day that warrants my first blog post in months, apparently, because my day of reading has also been a day of pondering many things. Having only the dogs for company means I've had a lot of time for analysis and reflection, mostly about myself and the things that I've been reading about. I usually won't shut up when I'm around people, so perhaps this alone time has given my usual verbosity no external outlet. So a blog it is.

The great big pot of philosophy soup has been boiling over in my head, perhaps transferring it to the screen to shout to the world will make it simmer off and make a bit more sense. At least, I hope it will, for my sake and yours.

In case you didn't get that last part, this blog will be much more stream-of-consciousness than most of my writing. If that's not your bag, thanks for reading this far and happy new year!

2013 is here, looks like we're headed to the future after all, and quickly.

I'm continually astounded the fact that I live in an invisible web of interweaving communication, powered by the billions of fast moving fingers on keyboards (or thumbs on smartphones) around the world right now. Tweeting, blogging, buzzing, sharing, engaging. Communication technologies advancing at a ridiculous rate, changing the very culture of all humankind in radical, never before seen ways.

I like to read. I was a bookworm as a kid, and as soon as 10-year-old me found out about the Internet, I was on it. Chatting, reading, making websites. But these days... I wonder what kind of animal I am becoming, and I wonder about my peers too, as we all make our way down this technological rabbit hole that humanity has been presented with.

I have come to accept this is the reality of my life. I'm long past caring whether I may spend more time on the Internet than others. Now, it is simply one stimulus on my brain after another. That Reddit link is blue. Click. Read, synthesise. Determine if I'm interested enough to read more. Determine if it's funny/interesting/poignant enough to share on my Facebook feed (which I'm also religiously alt-tabbing to to appease my short attention span.) The link is purple now. Move on.

By the end of say, a few hours of browsing, there's always too many tabs at the top of my screen to even read the titles. I shift in and out of several engaging articles, not because I am bored of them per se, more that I have to find my fix of internet novelty every few minutes. I'm sure this is some kind of Pavlovian conditioning I have done to myself. I blame my relentless curiosity. It can make writing my blogs quite difficult, as I always keep imagining people having trouble reading them because I forget the words on the page don't get up and dawdle away as often as my mind does.

I have a mind that won't shut up when I'm trying to sleep, yet gives me nothing when I'm seeking that perfect sentence or phrasing to perfectly illustrate my point. I have a mind that verifies my opinion on a wide variety of issues, yet then gives me weird emotions which cloud my logic and distract me whenever I get a chance to fully explore them with others. I have a mind that seeks narcissistic pleasure by exposing those who I intend to belittle as hypocrites. I have a mind that fears the unknown, the unexplained, and seeks to belay those fears through the light of knowledge. I want to love my family and get frustrated when I can't find a partner to give love to. I am a human that fears criticism and being proven wrong. Though these sentences feel weird as they flow from my fingertips, I feel like I am freeing myself in a world full of putrid personal PR campaigns, though it will be to my detriment in the long run playing the greater fool on these topics. What am I saying to my audience here? What am I trying to achieve, with these revelations of my weakness to the world?

I suppose I am a flawed monkey, albeit a super-evolved one. Just like you. And I suppose I was just trying to remind us both of that fact. Make of it what you will.

Time to get smart, human-creatures.

I wonder how long it's going to take before people start getting super-intelligent. Theoretically, it should be soon. I wonder what's holding us back? I am currently experiencing the extreme first world problem of being too inundated with interesting stuff to read on the internet, that I am literally opening too many windows to keep track of and getting lost in a rabbit-warren like sea of information, articles, videos, social media statuses, tweets, IMs and the like. Perhaps that is the problem? Oceans of information, a universe to discover, and one tiny little human brain and 24 hours a day for each of us. (And that's not even counting the times we get distracted.)

Yet even in my reading of all the fascinating and wonderful articles my laptop screen, the Internet, and curiousity have delivered unto me today, I still wonder why I see the troubling behaviour in the people around me, and more importantly, in myself.

Denial. Aggression. Territoriality. Superiority. Fear. I see it in facebook statuses, I hear it in real conversations. Amongst friends and family, too.

I make no mistake of thinking humanity are going to be able to emancipate themselves from their emotions and physiology, but in a world where our technology is outpacing our values, we are simply going to have to. That's what's up. And in this century, I really predict we are going to see a big crunch, especially with the kids in the generation I'm in onward, where all of us are displaced in a world where our old ways of doing shit are just no longer relevant, yet we're expected to carry on as if they are.

And by that time, I really want the super-intelligent people to have at least started to appear. The logical ones. The Vulcans, if you will. Those who can literally see past the putrid ego that has been forced upon the greater majority of us, by both our own emotions and our society with its many corruptions. Our instant self-gratification society, if it continues, will rot at the core without people who can assess problems and detach subjectivity and emotion from them.


I have to sleep now. This blog post could have been much bigger and grander, if I could just slip a little collar around each of the thoughts that were brilliant in my mind, but too elusive to translate to the page during the writing process.

This is a year of personal growth for me. Like every year should be, I suppose. If you've made it this far in the post, thanks. I don't even think my point was made quite as I intended, but perhaps my initial central thesis got lost in the wind as so many thoughts do, in this world of information overload.

I have started a fitness kick recently, and if I get good results and a kickin' new bod I might start writing about that this year. Teach you guys how it worked for me or something. I'm also transferring my life long love of writing from the communications to the education sector (IE I'm studying my Masters to become a teacher this year). My encounters with the students might provide something a little less morose and wishy washy for you all to read as well. Anyway, until next time...


Peace and Love,

Willskis

They see me trollin'... they hatin'.

Well it's been certainly an interesting week. The Daily Telegraph launched a campaign on Monday to take on the faceless twitter-trolls that plague our precious Internet. It was all a pretty sensationalist beat-up, and a pretty brainless one at that, but it did get me thinking about the evolution of the term 'troll.'

Once only a concept only a hardened Internet-geek would understand, trolls in all their various forms have now emerged from the Usenet groups, the forums, and the chat rooms, and entered the very new and very public world of social media.

What was once a very calculated move by a person to slowly but surely infuriate whoever they were interacting with, the term 'trolling' has now been extended to mean any kind of negative or inflammatory remark made on the Internet, usually made by an anonymous screen name. With the rise in Web 2.0 the amount of these kinds of comments and posts exploded exponentionally.

The question I have to ask is, is anyone not used to this shit by now?

I mean, I know people say some pretty god-awful stuff online sometimes. I play DotA and HoN, online videogames that require intense teamwork and precision between a team of five players. Often these guys are strangers, and as they literally know nothing about the person they are playing with/against, there is no real social ettiquette in how to treat them. So needless to say, the trolls are often out in force. When a microphone headset and high-speed play is involved, you hear a lot of rage. The players rub it in each others faces when they are winning, and rage and insult their team when they are losing. The angrier they get, the funnier it is for the other team.

The stuff that comes out of some peoples mouths in that game is scary. I fucked your mother, I hope you get cancer. That kinda jazz. Pretty awful stuff. However, I bet most of you read that and weren't "offended". And you know why? Because... you've probably seen stuff like that on the Internet already. A lot. Twitter, facebook, WoW, news website comment sections, YouTube comments sections... everywhere. It's kind of desensitising.

But yet, people are still getting trolled. On a daily basis. The Internet-lingo for being angry and upset by the comments of another user is 'butthurt', and it is immediately directed at anyone who obviously does not possess enough testicular fortitude to simply laugh off any and all trolls and their insults, no matter how deeply their words cut to the core.



There's no twitter campaign that's going to stop trolls, you idiots. They are trolls. They probably aren't always trolls, but every now and then as they move about their daily lives, you will see someone post something inflammatory. Here's what you do: IGNORE IT.

That's right, ignore the troll. IGNORE IT. YOU IDIOT. DON'T FEED THE TROLL, IF YOU WERE RAISED BY THE INTERNET LIKE I WAS, YOU WOULD KNOW THIS ONE SIMPLE TRUTH.

Trolls thrive on attention. Think of them as vampires who feed on butthurt, not blood. Ignoring them serves TWO simple functions. One, you get to take the high road and go on your merry way. Also, they get no response, and become bored because they have not rustled anyone's jimmies. They move on. TROLL SORTED. No need for banning, no need to start a flame war (you'll lose, they need no logic). Just ignore them.

But no. There's always some stupid twonk who decides they have to fight for truth and justice on the internet. They have to correct this person and prove their superiority to them. So they start a fight in the comment box and give everyone a terribly not-worth-it piece of reading material, just because they didn't know not to feed the troll.

I think the Daily Telegraph should start a campaign against these guys. The Troll Enablers. Not the trolls themselves. You'll never catch those cheeky fuckers.

Anyway, feel free to attempt to troll me in the comments, as usual.

Peace,

Willskis

Haters gonna hate: 8 types of hate I hate

Hate is such an ugly word, isn't it? It's evocative. It makes you think of that emotion you feel when something truly infuriates you. I try not to be hateful normally, so I'm only writing this article because I think I've recently had an epiphany regarding all the various forms of hatred I see around me in my day to day life: I hate it.

Whoa, how meta. If I hate the hate, is that like a double negative? Or just some weird hypocritical shit where I am ragging on something and yet doing it at the same time? Or ... oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

Don't try to overthink this one. You may not like this blog post. You might even already hate it. I mean, it is confusing. But why does confusion/boredom/lack of understanding seem to lead to hate in our modern world? 

I have a theory about hate. It's easy to hate. Things are stupid sometimes, and they make us angry. But deeper than that, think about what position we take when we like something, say an album, or a YouTube video, or a person in our social circle. Now compare our relative position when we hate any of those things.

I've observed that hating on things gives humans (at least the illusion of) superiority over the thing that they hate, whereas liking or approving of something means that we are below or at most equal to whatever it is we are liking. 

I'll give you an example. I might be at a buddy's house, and we're just chilling and watching YouTube, using it like a jukebox. My buddy puts on a track by Led Zeppelin, say, the Immigrant Song. We both rock out because we both dig the track. We put it on and mutually agree the song is awesome.

Say, however, that I change the tune and put on a remix like this one which is a mashup of Led Zeppelin and 2Pac that I like. It's still on theme but it changes the tone, and my friend may not be instantly down for it like he was for the Immigrant Song. He probably says something like, "Turn that shit off, I fuckin' hate it."

Instantly he is then, probably without realising it, placing himself and his musical taste, above both mine and the music I chose. He is better than the remix, and he hates it because it sucks. Now, this buddy is not necessarily doing this on purpose, he legitimately just DOES NOT LIKE the music on first listen (or on principle or whatever). He thinks he is doing me a favour by helping me not to like a genre or track that 'sucks'. It's subconscious behaviour -- but because he has vocalised the hate (or typed it in the case of Internet hate) it becomes a force unto itself. It's a force that, I believe, is ultimately selfish and serves no other purpose than to force your frame of reality onto another person.

Now that long-winded intro is out of the way, how about I keep making my point with a list. It's a tough point to write about, because like I say, I am not exempt from being a hater at times myself either. I just feel like if we all understood why we were spewing this hate all the time, we would be able to tone it down a notch, put our chin up and smile. You know, remember the things we like and be indifferent to the things we don't. Wouldn't that be nice?

Anyway, here are 8 types of hate I hate.

1. YouTube Hate
   
   WTF, YouTube?! Reading your comments makes me lose hope for humanity. It was worse before they introduced the top comment, but even still the amount of garbage you have to read on any YouTube video's comment section is astonishing. "FUCK JUSTIN BIEBER HE'S A FAGGOT!!!@!!@" I struggle to picture what pleb is sitting there typing that in all caps for emphasis, what they're trying to get off their chest. Why the fuck do you care about a teen pop star that appeals to a demographic of 12 year olds? It's obviously not the pinnacle of music but it has been happening for DECADES. What are you accomplishing by posting one comment that will no doubt get lost in the ether within minutes on a video with millions of views. Are you hoping all the fans are going to read it and realise the error of their ways? No? Then fuck off out of the YouTube comments section and go fly a kite or something.
   
   
   
2. Facebook Hate
   
   The amount of people that don't realise exactly how public their Facebook profile is boggles my mind. Does it register with all of you that everyone on your list can see what you just wrote? Yes? Then why do you think anyone gives two shits at all about the fact that you had to switch to Timeline? Just chill out and roll with the changes, if little shit gets you that worked up, you are going to have a hard, hard life filled with inconvenient change after inconvenient change that you are ill-prepared to deal with.
   
   
3. Religious Hate
   
   This one's a touchy subject for like, everyone. It used to be that the only ones religiously forcing their beliefs upon others were religious people, but now the non-religious are a big enough vocal minority that they are joining in the fun. Now I'm not against touting your own religious beliefs, but it just sucks for everyone when it leads to hate-filled rhetoric being spewed at each other. Which is, oh yeah, EVERY TIME. I've had to change my Facebook status from 'Atheist' to 'No Religion' because I'm starting to see more atheists arguing with the same vitriolic zealotry as the worst fundies. I understand each side is pretty infuriating to the other because it deals with core, internalised questions like 'who are we, why are we here, why do we dream, what is the point of life' etc, but the debate is not leading to a conclusion at the moment guys, it's just leading to more hate. It's just a case of someone hearing a belief they believe is wrong, then coming back with more hateful vitriol in order to make THEIR established world-view more comforting to themselves.
   
   
4. Elitist Hate
   
   In that same vein, this is the one I see more than any other, and it applies to all these, at least a little. Elitism is a construct of the human ego. I have an ego, yes, so does everyone. It's just hard not to be annoyed when other people don't appear to notice their own, and spew venom against anything they believe is beneath them. "Fuckin' Skrillex ruined dubstep." Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The more likely statement is: "I liked dubstep, but then artists like Skrillex made it popular and therefore I couldn't feel like it was my own anymore, and all these shitty people I hate started to talk about it." THAT'S what ruined it for you, not Skrillex. If you're going to be an elitist dick, at least be honest about it. Actually scratch that, if you're going to be an elitist dick, have a cup of tea, and don't. Just enjoy what you enjoy and let others enjoy what they enjoy. It's not hard.
   
   
5. Music Hate
   
   Yeah, yeah, these are overlapping. I hope you've read enough not to let that bother you by now. Music is such a wonderful part of life, and it took me a long time to get out of my phase of being a hater to whatever types of music I looked down upon in my teenage years. I liked Punk, Rock, and Metal when I was in High School, and I absolutely deplored anything to do with Hip Hop, Country, Electronic, Jazz, Classical or the like. After a while, I realised all the genres had merit and I stopped picking and choosing which ones I could or could not appreciate songs from. This was a big point in my musical life, because I realised while I didn't have to like everything, I had been dismissing some really excellent music because it was 'cool' or 'elite' to be a hater. Fuck that. I also stopped spewing my naive 15 year old opinion to the Internet, thank Christ. Now I get to spew my slightly less naive 24 year old opinion.
   
   
6. TV/Movie Hate
   
   Similar to music hate. I understand it's cool to have an opinion as to whether a show is good or not. I just think people sharing that (hateful) opinion totally ruin the spirit of the show. For instance, I'd have to say my favourite show at the moment is a toss up between the Office and Community. I love them and watch them religiously. Some times they have an off episode, but I'd say the writing on these shows is my favourite comedy writing on TV. I love it. They produce a new half hour of entertainment every week, and I'm thankful for that. However, if I read articles on the internet or Facebook, Twitter etc opinions of the show, I'd think it was a horrible laugh-less half hour waste of time if I believed all the hyperbolic bullshit people will go on about it. Kids: If you don't like a show, don't go on the Internet and complain about how it 'sucked', just go outside and go for a walk, let off some steam, y'know? You are the kind of people that are getting my show cancelled, most of the time because you can't be bothered reading the layered writing of the show, the clever undertones which add to the humour even on multiple watches. Which I suppose, leads me to...
   
   
7. Lazy Hate
   
   This one irks me a lot. A lot of the time, people dismiss things that they are too lazy/disinclined to do the work to look into. Then, when they get into an argument about it, they miss the point SO HARD and end up just spewing a bunch of hate that shows they're too lazy to do the research/look into the point further. Case in point is people that hate Wikileaks or Julian Assange. I see both Julian and his website get beat up in the media, and people too lazy to look into the work that Wikileaks is doing decide they're annoyed at seeing Julian's face, or they don't understand the absolutely immense ramifications of the leaks he and his site have already uncovered. Now this isn't an article about Wikileaks (despite Julian losing his final extradition appeal only last night -- good luck, mate), but the amount of people who have misinformed, ill-educated views which lead them to this particular brand of lazy hate is staggering. I just want to force feed some of them a big ol' education burger or something. Ah well.
   
   
8. Blind Hate
   
   The last on my list of hated hates, blind hate is probably the most common and prevalent. If I had made my article about any number of a particular SPECIFIC types of things, like Jesus, drugs, evolution, abortion, asylum seekers, the economy, then I would have been automatically infuriating SO MANY PEOPLE who possess what I like to call blind hate. They've thought about the issue, sure, but they are so heavily set on one hateful view point on whatever topic that they are UNABLE to open their eyes and evolve their beliefs, and indeed evolve out of their hatred. I don't know how such anger and contempt gets ingrained into people's core philosophies, but if you look around, it has. And until we as a society work out a way to get past many of these issues of blind hate, I'm afraid we're going to be stuck in a form of philosophical dark ages. And if there's one thing we as humans should be directing our hate towards, it's that.
   
   

So there you have my list. It's a confusing topic and there's no way to really 'stop' hate in our society. People are emotional creatures and they let their passions dictate what they say or write more often than not. I just think if we all realised what horrible douche bags we are being when all we do is cynically hate on things, we would be able to move into a more constructive form of language, one not based on opinion, but on fact. On things that can be proven. Maybe that's the catalyst we need to get out of our culture of destructive, destructive hate.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed my list. Or, at the very least, kept your hate for it to yourself.

Until next time,

Peace and Love,

Willskis

Hey News LTD, publish this blog and Dick'll give me five grand.

On October 31st 2011, the world experienced something truly scary: the arrival of our seven-billionth human.

I use the term scary, because besides the fact it was Halloween that day, seven billion seems like a lot of people. Hell, it just seems like a pretty big number. In fact, the number is so big, that I was probably wrong when I said Halloween. That was simply the day it was recognised by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The actual day could have been slightly earlier or later; simply because of how hard it is to track the births and deaths of that many people.

There have been people throughout history worrying about population growth, and rightly so. The Earth is big, but not that big. Not big enough to tackle the problems that emerge of an exponential population curve.

 

Because when the population explodes, it really explodes. That is why iconic Aussie businessman Dick Smith has created the Wilberforce Award. 

Dick has laid $1 million on the table for any individual who can step up and become famous by showing leadership by communicating an alternative to our current system of wasteful, pointless consumption.

I suppose I could be that person. I could use $1 million. But I'm not here to write today about how I am going to save us all from too many iPhone models clogging up our nations landfills in 2050. Today I am going for the much more modest achievement of getting this blog post into a former newspaper I used to work at, The Daily Telegraph. Dick has offered any journalist under 30 years old $5000 if he can achieve this feat. It's not a million. But it's not a kick in the teeth! Help me get there, dear reader.

The Tele is the biggest paper in NSW, and it is run by News Ltd. That is, it is run by the Murdoch media empire. When I worked there this wasn't that big of an issue - everyone who worked there seemed like actually nice, put-together individuals and not the bloodsucking propagandists that anti-MSM advocates may have you believe.

But Dick is adamant on his page:

"The Murdoch press are absolutely paranoid about anyone mentioning that we can’t have constant growth in the use of material resources and energy."

So this blog is to dispel a few myths, I suppose. Here I go:

• The Murdoch press aren't paranoid. There are some people that work there with some fairly extreme beliefs about things in society (I'm looking at you Andrew Bolt) but on the whole these are people who are tasked with the insanely tough job of creating a readable, visually appealing, interesting and engaging newspaper every day. I'm sure if they were to run this blog post (or a paraphrased version of it, it is a newspaper after all) it wouldn't be too out of the ordinary. Perhaps Dick is the one being paranoid? Oh crap, I'm trying to get five grand out of this guy. Moving on...
• We can't keep changing things that have evolved around the economy and expect them to solve anything. Yeah I'm talking to you, Carbon Tax. And you, ETS. The problem with these ideas is they are too much like a band-aid solution. The world is getting bigger, but as we are seeing, bigger population does not necessarily mean bigger growth in GDP or global economies. The world is producing more people, who are producing more innovation/technology/invention, which is in turn increasing efficiency.
  Now, unfortunately, efficiency seems like a good thing, but it's actually a bad idea for business. If I bought the most efficient razor blade, made out of a special titanium steel that never wore down so I would never have to buy another razor again, you know what would happen to that poor razor blade company? It would go broke, because I only bought one razor, and I only ever NEEDED to buy one razor. Meanwhile, next door's razor company that sells shitty razors is laughing all the way to the bank as people come back to buy a new razor each and every week. My point here is, we're producing more people, but autonomous machinery and digital technology are doing away with more and more of our jobs. So what do we do? The machines are efficient, and they're saving us time and effort! But hold on, they're making it harder for people to get jobs, because they simply do it better than a human. So... perhaps it is the fundamental socio-economic paradigm we live in that's the problem. Perhaps THAT is what has to change.
• Business-as-usual is just not going to work anymore. Old people give me disgruntled looks when I rant and rave about digital communication, the internet, the Tweet generation, and the like. I've been screaming it for years, but they say things like "I was like that at your age too, I thought everything was new and was changing everything." Newsflash! Everything IS always new and EVERYTHING DOES CHANGE. IT'S CALLED EVOLUTION. We evolve constantly, and the newest evolution, namely the Internet, is our best yet, In My Humble Twenty Three Year Old Opinion (IMHTTYOO). It's giving me the platform to write this blog, to share through my entire network, and to communicate with my fellow humans. It's doing it for free, because the technology is out there and there's no need for a price tag so some fat cat middleman can get rich. THIS is the thinking we need to apply to our whole society's technical design. That's right, I said design -- we have gone too long without designing the core functionality of our society that humans require to live: food, water, air, shelter, arable land and a relevant education. These are design considerations, that if I were creating a new world, I'd make sure were the main boxes ticked for EVERY human. It wouldn't even be that hard, and if every human had that, then we'd all be flying around space together sooner than you think. And there'd be no need for money and the excess corruption and backward behaviour it encourages.

This is getting too long, so here's my plea to friends, family and colleagues who read this: please share it. I'm not trying to go all Kony on everyone, but if there's a chance I can get this blog (or a rewritten version that I write myself to better suit the tone of the newspaper) in the newspaper, and get people thinking about the exponential population issue as well as the need for a new dynamic social design, then great.

To the people thinking I only care about this because I'm trying to win $5000, how does this grab you -- if I do get this published and I do get $5000 off ol' Dick Smitty for winning his 'bet' that he couldn't get media coverage, I will donate the entirety of the money to a worthwhile charity like the Cancer Council. I just want people to know the issue. I'm broke as shit but I definitely won't have anyone saying I only wrote this/care about this because of the money.

So I'm going to work on spreading this page around to my contacts who are News Ltd journalists. Guys, if you're reading this, give me a call, tweet me, email me, and we'll work around getting something published. We'll see if Dick was right. $5000 is a pretty good price for national press coverage in this day and age, anyway. I have ideas about ways to engineer around the increase in population, but for the most part, they're not my own. They are the result of hundreds of hours reading and studying scientists, sociologist, futurists and designers and their outlook on the carrying capacity of the earth. These are the considerations that need to be taken into account, not monetary considerations. Not "how much will it cost", but rather "do we have the resources?" And the answer is yes.

“We talk about civilization as though it’s a static state. There are no civilized people yet, it’s a process that’s constantly

Jacque Fresco

going on… As long as you have war, police, prisons, crime, you are in the early stages of civilization.”

-Jacques Fresco

Peace and Love

Willskis

So I tweeted Kony, which makes me a phony.

 

A few weeks ago, a lot of people all around the world learned the name of the International Criminal Court's most wanted man, Joseph Kony. I was one of them, having had my curiousity piqued on Reddit after the film had gone viral.

Some people, including me, were pretty incensed by the footage. Created by Jason Russell of the "Not for Profit" organisation Invisible Children, the film was 29 minutes of explanation of Kony's crimes, a bit of explanation of what had been done to stop him and why that hadn't worked, and a call to action for the world to take down this man for his heinous crimes against humanity.

The explosion that followed this video was pretty amazing. Enough people tweeted and shared the video that it garnered worldwide attention on a mainstream scale.

I found it fascinating, and was ready for the world to be amazed by the shockwave of awareness spreading to all corners of the globe. But besides the fact that everybody was talking and arguing about it (mostly arguing) on my various news feeds, it didn't seem like anyone cared that this guy Jason Russell had made a film that seemed to be penetrating our social consciousness on a scale never before seen. Most people were either arguing vehemently about bringing Kony to justice, or were taking the Condescending Wonka approach (see above) to attempt to take these online 'activists' down a peg or two.

The argument that people didn't care until they saw a pre-packaged video with excellent production values has merit, I suppose. I just didn't see the need for it at the time. I still don't. I don't understand the mentality of bringing someone down who is trying to accomplish a good outcome, regardless of their personal motive for doing so.

Like, I would understand if there was this blasé bohemian hipster who sits around drinking lattes and playing Draw Something with their friends tweeting it in order to look socially conscious, how that would annoy people. Issues like this are not something that should be used to manipulate one's own identity or social standing, that kind of goes without saying. And yeah, if you did post this video with the hope that people would find you a more caring and insightful individual, you're doing it wrong. Also, you're probably a douche.

But on the opposite end of that scale, I'd also like to say a big "fuck you" to the people that DIDN'T watch the film because they legitimately didn't care, and then tried to call out other people for tweeting or sharing the video for the same reason. Yeah, Wonka, I'm talking to you, buddy. So I may not be signing up to any Ugandan aid programs that require me to go dig wells or build infrastructure. But that doesn't make the issue less important, and it doesn't stop the fact that before people all around the world showed a single display of solidarity by sharing this man's name and his crimes with their respective social networks, hardly anyone knew about this guy or what he had done.

The fact is, this wasn't even about Kony. Not really. Well, not for me anyway. This was about showing the world, that our new technology is allowing us to coalesce, as humans. Never before, and I mean never, has the world done something like this. The KONY 2012 campaign, regardless of what you think about those who are vocal about it, is the beginning of something bigger for humanity. Something that resembles a true democracy, in that the issues people care about on a grand scale can be dealt with accordingly.

It remains to be seen if anything else emerges from the Kony campaign, besides a few delightful "weird but true" newspaper articles regarding Jason Russell's very public meltdown.

I didn't mention that meltdown until now because I felt it detracted from, like I say, the social consciousness evolving around us. It shows that this guy may not be the saviour of the Ugandan people like he may have thought he was, but it also shows he was a person who has stresses just like all of us. I have experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for myself over the last few months, and while I haven't exactly masturbated in public, I understand what its like to be at the lowest of the low points within your own mind.

 Mainly, however, I find this (seemingly final, hopefully not) chapter in the Kony 2012 story is not even relevant to the issue. It reflects poorly on Russell himself and his organisation, sure. But it doesn't detract from the scale and atrocity of Kony's crimes. And it sure as shit doesn't stop me from being amazed at the level of compassion and concern for human life I saw from my fellow humans on the days following KONY 2012's release.

Oh and to answer, Wonka, yeah, I kind of am an activist, and I have been for years. If I had my way, videos like this would be the ones that would go viral on the 'Kony' scale:



This is Paradise or Oblivion, a film from The Venus Project, an organisation I whole-heartedly support. It is a very interesting and informative 48 minutes, and I feel makes a great argument for a better world. It's what I'm passionate about, and conveniently it is brand new and looking to go viral. I'm going to do my bit by sharing it with you, dear reader, right now. I hope you watch it and let it permeate your way of thinking, because I feel the more people that can do this, the easier we transition as a species when our current monetary structure starts to decay at a rapid rate.

When we elevate our thinking out of the condescension of others, we see that being negative and high-and-mighty towards others accomplishes nothing, except a temporary gratification of our own ego. It's easy to do and it's easy to see why so many people around us are negative douches, but it's not the way forward. If you don't want to care, that's fine. But don't bring down other people for caring about something, even if they just found out about it recently. There is no shame in learning or growing as a person. It's important to be skeptical, as people who looked deeper into Jason Russell and Invisible Children's finances found out.

Now let's get ready to all be entranced by the next internet meme that gets us all talking. I hope it is as positive as Kony or Paradise or Oblivion. But most likely it will be a ski instructor on Reddit or a rage comic on 9GAG -- which is ok too! Another thing I want Wonka to know is it's definitely possible, and most definitely OK, to be an activist who doesn't always think about serious issues. We all need to laugh, be distracted and have fun from time to time - just not all the time. Just like you don't want to be thinking about heavy, sad issues all the time. Otherwise you might turn out like this... trust me.



Peace

Willskis