r0dman.com

Last night was a late one for my fiancee. I have probably mentioned it before, but she is a teacher. She currently has a student teacher in her class, and had to write his report last night (on top of all the work that she already has to do). I spent last night doing what I usually do – researching anything and everything.

When I had the chance to catch up with her for 15 minutes before bed, we just talked about everything going on in the world and how people handle this information. While she is just too busy to research “the truths” of the world, she hears most of it from me. I always try to provide unbiased information, and let her form her own opinions. She is oblivious to most of lies and deceitfulness of the world, although when I do give her information she takes it on board and processes it as she sees fit.

Others however, just don’t want to hear it. Intentional ignorance? I don’t know.

There’s a hundred different examples I could pick, but to name a few:

• Diet – meat, milk, etc. Unnecessary products that do us more harm than good.
• Finance – the sham industry. Built on debt, and fudging numbers.

They are probably the two most important to me, but even small things like Internet censorship I fear is for the wrong reasons.

Like most people, I have a fairly diverse group of friends. I went to a private school and have some VERY well off friends from there, but after working and spending more time mountain biking, many of my friends are now from the lower socioeconomic side of town. I know people from all sorts of different backgrounds, and with differing life stories. Regardless, a good 90% of them, appear to simply not be able to use their brain. Their life is purely about money, possessions and all of the ridiculous issues that go along with it.

I have mentioned in the past about how I try to get people to think. Trying to tell someone that eating meat will give them cancer is unfair. Not only will your average meat eating Australian bite your head off and disregard what you were trying to tell them, it is only my opinion that our diets will give us cancer. Until the World Health Organisation states that eating meat will in fact give you cancer, you can’t expect people to believe it. Rather, I try to produce the facts and let people do with them what they please.

My main aim is just to make people consider things. Whether it be about diet, or property values or whatever. Just consider it, and then research it. Better your life with the truth!

From the Global House Price Crash Forum, “maveri” wrote:

As we grow up we leave behind our childish view of the world and form our own opinions and source our own data for ourselves – we move on from our parents view and form our own.

What our parents told us about the world is viewed in a different light than what it used to be. We realise that their perspective is limited and designed to portray a certain aspect only and at times, the view that they portray is for their benefit in large measure, either for control or for protection or worse, for harm.

I find that the majority of my friends, and specifically my best friend (who just about disregards everything that I say as a conspiracy theory, even when the statistics are there to prove it) who have trouble “believing”, usually hold the same opinions of their parents. They are the sort of people that vote how their parents vote, and couldn’t tell you why, they eat how their parents eat, sleep how their parents sleep, and work and live and everything else – just as their parents do.

So talking to my fiancee last night, I said “either I have some uncanny ability to be able to open up my mind, and consider the extremes (not necessarily believe them, but entertain the idea), or others are extremely close-minded”. This probably sounds very arrogant – it’s not intended to be that way, it’s just born out of confusion from myself. I genuinely don’t know if others are ignorant because the truth is so scary, or if they just genuinely are oblivious to everything going on, because they just can’t compute it all.

Either that or I’m just going insane and everyone else is right.

Last night I volunteered to speak with some kids from my old school about the work that I do. The night is a careers “expo” of sorts, and most fields had a representative or two. I represented “Information Technology” on my own. Crazy, since it’s such a broad industry but I was up for the challenge.

My school, a private school, really pushes it’s students into university. Since it’s become the status quo for “successful” families nowadays, the parents really want their kids to go to uni too. It gives them status to be able to brag to their friends about. Back in the day, I too went down this track, and after six months actually quit uni and joined the workforce. It was the best decision that I ever made for my career. Out in the workforce I realised that those with a degree usually end up with the same issues of finding work as someone without a degree – a lack of experience. Experience is king in IT, and often a degree may make finding work easier, but without a degree you have a four year head start on everyone else! Now while this obviously doesn’t apply to all industries, it certainly does in IT in Australia.

Telling parents this was received in a number of different ways. One parent said “but surely nowadays you HAVE to have a degree”, adamant that her son needed a degree. I wasn’t telling her that her son shouldn’t go to uni, just that he should explore his options. Most of the parents were happy to hear my story, and in some ways happy that there is indeed more than one way for their son or daughter to get into the industry.

What struck me so hard was one parent. His son was the most keen kid that I spoke to for the whole evening. You could tell that he had a really strong interest in computers and really wanted to get into the industry. The father on the other hand just wasn’t interested and quite obviously didn’t want to be there.

It was amazing that I was sitting there, trying to give his son all of the help that I could to send him in the right direction, yet as a parent, he just didn’t care less about what was going on and obviously wanted the night to end so he could go home.

When I quit uni my parents weren’t happy at all. At 18, they didn’t believe that I was able to make the right decisions for myself yet and as a result they didn’t support me in my decisions. Seeing this kid last night, and seeing his dad’s display of “couldn’t care less” parenting, it has just reinforced my beliefs in how I will raise my kids one day.

While I understand that children, and even adults are never going to make the right decisions 100% of the time, I’m going to support my kids in whatever they want to do. Life’s too short to push them into something that they aren’t interested in.

Support peoples’ dreams, and help them to become their true self. Help them to break away from the norm and beat mediocrity.