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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.

If there’s one thing that will get an office full of government employees out of their seats, it’s coffee.

Recently our social club organised a coffee machine so people in the building could buy cheaper coffee than the cafeteria supplied. While I applaud their reasoning for doing so (the cafeteria jacked up their prices), I can’t believe how much attention the thing has picked up.

I find myself forming strong opinions on things that aren’t really that important to me. For instance, since selling my car and riding to work more often I am in disbelief when I hear about people driving 8 minutes to work rather than riding or walking. I end up labelling them all sheep and just disregarding their opinions from then onwards. Ok so maybe it’s not that bad, but I guess you could say that it “fuels the fire”, the fire being my hatred for lazy car drivers. People that could be walking, riding, jogging, and catching public transport and usually have no good reason not to do so.

Coffee is fast becoming my newest and biggest gripe. I’ve always been in tune with my hydration. Right now as I’m typing this I know that I need more water, even though I’ve had a good 5 pints of water already today. It’s only recently that I have realised the affects that different foods and drinks have on my hydration, and how important it is for myself to be hydrated.

Up until about a month ago I used to have the occasional black coffee. I actually like the taste of it, but recently my “stand” is more important than my need to drink coffee. I’ve quit (until I go to Italy next year). There are a huge number of people in my office, and obviously worldwide that start their day with a coffee, have another coffee for morning tea, then have a coke with lunch, and later have another coffee for afternoon tea. If their body is lucky it will finally get some water with dinner! Living like this is terrible for your body, but it’s so accepted that I’m the freak for not having a coffee in the morning, and for going to the toilet every hour.

Anyway, this is my gripe and I’m sticking with it. Now do yourself a favor and drink a glass of water!

My fiancée and I took my mum out today for Mother’s Day. We visited a botanic gardens up in the hills which was beautiful, then grabbed some lunch at a bakery. It was a nice day.

We all had a good chuckle at the botanic gardens… People’s laziness never ceases to amaze me. They make all the effort to pack half of their house in their car, along with their kids and then spend the time driving for an hour or so to a nice botanic gardens.

Presumably people go to these places to “escape”, yet when they get there they seem to flock like sheep. Everyone tries to score a park as close to the gardens as possible, then after five or so laps finally concede defeat and park the extra fifty metres away. Being such a busy day at the park there was never going to be a chance that someone would get a close park, but they always try.

After parking they get everything out the car, and everyone in the family loads up with things to carry. It’s time to find a “spot” – they walk to the closest place that they possibly can to sit down and have their lunch. Because so many people think like that, they end up “escaping” to a park where they are surrounded by others that are also “escaping”. Yet they are surrounded by others that they were trying to escape from in the first place. Insanity!

My fiancée said to mum at one stage “I can’t get over these people, not walking five more minutes to get to the nice spots that we go to. Although I suppose it’s good so those areas are free for us!”. Too true.

I really love not being lazy. Today gave me the biggest boost just walking around the gardens. The air was freezing but it just smelt so clean and fresh. Walking around to the much quieter areas the three of us had a good chance for a catch up and could actually talk without others being around. Good times.

I caught the bus in to work this morning. It’s an hour and ten minutes by bus, and 35 minutes by car, but I prefer the bus. Less stress for me. When I drive I am just in disbelief of how terrible people are at driving, how inattentive they are in the mornings, and really, I just feel like a sheep when I’m in that car on the way to work.

Now granted public transport isn’t much of a step up from driving. It just makes me a sheep that is either too broke to drive, or cares about the environment a bit more than the next sheep. Ideally I ride my bike, but I’ve been lazy lately. When I used to work in the city it was a 35 minute ride to and from work, and I literally rode every day of the year. It’s not so easy when your commute is an hour and a half. It probably doesn’t help that I ride a single speed though.

This morning my connecting bus left before mine got to the interchange. At first I was a bit annoyed but I realised that if I caught the train I’d only get to work 5 minutes later. No biggie. I waited for the train while it was raining lightly and it was actually enjoyable. A few minutes to myself, in the rain. Nice! When I arrived at work though, people think I’m crazy. “An hour and 15 minutes to get to work? And you’re jacket’s wet! As if you don’t just drive!”

What I can’t get over is just how people are unable to think for themselves. The majority of people that I know just follow what the TV tells them to do, or what the sheep next to them is doing. I knew if they asked them why they drove a car they wouldn’t know. You get answers like “Because that’s what you do, you drive to work in your car. Everybody does it.”

I got started with a dude the other day that was telling me how bad alcohol is, and how awesome he was because he didn’t drink alcohol. Pity he drinks three or four cups of coffee every morning, and is one of those “I can’t function without my coffee” people. So I told him…

Caffeine is the most widespread drug on the planet. It is more addictive than alcohol. Served to children at all ages, and has huge range of negative effects.

Granted, alcohol is not good for you, however, think about when caffeine is taken. Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Every day?

Think about when alcohol is taken? Once a week? Once a month?

Obviously the amounts vary per person, but caffeine is a socially accepted drug. You can chug it all morning at work and no one bats an eyelid. If anything, you’re the odd one out when you don’t drink it. Try having a scotch at 9am. I doubt it would go down well with your boss/wife/etc.

So you can be addicted, and be on a drug during work, or while living your “normal” life.

This guy is happy to be told by the newspaper (and I use the term loosely) that alcohol is so insanely bad for everyone (and don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating how good it is for you), but he’s in a little dream world that tells him that his excessive coffee drinking is fine. The same guy drinks a few litres Pepsi Max every day and refuses to believe that people can be “in shape”, and eat a diet with more than 8 carbs per week in it.

Why do people need the latest fad? You only have to read your local paper to know what I’m talking about. New diet, the latest phone, new cars, etc. They don’t know what else to need. How often are people told that they should go for a walk outside and enjoy life? Told to look up at the sky and be amazed by the clouds? Told to go for a ride on their bike with the kids? No one benefits financially from those activities (except for the Government, but they are too blind to plan for long term benefits of people being fit and healthy and are happier for the short term benefits of claiming tax from TV sales and other crap), and after all, a newspaper is just an advertising medium. The paper is just doing what they do to make money. Same with the TV station.

All I’d like to see is people thinking for themselves. Believing in what they TRUELY believe in, not what they are being told to believe in. Fat chance though. In this last year I’ve learned what it feels like to be in a minority group. Only thing is my group isn’t due to my race or hobbies or orientation, it’s because I’m happy to think for myself.

Do you think for yourself? Or do you just follow the other sheep? Once you open your mind up to the possibilities, it’s hard to become an ignorant sheep again.