I tend to disregard a lot of things that people say. To me it’s my way of dealing with things, but to others they really take offense.

Take for instance my views on the world. In the past I’ve written about how I don’t really care too much about being cut off by a car while I’m riding my bike (so long as I’m not getting hit). I’m able to brush it off and turn it around on the driver – they are so caught up in their lives that they don’t have time to care about a human life. I see that as a really positive thing – rather than get agitated by it and let it consume my life, I’ve learned to laugh at them and their life.

I can see how it could be interpreted in a number of different ways. It could be arrogant, a bit sympathetic, or pity. Many people see me as a jerk, just out to belittle people, but in all honesty, I’m only trying to justify my life.

I feel so damn alone sometimes in my views and beliefs. Not that I mind – I’m a fairly solitary person being an introvert and all, but sometimes you just want to be able to talk with people and not have to have an opposing view. This is what has made my form my views on life, and helps me to interpret what others do or say. I guess with a lot of negativity in my life as I was growing up, it’s been a sink or swim situation. I went through the troubled little ratbag stage, and came out of it realising that if I didn’t look on the bright side of life I’d probably just end up wearing a black trench-coat listening to The Smashing Pumpkins. I very rarely misinterpret comments and turn them into a negative comment, attacking myself. I always look for positives before taking offense.

Misinterpretation of comments or words can completely change the meaning of a comment or a conversation. The medium by which the communication takes place complicates this issue even further. In person, things like tone or body language can help each party to interpret what the other party is saying. Via text or the internet we don’t have this luxury. It’s all up to the writer to be obvious and the reader to really think about it – often an impossible task.

It’s an interesting one – how does one effectively communicate to a point where there is no scope for misinterpretation? Maybe I’ll read up on that too…

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Misinterpretation

On this particular night they were whinging about one of their typical gripes… “Dole bludging scum from Elizabeth”. In their view, these dole bludgers get money to get drunk and have more kids that they don’t take care of, while the harder that my father and his wife work, the more tax they pay. A harsh view, but after working out in that side of town for quite some time now I have to agree with some of their gripes.

They get pretty aggravated while having these conversations and I usually just end up butting in with a “hey, you’re living in a nice house, eat good food, and drive new cars… life could be worse”. Getting aggro about these sorts of things is just added stress that nobody needs.

During the car ride home I was talking to my fiancee about where your viewpoint in life can be, or where you make your comparisons from. I have always found it easy to look at the bigger picture. Life is amazing when you consider that in Australia we pretty much all eat well, sleep in a warm bed and on the whole have a lot of “stuff” – compared to that of a starving child in the cold in India, I’m living like a king! In a global sense, not very many of us have something to complain about.

But really, it’s hard to make these comparisons sometimes. While I am quite a happy person because of this “bigger picture” view, sometimes you do need to compare yourself to those in your locality. For example at work, if you are working in a team of equals, comparing yourself to others is fair. If you are in an environment where you are forced to work fives times harder than everyone else in your team, and you live with it just because of starving kids elsewhere, you’ll end up becoming very frustrated and probably end up quitting or stressing out.

I think it’s important to have a healthy balance of both. Considering everything in a worldwide perspective is a great way to appreciate what you have, even if in a local perspective it’s not very much. It keeps you happy about what you already have and often negates your need for more “stuff”.

On the flip-side, while staying happy about what you already have, comparing yourself to others directly related to you keeps you in check and ensures that you’re standing up for yourself. After all – in order to live in the global world, you have to live in a demographic somewhere, regardless of what that demographic is.

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Relative Viewpoint

He brought up this blog, and how he wants to blog with me but didn’t know what subject would be suitable. Immediately I knew that it had to be something about consideration. You see, we are two very different people in a lot of ways, but deep down we are both willing to listen to each other and consider what the other one is saying.

You know how some people just seem to disregard what you say immediately? If you’ve read the articles on this page you’d be well aware that I’m open to a lot of different theories and facts. Finding someone that you can discuss this with is hard at times.

Every time I bring up the idea of house prices crashing in Australia to my father, he pulls the “it’s different here” line. He’s old school, and doesn’t have the mental ability to consider the fact that a lot of people could get screwed over by this bubble. Same deal with talking to my fiancee’s mum about weddings. I’m not saying “I’m right and you’re wrong”, I’m saying that “my view is this”, and yet I’m still told that I’m wrong. How can an opinion be wrong? Nice people, but very close minded, and I have trouble talking about my true thoughts with these people nowadays.

After our drunken talk last weekend though, I realised that consideration is very important in a good relationship. It’s hard to speak your true feelings to someone who will just shut you down every time. Good communication means that while you may not agree with someone’s opinion, you will try and see it their way. The more you are willing to consider a person’s view or opinions, the more you will find out about them.

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Consideration

I have a lot of free time.. too much probably, and in that free time I like to read websites. Alternative media, whatever you want to call it, so I actually read the news that I want to find out about, not what the papers write just to make money.

Over the past year I’ve really been into the Global Financial Crisis and the housing bubble. When I started delving deeper though, I started to see the cracks in the stories and began to read up on related conspiracy theories, to get a better idea as to what is really could be going on in the world. The problem is that now I just don’t know what to believe and what not to believe. Have these sorts of stories been around for hundreds of years, or has each generation had these sort of “scares”? Have our parents heard this sort of bleak news when they were younger and everything has worked out for them, or is this just a new thing? Do I really pay attention to this information or do I ignore it?

Ignorance is bliss no doubt, I believe that on so many levels. Finance, diet, lifestyle, and so on. I know corruption is rife worldwide, and often it’s so rife it’s actually unintentional in a lot of cases. But organised corruption on a massive scale – do I just keep on riding my bike and push it out of my head?

I’m so stoked with life on so many levels, but just so lost went it comes to what I should believe in.

I’ve finally made one decision – I’m over religion. Growing up as a kid with an atheist father and a true Catholic mum (by true Catholic, I mean one that doesn’t go to church), and being sent to a Catholic school, I had religion in my life but never forced upon me. I’ve always had the option to believe in something but the option to believe in nothing. Nowadays I see religion for the ponzi scheme that it is. Good luck to those that have found God and choose to believe though, I have no issues with it. That’s out of the way now, but there’s more to decide on.

Do I choose to believe that the New World Order plans to create a global government, and make our countries states. Is the Global Financial Crisis an engineered crash by the Global Elite? Is population control a reality? Who really attacked the twin towers?

Obviously not every conspiracy theory is true, but why are we always so quick to assume that they are false? There are a lot of truths out there once you start to look into them. What is crazy and what isn’t?

This is where I’m at.

New World Order is everywhere at the moment, just check out Google News. It’s as though something that has always been labelled as crazy is now actually happening. This video abbreviates some info into a more professional presentation.

[pro-player width='490' height='230' type='FLV']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvTy_fVdJ8[/pro-player]

Ugh, I don’t want to be going insane. What should I believe in?

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A New World Order

Through the later school years and a year or so after leaving school, I was finding my place in life. It was hard to see mates getting handouts from their parents while I had to work my ass off to get anything, and even then I couldn’t compete in their world.

Nowadays though, I see that everything I’ve been through has taught me some serious lessons. Small lessons like appreciation for money, but more importantly knowing what is actually important to me.

Time after time back in the day, I’d be annoyed that I didn’t have something that one of my mates had, when in reality although it would be nice to have, it wasn’t really that important. (Eg. a mate gets a nice new skateboard from his parents, but I can’t afford one so I don’t get one – in reality I was never into skating anyway). Nowadays, it’s financially a lot easier for me to buy something just because the next person has bought it, in “keeping up appearances”. I used to do this, but now I’m over it – as far as I see it, it’s just another form of competition.

Buying a nicer car, renovating the house or moving to a more upmarket suburb. Even just the places that you go out to dinner. It’s fine when you’re making the choices for yourself, but it’s crazy if you’re just doing something for first place in the game of life.

I know a couple that live well outside of their means, just to try and keep up with the rest of their family. The whole family competes constantly. Houses, cars, TV’s, computers, and now children. You name it, they’ll all try and outdo each other. It’s sad really, because when they actually want to do something, they can’t afford it or don’t have the time, because they commit so much of their resources to their competitive lifestyle. They end up living someone else’s life and not the life that they truly want to live.

I had a (cross country) mountain bike race on yesterday. My first race since last year and in a higher class than before. It was a real challenge for me, but I realised a lot of things while I was racing. A fair few of them unrelated to this post (things about technique, etc) but most importantly that I wasn’t really that interested in winning. I’m more of an “I wonder how fast I am” racer. It’s a personal challenge more than anything else for me. Sometimes when it comes to sport I wonder if I should try and be more competitive, but really, why? For the kudos of other people? I just want to go out and ride, and do the best that I can. If my best is first place, great, if it’s 20th, fine. I came 7th on the weekend.

I’m happy with where I’m at. Sure, a bit of competition in sport is healthy, but to me not being too competitive in life means staying true to what you actually want, rather than living a life of competition between friends, family and colleagues. It means you can live the life that you want, not what others want you to live. I couldn’t think of a better way to live really..

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Competitive nature

My mates pull figures out of thin air. On the weekend one of them said that if he could earn $100,000 he’d be happy, and he’ll do anything to earn that sort of money… “Even work 80 hour weeks!”

But to me, I think we’ve all got it a bit wrong sometimes. Why is it, that when I earned around five grand a year working for McDonald’s, I never had enough money, yet now that I’m earning over ten times that, I still “don’t have enough money”. Well, to be honest, that last bit is a lie.. I do have enough money, but only because my lifestyle has changed. My change of income hasn’t changed my situation, but rather my change of mindset. For most people I know, and most people I don’t know, they simply never have enough money because they always spend the extra money they earn on more “stuff”.

It’s not our fault that we always want more “stuff” (it’s what we’ve been taught for a long time), but it really locks us into our working life. Put simply, I have no intentions of working for my whole life. I am working full time now while I’m “getting set up”, but later in life I hope to be able to have my wife as a stay at home mum (as that’s what she wants), and ideally I will just work a few days a week.

I think the biggest issue with being able to do this is the ongoing costs that come attached to almost everything in our life nowadays. Mobile phone contracts, Internet contracts, pay tv contracts, petrol, car rego, club membership, insurance, etc. We’re committing to more than we realise. Now obviously some things you can’t live without, and obviously most people need to spend money to make themselves happy sometimes. For instance, I enjoy using the Internet, and I spend more than most people I know on it, but it’s a genuine interest of mine. I don’t have pay tv, because I don’t really watch much TV. I feel as though I can justify that expense.

The issue is that most people don’t really think before they commit to things (eg, $99 a month on their phone), and before long they are so used to having it, they “need” it. Now when you stockpile all of these weekly, monthly, yearly financial commitments up, plus the combination of getting into the habit of buying things regularly (eg, DVD’s, clothes, even expensive food), you end up broke. (Once again, I’m not saying “you should never buy a DVD”.. Some people love collecting them, it’s their hobby. Good on them. But so much stuff is thrown at us, that we just don’t think sometimes and that pay packet ends up spent.)

I tried to explain to my mate that if he earned $100,000 a year by working an 80 hour week, he wouldn’t have the time to service his car. He’d have to get someone else to paint his house… And so on. Heaps more outgoing funds, so his massive income would be eroded.

I’m actually starting a veggie patch at the moment. I intend on having a big one eventually, but I don’t really know what I’m doing so I’m starting small. A veggie patch is a prime example of an area where time means money. Later in life, my family could end up being self sufficient, but it would take a lot of time to do that. I don’t believe you could work full time and be self sufficient. But even having a small veggie patch, and working on it after work would save a family quite a lot of money. If you work an 80 hour week it’s the last thing you’d want to do in the dark when you get home, so inevitably you’d just end up buying more from the shops. More outgoing funds that erodes the huge pay packet.

I link to a blog by a dude that calls himself durianrider. He’s pretty “out there” for a lot of people, but I admire the guy. He’s stoked on life, yet works very little and just earns enough to eat and live. Now I’m not saying that I want exactly that, but I think it’s a perfect example of the other extreme. How can one man that earns next to nothing, be so happy, yet others that earn more than most of us can comprehend be so depressed that they have to be on drugs daily, and often end up killing themselves in the end because “it’s all too much”.

It gives me hope that in a financial sense, there IS more than one way to live your life. I intend on “playing the game” for the next few years and getting setup for life, but after a few years I intend on scaling back work so I can enjoy life with my family.

I work to live, and I only ever want it that way.

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Work to live or live to work?

Specifically, I mentioned having an argument with my future mother-in-law about weddings, and how my personal opinion of them is that they are a blatant waste of money, and the stress of the whole thing just erodes the actual meaning of the day. In the end, I believe that they have very little to do with the marriage, or the love that two people have for eachother, but moreso about the image that either the couple, or their parents want to portray to their friends and family. They want to be seen as the people with the really nice wedding, that “must have cost a LOT”, just in the same way that they need a nice flashy car, or a McMansion by the beach.

My ranting continued for quite sometime, as it usually does, and ended up going into the financial side of a wedding.

…fact is that the average cost of a wedding in Australia is $28,700 (or was 4 years ago.. it has probably gone up since then). The average household income is “$91,300″. In reality though, the median household income is more like $50,000 before tax. But lets say it’s $91,300. That’s $63910 after tax, assuming they are both being taxed at 30%, which they probably are.. both earning around $45k or something.

A LOT of living expenses are coming out of that figure. Chances are they’re still renting, driving two Australian made cars with poor consumption and require servicing frequently, which also drains their wallet. It doesn’t leave a whole lot of money. Most Gen Y’ers can’t save for a deposit for a house.. the government is giving them free money to get into debt which is a whole other topic which I shouldn’t get into now.

But the thing is, they just don’t have the dollars to pay for a wedding.

Now what I realised when I was explaining all this, was that there is a black and white difference between the facts, and an opinion.

When I have these “arguments” (or disagreements, or so forth), I usually end up very frustrated. I make a point of providing facts, and then afterwards explaining my opinion, which is derived from those facts. Unfortunately when I usually have these conversations though, the person I’m talking to isn’t interested in facts, only their opinion, and they have nothing to back their opinion up.

I’m happy to be told that I’m wrong, but if you’re going to do it, please have a reason why.

I don’t like to push my views on people, but from reading another blog on the internet, I have come to the conclusion that if you know something that can help others, tell them. It’s not always easy, in fact it’s very hard to be in the minority (being educated), but given a reversed role, I’d like someone to tell me if I was about to make a bad decision, or if I could do something to better my life.

The truth is in the facts.

I’ve realised that the facts are what I need to tell people, not so much my opinion. I try and drop them in everywhere now. (The rate of increase in the number of dwellings in Australia exceeded the rate of growth in the number of people in Australia by 41%. The rate of increase in the number of empty houses was 2.7 times the rate of population growth. *)

Facts are provided everywhere, and once you have verified they are in fact correct, you can make your opinion. Finance, diet, so on and so forth. There are facts, and they are all relevant for you to hold a view on the topic.

If I said to you..

“I think the healthiest way to live is to be a raw vegan, so you should be one.”

Who am I to tell you what to do?

But what if I said..

“Did you know that casein in milk has been proven to be a major cause of osteoporosis and other bone diseases in humans?”

You could then form an opinion from that fact. That opinion could be to believe it, and an action from that opinion may be to stop drinking milk.

Conspiracy theories are a perfect example of where facts can hold some vital information, but where the opinion of some presenters/producers/etc can take over and effectively turn a lot of people away from the original message that they wanted to send. Often there are facts that “the people” should know, but waking up one day and telling “the people” that “Obama is 21st century Hitler” is hardly going to go down well with the majority of people.

Stick with the facts. By all means let others know your opinion, but make sure they know it is your opinion.

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The truth is in the facts