We're all being used

The minute I quit my job in Australia, I am deemed to be here illegally as an alien, and the government has every right to kick me out. The only reason I’m here legally is that the government deems the benefit they gain from my contribution to capitalistic ventures and tax dollars outweigh any utility cost they sacrifice by having me here. An avenue to stay here legally in spite of my employment status is to gain entitlement with time. If I’ve done enough and proved my willingness to submit to the system and provide a benefit to the country for long enough, they’re convinced I can be a sheep for life and therefore pose no threat to stay indefinitely. By maintaining the status quo for another few years, I would gain permanent residency and eventually citizenship, but until then, I’m in a holding period.


This logic filters through to media and companies – if you’re not providing them a beneficial use or ratings, you’re useless and expendable to them. If they perceive the benefit you provide them by way of $$ as favourable to them (not you), they will milk you and use you. Despite what you want to believe, there is very little by way of trust – which is why you sign contracts and any breach of a provision will lead to a merciless battle to preserve their sanctity, not yours. In that light, we’re all being used because we can be discarded if circumstances change whereby the benefit you provide is no longer worth the utility cost. By committing ourselves to too much to work, we delude ourselves into believing we’re doing something beneficial to the world, the company and anyone else who benefits down the pecking order. Stop measuring your self-worth by how capitalistic ‘success’ has been defined – how much you earn, what you drive, where you live, what you’ve created, how many ‘likes’ you get. In the end, we're all cogs being used and spit out by the system, sweetie.

On Creation and Idleness

Humans, by nature, are driven to create things. From the moment we’re cognizant and enthralled enough to realize our poop is self-created, we take pride in the things we make. Success is measured in our ability to create such things as art, books, money, buildings, video game scores, food, powerpoint presentations etc..  The product can be something shitty, but you made it and that's fulfilling.  This is why DIY home-made projects are more rewarding than paying someone else to do it – you can admire your own creation and take pride in it, regardless of whether or not it took you twice the time and effort. 


The glory of boasting about our creations and being praised for them lies at the heart of privileged societies, which are entitled with this luxury as we have numerous tools at our disposal to create at will, barring innate skill, money and fear as constraints. This is why the religious type are inclined to argue that no such diversity and complexity of life could evolve over billions of years and must be attributed to a higher being, but I digress.

The fact of the matter is through our propensity to create more for self-satisfaction, we end up consuming more, hoarding more and feeding our narcissism. We don’t feel ‘happy’ or fulfilled unless we’re actively pursuing capitalistic tendencies to beat the competition or come up with something new and innovatively creative. Subsequently,  some thinking people step back and wonder why we’re still not ‘happy’ and fulfilled because after all, that’s the one Holy Grail we’re all universally chasing after. Living an idle life is frowned upon and deemed a failure if we are physically and mentally able to do something the majority feels you are capable of doing. .

This is a huge reason why I advocate travel and to an extent idleness, where we’re not constantly compelled to create something – it allows us to see the discrepancy of our so-called privileged lives of endless choices contrasted with a life of, for example, a subsistence farmer whose only aim is to feed his family, limited in choice and leaving his or her vices to the weather. A life of routine prevents us from getting a full flavour of what our choices of work are doing with regards to resources and on others as far as income disparity. There is no free lunch. Everything we create or do, despite convincing ourselves it will inspire others or improve their lives, comes at the expense of others indirectly. That’s the capitalistic, self-fulfilling way. Look after yourself at the expense of someone else you can’t see. 

In the end, capitalism will always triumph and by getting ourselves stuck in its wheel, you either pay to play in order to maintain status and pride or risk falling out. In order to gain an understanding of why our productive lives, intended to be full of happiness, are not in fact as grand as we imagine, we need to understand that the mechanical acts of endless creation can be futile.

Take the time to be lazy, idle and to travel.

An Inspirational Vagabond

Yesterday on my way back from Kuala Lumpur to Perth Fortuna spun its wheel in my direction and I was lucky to meet a 27 year old Swiss girl name Virginie. Shy and unassming, yet bold. We made small talk and slowly she divulged to me that she had been travelling for the past 14 months around Australia and SE Asia on her own. For the next 4 hours of her flight, she knew her plans, but after picking up her bags, she had no idea where she was sleeping that night or how she’d get there.

Virginie had very little money so she confessed she had hitchhiked around Australia for 6 months and planned to do so again, camping along the way in a cheap tent without the luxury of being waterproof. She had camped in Thailand and Malaysia the past 4 months, without a cooking stove, subsisting on dry food and trusting in the charity of others. There was a bit of a language barrier, but I couldn’t help myself from asking her a barrage of questions on loneliness, fear, safety and what brought her to embark on this adventure. She had no cell phone, no laptop, no Facebook, no means of direct communication with her parents and very little by ways of possessions. In short, she is a modern day Christopher McCandless (although she wasn’t full of hubris like he seemed to be).

I commended her on her bravery and provided her a place to crash for the night, gave her a solid knife, some rope, a map of Australia and some other things to help her on her way. She defied the typical person we commend today, full of narcissism and a desire to prove themselves through accomplishments, unable to remove themselves from their phone and modern day comforts. Rather, she was keen on exploring the world on her own accord, establishing her independence and realizing her ability for self-sustenance after depending on someone through a 9 year relationship prior to her travels.  She had nothing to prove to others other than herself and it showed.  Virginie wasn't concerned about vanity and mundane worries, but about the basics (transport, food, shelter) to allow her to travel and explore more.  She was astounded by having a simple meat, potatoes and brocolli dish for dinner with us while we tend to worry about cooking temperature and seasoning.

We spent the night talking with my 2 roommates over dinner at home, sharing stories and opinions. She is, by far, one of the most interesting and brave people I’ve ever met. She encouraged me in my plans next year to drop everything and explore the world more, flap free style.

Bahh Bahh

Whether we like to admit it or not, we’re all sheep, bleating and following behind the next woolly ass in order to avoid judgement and risk being cast out amongst peers. We constantly seek approval. Socrates was an anomaly. He was an outspoken, unhygienic and allegedly ugly man who would walk the streets of ancient Greece barefooted asking people in the marketplace very profound questions. While he may have failed to conform to our notions of physical attractiveness and hygiene, his questions cut people like a razor. For this, some came to adore him for forcing them to think, others despised him for his unconformity and fear-inducing logic.


Imagine you’re shopping at a local Saturday morning market, latte in-hand, the other feeling for a perfectly ripe avocado to make guacamole you hope your friends will praise you for. (Enter approval seeking). Suddenly a decrepit, unshaven man walks up to you and asks you (very eloquently) to give your perceptions on the origins of morality. Chances are you’ll scoff and tell him to fuck off and find some shoes. Socrates stated that as sheep, we rarely step back to think about where we’re headed and challenged us to question our assumptions and eliminate those things that rationally made no sense (The Socratic Method) until we arrived at some truth. By insisting we know enough, rather than admitting our incapacity to understand everything, we already limit ourselves.

His student Plato carried his philosophy further by saying most of us live without an understanding the depth of our condition, content to take everything at face value, which is why ordinary citizens would shun the shoeless Socrates rather than answering his questions, because they had never considered them to begin with. By taking things at face value, these men advocated we are bathed in shadows, interpreting these as reality rather than the source of the object. To make a long story short, Socrates rubbed so many people the wrong way until those in power had enough and sentenced him to death, forcing him to drink poison. Luckily, 2,500 years later, his legacy and those of his pupils, Plato and Aristotle, remain strong, but our behaviour generally remains the same.

The thing is, as humans, we’re born into a conundrum. Of all animals, we have one tool at our disposal other animals don’t – REASON. It’s a tool all of us use, but not to its full extent, because beyond a certain point it doesn’t serve to improve our individual survival, which is ultimately what we care about. We like to eat, have sex and drown ourselves in the flavour of the week. This comfort inducing cycle creates such complacency that some of the most developed countries are depressed and have no idea why. Having money, a job, a house, good food, kids and the like is supposed to equate to happiness, right?

I’m not advocating that we need to come out of every comfort zone and think philosophically about every topic because this could even lead us to realize the human condition can be an ugly spectacle. However, the lack of self-reflection and elimination of nonsensical thinking as Socrates fought so hard for could be a genuine reason we’re in such predicaments we have no idea how we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The Brothers Karamazov

I read this book without much research other than hearing the premise of the novel and continuing my binge on Russian literature.  The only fact I knew was that it involved 3 brothers, each different in their own rights, contemplating religious faith.  The philosophy of religious faith as contemplated from multiple perspectives was enough for me to read it; however, I must admit I thought the author would allow atheism to triumph as Ivan is painted as the character of philosophical insight.

The book was completely opposite to what I expected since religious faith was deemed the champion to shaping ones’ character, happiness, reputation and fate.   While Doestovsky was too idyllic in painting pictures of faith triumphing as skeptics saw their demise through death or suicide, I could heed a bit of what he was saying: That humanity needs to believe in the unbelievable and faith is not merit-based. Faith allows the means for people to live happily and peacefully without having to find answers to every gaping hole.    

Coupled with a lot of reading of Christopher Hitchens, the most outspoken person against faith, I feel a bit disheveled after letting The Brothers Karamazov digest.  The person I most identified with in the novel was Ivan, who goes insane after discovering a serious flaw in his philosophy that he is in fact partially responsible for his father’s murder.  His demeanor is one of detachment from humans, attempting to keep humanity at a distance due to his skepticism, which I also identify with at times. 

While Doestovsky’s novel spoke volumes to me and reminded me certain people of faith are some of the best people I know (similar to Alyosha), I can’t help but let my thinking fall into the fate of well, my own thinking.  Novels like these, while insightful, do little to sway me from my endeavor to discover what’s true.  If it leads to my personal insanity like Ivan, so be it.   If it puts me back on a track of faith due to the ignorant happiness it can bring despite defying logic, so be it.  

Brain Food

What we learn, study and mentally absorb is not unlike the food we eat. As adults, we generally know its limitations and that certain knowledge and foods are useless (i.e. birthday cake and celebrity gossip) and some are good and nourishing. We can consciously choose the food we eat as adults, but not necessarily as infants and children, which is dictated by our parents and school lunch menus. In the current food era of industrialized food, this has led to a prevalence of childhood obesity with the finger pointed at parents’ lack of responsibility in promoting healthy diets and exercise. By this stage, children could be so classically conditioned to consume highly satiable foods that obesity continues through adulthood and never reverses itself unless extreme measures are taken to defy what they’ve learned tastes good and satisfies hunger. The same applies for a dogmatic approach to education, which I believe is much more controllable than one’s diet, but rather than chastising the narrow minded path to religious education, we laud it as if it goes in hand with teaching morality and alleviating suffering, when in fact it is the culprit of ongoing bigotry and violent crime.

Regarding the necessity of food, what we ideally strive for is optimal health and weight. The vices of satiety and indulgence coupled with the abundant availability of food in developed nations leads to overconsumption and diseases we’ve only had to deal with in the past few hundred years, however. Regarding education, what we strive for is truth through evidence, reason and rationality, but the vice of ignorance amidst the abundance of knowledge and opinions usually leads us toward the path of settling with the information that’s popular, biased and readily available. That’s why nationalism is so strong and religion (and cuisine for that matter) is geographically isolated to particular countries. Humans are very adaptable creatures so you have to acknowledge the fact that what teachings you were born into and inherited over thousands of years may not be correct.

The issue with this mode of learning is it ingrains a very rigid form of dogmatic teaching that an ultimate authority who we dub as God is watching over you like Big Brother, watching your moves and preventing full reign of your thoughts, such as lust, which is worthy of thought-crime. (i.e. you can’t think freely without consequences) Some never step back out of this conundrum to see the sources of the dogmatic teachings. Where did religion originate, why is God revered as Yahweh in the Old Testament when polytheism dominated, how many people were killed to spread God’s word, why was religion created in countries 2,000 years ago when civilizations were suffering through famine and disease for 98,000 years? Why did God wait to intervene with Jesus after watching humans suffer for 98,000 years?

Holding onto such thoughts with a vice grip causes some of the greatest tools at our disposal, reason and free thought, to gelatinize as we follow creeds blindly like lost sheep. This is provides an unfair advantage to children, when their curiosities are in full swing, by implanting the idea to fear death early on and that the world is merely 2,000 years old. Whilst science is constantly unveiling new, sustainable evidence for evolution, a wall is erected, preventing young people from weighing scientific evidence against dogmatic religion and drawing their own conclusions.

We’re constantly mired in uncertainty and knowledge because we can’t foresee the future and know everything, which is ultimately the challenge of existence: selectively learning what we value and making informed choices for our survival, knowing we are all mortal and susceptible to death. What religion does is stifle the beauty of uncertainty by telling us the future is full of happiness and praise after death as consolation for having to blindly praise a God. Frankly, that sounds like a fairy tale to me. The wealth of emotions and uncertainty we experience is what makes our lives interesting and produces texts / art /movies which rock our core but just like that, upon death, God promises a split in emotions as if parting the Red Sea where followers are forever inhumanely jubilant like an artificial environment while others gnash teeth and suffer. The idea of absolute certainty for the everlasting future is not something that sounds appealing as it goes against everything we value. It goes against the principle of reason, rationality and searching for truth by telling us to believe something without a prerequisite of thinking.

Fear List

All of us have deep-seated fears, some of which we’re too much of a pansy to confront, others of which they will always linger after years of negatively reinforced blind observations & experiences. Fear was the culprit for my previous dark days of depression and I found it liberating to ask questions and face the tangible ones head-on. We can either hide behind our fears and surround ourselves in certainties and comforts or face them to make us more resilient and able to cope with practically anything that’s thrown at us.

That said, I’ve overcome a lot of fears, but still face a myriad of them and thinking about them is even scary. So admitting that I’m afraid of them and writing them out is a good step to more liberation. So onto my juicy fears:

1) Rejection. We’re all insecure to an extent so this will never temper away completely. Some deal with it by manipulating and using others with tools at their disposal to feel accepted. Beautiful women can get the attention of men. Or you take the safe route and follow fashion trends and earn a lot of money to show off possessions. The general public will accept you, praise your hard work and you’ll feel accepted and less of a reject. It’s the safe route to take toward overall acceptance. However, if you cast an eye and see the machine is fed by this fear mongering and have a semblance of intelligence, you’ll realize how you lie to yourself if you go down this path, gung-ho. I fear rejection by women, social groups, other races, communities etc.

2) Loneliness. I can no longer can tolerate nor settle for company for the sake of keeping me at ease like I did in previous toxic relationships. I feared solitude and facing my demons so much I had to dilute it with someone else's company. You end up dragging out relationships, creating more baggage and superficial friendships. That said, even though I can surround myself with family and friends, I fear long-term loneliness. As Chris Rock says, choose your poison, Married and bored, single and lonely!

3) Meeting the wrong person. A woman’s beauty and peoples’ uncanny abilities to deceive can reveal some nasty cards in the future. My hunch for people has improved, but it’s still a legitimate fear I have. A few bad apples I’ve met this past year have made it creep up.

4) The unconscious grip of power money has on me. My blog renounces the false security money brings, but I still feel the grip it has on me. It makes me greedy.

5) The subpar intelligence of the masses. The lack of self-reflection and uninformed choices people make leads us down the burrow of inevitably bad consequences. We’re fucking ourselves in the way of natural resources, health, finances... Says the guy who works for an oil company. But that’s beside the point. Human beings have lived and evolved for a tiny sliver of Earth’s existence and we’ll inevitably wipe out again with the next ice age or natural disaster... we’re just accelerating this outcome ourselves.

6) I fear smiling at someone and not having it reciprocated.

7) Superficiality and how much power it has to define “culture” and “arts”

8) My long term health.

9) Mind games with women. I’ve had my share of good and bad relationships over the past 15 years from a 4-year long-term relationship to 1 night stands to months of casual relationships where the obvious intent was to use one another to amazing people where the circumstances just didn’t allow it to materialize. At 30 now, I no longer crave sex and intimacy like I used to. A lot of men think with their dicks and will sacrifice their integrity to get a piece of ass and attention, crushing the woman’s self-esteem in the process by using her. (This goes both ways). The whole game of treading carefully to play a balancing act of not appearing too desperate while showing interest is deceptive bullshit. As the one being used, we give up our integrity by lavishing someone with what they want with minimal in return. It’s a game to satisfy our insecurities by playing with another’s emotions. Sure it keeps things exciting in the beginning because our primal instinct to chase things, but why can’t we just be honest and straight forward?

10) Ironically in conjunction with #2 above, long-term commitment.

11) Becoming cynical with age.

12) 2013. My intention to leave my job here next year and travel without health insurance and financial security. It’s all a bit daunting. Unless circumstances change to put me on a path of domestication, it’s still slotted as my top plan. It’ll help me shed fears further.

I No Longer Fear (as much):

1) Aging: I’ve already lost the bulk of my hair but have surpassed 30 in better shape than I was at 20. Shaving it off has been liberating and I give priority to my fitness. Sure some people of the opposite sex won’t give you the time of day because of baldness, your height, weight, race, moles and whatnot. Fuck them and move on because most people of value don’t give two shits. If you can make a girl laugh, you’re already halfway there. Whenever I see people spilling money toward ‘anti-aging’ products, it saddens me.

2) Judgement: Like they say, opinions are like assholes: everyone has one. If you let them shape your edicts without genuinely seeking out personal values yourself, you’re living someone else’s life. Nearly everything we do and say is done in some form to win others' approval..   when you can minimize approval seeking, it's liberating.

3) Idiots: There will be idiots everywhere who hold conventional wisdom, superstitions, pseudoscience, and conspiracies as dogma. Through their ignorance, they feel entitled to try making you feel small.  Unfortunately they are the majority, hold a lot of power and are making irreversibly bad decisions. That’s still scary.

4) Horror / spirits: This also used to petrify me. There’s some irony that some of the most religious people I know are most afraid of this category.

Do you have the balls to write down your fears and face them?