Everyone’s had a dream and most people have had nightmares that feeling of dread and suddenly waking up in cold sweat. I rarely dream or maybe I just never remember what I’ve dreamt. However lately I’ve been having very strange dreams where the past, present and possible futures seem to run together. It’s strange the Native Americans believed dreams as a means of obtaining sacred wisdom and guidance for life. While I’m not suggesting that these strange dreams have opened up my mind to the meaning of life or some secret wisdom that will help me succeed in life. I am starting to contemplate the possibility that dreams might be something like my subconscious trying to bring something to my attention…..after all what are dreams anyway??
Category Archives: Idle Thoughts
How far have we really come?
During the seven and a half hours of idleness that I have at work everyday. I started pondering whether we really have come as far as we like to think we have. It’s undeniable that the standard of living of people in the developed world has improved dramatically. From a scientific and medicinal point of view our life expectancy is growing and we are probing the depths of the creation of the universe. But aesthetically how far have we come? and how far behind are we?
Look at the buildings that the ancient world created, the monuments and achievements without electricity or computers. Where getting in touch with someone a hundred miles away may have taken up to a week or more even. Yet St.Peters Basilica was built, the Sistine Chapel and the Notre Dame Cathedral were all built. A lot of our biggest monuments and accomplishments are remnants of the ancient world. How many of these projects have been bettered in recent times? with all our advancements in technology and communications. Could we plausibly build an equivalent of the statue of liberty and transport it across the Atlantic ocean. Yes we could but what would be the point it was already done 100+ years ago.
To address the second sweeping statement made earlier about we are not as far as we should be. This is something that I believe wholeheartedly. The Greeks were on the verge of discovering calculus if they could resolve their philosophical problems but they couldn’t before their civilisation crumbled sadly. But then advances were made things seemed to be going fairly well, the renaissance happened and their was an explosion of creativity and new ideas. Sadly religion and the church had to get involved.
Like a corned beast they refused to accept any new ideas no matter what evidence was presented to them. They persecuted and discredited curious and creative individuals who knows what has been lost to the sands of time now? How much of a set back was the dark ages and inquisitions to mankind’s development. For this among some other reasons is why I have no love or faith in religions. As Dan LeSac put it
All the good I tried to do was corrupted
when organised religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discoveredReligion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong
Insomnia
It’s 1:32 in the am and well I’m writing to my blog. Most sensible people are asleep or out partying, I’m not sure which I’d prefer at present. Probably sleep. There’s no real point to this other than it might pass some time till I fall asleep or I dunno go mad and go skydiving or something along those lines.
I suppose while I’m here I’ll scribble a brief part about a subject that deeply interests me, that is the changing media landscape. Almost since the inception of the different mediums of well media such as television, print and radio. They have been controlled by companies giving the wider public almost no input into what they read, watched or listened to. In recent years this has changed due to the internet and websites such as youtube, digg and facebook.
I think the youtube slogan sums up these sites, “Broadcast Yourself”. These sites focus on user interacting and user created content. In stark contrast to the programming schedules of the established media companies. These sites and their explosive growth in users has the established media running scared. The old world thinking that these companies have is strange given that the music industry has found out that you cannot control the internet. Yes the music industry did succeed in closing down napster but big deal! Napster was just the first, off the top of my head I can name over a dozen services and websites that will let me download films and music for free.
One thing that these companies seem to be mailing spectacularly at is that fail to realise that the internet cannot be controlled and even if they succeed in getting youtube to pay up these fines, sending the pirate bay guys to jail and hell even removing file sharing software such as limewire from circulation. They will NEVER succeed in controlling the internet or the content on it. It’s impossible when you have the volume of people that use the internet daily to control what they upload, download or visit. No matter how much they may like too.
Personally all these companies are serving to do is make me think that they are scared, stubborn and closed minded. They are failing to adapt to a new technology that for the foreseeable future is only going to become more popular and cause them more headaches unless they choose to adapt to the changing way that media is viewed and distributed.
The Future
Given my extremely close proximity to finishing my undergrad and actually being a qualified adult 
. I unfortunately have had to begin giving some thought to the future. The idea of having to actually assume some adult responsibility is frankly quite terrifying. This may have something to do with the economic change that has occurred while I have been a student. When I started my degree in 2005 things were extremely rosy and optimistic, we were told that we’d walk into jobs once we were qualified, that the world economy was absolutely desperate for technical graduates (B.Sc and B.Eng). But then well the world kinda went down the toilet and turns out the world is in a very serious financial crisis. With most companies announcing cut backs and the banking system in serious trouble, the perfect bubble seems to have burst.
This leads to my thinking to the future. There are three main options to all graduates travel, further study and getting a job. All have positive and negatives and the degree of those are going to vary from person to person. I’m going to give a short summary of what I consider to be the more important points of these three options.
- Travel- Arguably one of the most popular for students, the big pluses of this are that you get to well travel and see the world. To experience different cultures and see some of the most spectacular sights in the world. The downside of this is that it can be expensive and dangerous depending on the political stability of the region you are traveling to.
- Further Study- In the current economic circumstances this is my most probable choice. It has the advantages of allowing you to stay in the student lifestyle for a little bit longer. But also when you finally do finish and the world economy is back in a better place you will be in a much better position in the job hunt. The downside is that you have another year of exams and assignment stress. Which after three to four years most people have had enough of.
- Job Hunting- I can’t honestly say that even if the economic boom was still going that this would have been my first choice. I would most likely have still gone with further study. The perks of job hunting are that you get your evening and weekends back and you are no longer a poor student. The weekly pay cheque and complete lack of assignments and exams are very big pros for this option. The downside is that you lose a lot of the freedom you have in college for random road trips and the like. That while fun are really frowned upon in the workplace (Unless your boss is uber cool and wants to come with you
)
Those are the three main options that I can think of for graduates. One of the main things that I suppose I am afraid of happening is that I end up with a desk job. I don’t know why but lately the thought of having a desk job chills me to the bone. It’s like a desk represents a cage or prison cell. I don’t know what brought this on but in the last couple of months the thought of a desk job is like a bell tolling. I think it may be because a desk represents order and to an extent a form of tradition. Whether it’s youthful naivety or a pre mid life crisis the thought of coming in everyday to sit at a desk for the day just doesn’t appeal to me. I’m sure there’s a lot of people with the same thought as me and most likely a lot of the older generation shaking their heads in dismay.
The older generation would most likely say that I am just being childish and what else would I like to do? The answer I have it that I don’t know. At the moment it’s a case of I know what I don’t want.
Anyway I think that’s enough random rambling for one night. I’ll post something up later in the moth about post grad choices, the kayaking intervarsities and I’m currently writing another short story featuring the man in black.
Reflections of an Idle Mind
An idle mind is a terrible thing with no distractions the strangest things come to mind. Like
for example money. Is it really as important as the majority of people would have you
think? Should the desire to have more money or a bigger car be the sole purpose of your
life?
Recently while walking somewhere I started to think about that and the answer I came up
with was no it isn’t. What really makes life fun and worth living is the people that you
spend it with and the experiences that you have over the course of your lifetime. For
anyone that doubts me on this I have a simple question to ask you, If all you had was
money, no friends and only had conversations with work colleagues at breaks and
lunches? Would you honestly be happy? Take the reverse you have very little money but a
lot of friends and some great experiences to talk about? Which would you rather be?
Someone who has lived life and ended up with great friends and memories or an old miser
with nothing but your money. I know which I’d rather be.
I think there is a point in everyone’s life where they realise what path they would have
prefered to have taken. In the “Road not Taken” Robert Frost wrote about meeting a
crossroads in a wood. One path was well traveled and the other less so and somewhat
overgrown. The poem ends with the lines
“I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
The relevancy of these lines to what was said above is that at some point in your life you
will meet a “crossroads”. Instead of taking the well traveled path. Spare a second thought
as to where the less traveled one may lead you, because depending on your age and life
stage you may have been down the well traveled one already.
