The Stygian Traveller

Remember my Quest for Power post a little while ago, talking about my reading of philosophy and theology and what-not?

Well I started a blog for it. It’ll be partly about different religions and theologies, as well as philosophical ponderings and my work with the Force Academy.  You’ll find all the relevant information over at my brand spankin’ new blog, the Stygian Traveller, where I’ll discuss God, gods and the Force. You’re welcome to come over for a read, and I’m eager to discuss things with anyone willing to have a conversation.

May the Force serve you well, friends.

A Quest For Power.

It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve been here. And forever is too long.

What has the Wicked One been up to, you ask? Heaps of shit, and a lot of it would’ve been amusing food for thought here. But I digress…

Lately I have been reading religious texts and philosophy. I’ll be honest, it all started with Star Wars. For the few of you unfortunate enough to not know Star Wars, I’ll give you some background information. In the Star Wars setting (A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away), there is an all-permeating energy field known as The Force.  The Force is loosely based on real-world ideals such as Chi. At any rate, certain people known as Force Sensitives can tap into the Force and use it towards their own purposes. The Force is also said to have a Dark Side and a Light Side. A Light Side Force Sensitive has an array of Good-aligned abilities, including but not restricted to healing, protection and greater perception. A Dark Side Force Sensitive can choke people telekinetically and conjure lightning. There are two primary groups of Force Users. The Jedi Order served a peaceful Republic for the Light Side, and the Sith ruled a Sith Empire with the Dark Side.

At any rate, I could go on. But I won’t, if at all possible. In the beginning, Force Users are split between the Dark and the Light, it being a tale of good against evil, a hero rescuing a princess, and all that good wholesome stuff that stories are made of. As time went by, books were written and in the interest of creating better plots, a philosophical debate arose; the Dark Side being inherently evil, or not. By the same stroke, dark siders tended to argue that the Light was too constrictive to allow for personal growth, but this is often portrayed as justification for evil.

For more information, because I can’t sit here prattling on about Star Wars all day, go get out from under your rock and watch the damn films already.

With books and movies, the fictional universe grew. With discussion, an ideal grew. After several incidents of “Jedi” reaching serious numbers on world religion censuses, (because censi is rarely used and doesn’t sound right),  Jedi has taken its place as a world religion. While many put ‘Jedi’ on their census as a joke, some did it because that is what they follow. With over thirty years of comics, books, films and even fan-produced literature, the Force, Jedi and Sith have a level of depth rarely achieved by fiction. Later on, a video game company known as Bioware would create a series of Star Wars videogames named Knights of the Old Republic which would flesh out the Dark Side and the Sith Empire. Bioware did great work with this.

Cutting a long story short, Jedi and to a lesser extent, Sith, have become religions that I choose to label collectively as Force Realists. During the course of playing the Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR) games, I had noticed that some of the Sith teachings spoke to me more personally. I ignored the fact the Sith were antagonists simply because every good story needs one. The Sith are a meritocracy; the strongest prosper and the weakest tend to die. But they had a Code. A Sith Code, which I’ll jot down later.

The Jedi, on the other hand, are essentially monks, albeit with laser swords and magic powers. Their teachings are reliant on meditation, selflessness, the law, and a great deal of self-control. Which is all well and good if you really feel up to living the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk. Not for me, thanks. I read a Buddhist book and quickly realised I would be a terrible Buddhist anything. The Jedi have a Code as well, and I’ll show you the two codes to compare.

The Jedi Code:

There is no emotion, there is peace

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

There is no death, there is the Force.

As you can see, it’s all very much a peaceful, stoic sort of thing. Now for the Sith Code.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

Through passion I gain strength.

Through strength, I gain power.

Through power I gain victory.

Through victory, my chains are broken.

The Force shall free me.

Does that not simply roll off the tongue? With reading that code, I saw that the Sith are really only evil because the story demands an antagonist. I enjoy their philosophy. While I do respect the sacrifice, inner strength and wisdom the Jedi bring to the table, that style doesn’t suit me, and would require a great deal of interpretation to make it work for me. Whereas the Sith style tends to reward study and diligence. And when I read that the Sith were based on a real world religion? I went on a bit of a bender of books.  What religion is this, you may ask?

Anton LaVey’s branch of Satanism. Don’t turn away at that word, trust me. Let me make something quite clear really quickly: There is no devil worship in this branch of Satanism. If you meet some adolescent shithead who claims to be a devil-worshipping Satanist they’ve obviously never met one. Satanism tends to be based around acceptance of flaws and then bettering yourself. Its teachings are based on individualism, self-indulgence, and “eye for an eye” morality. It’s more of a philosophy than a religion but parts of it spoke to me nonetheless. I haven’t taken it for my own religion yet, but it served as a decent starting ground for my new little endeavour; theological study.

So sit awhile and listen. I’ve begun anew and am searching the world of spirits and the supernatural, the realms of gods and men, and taking myth from bullshit. Starting from Star Wars and Satanism, let’s see where I end up.

P.S. I’m thinking of taking this to its own page, to separate it from Someone Wicked.

Disclaimer: As always, I encourage comments and discussion. I do not intend to offend anyone but I will get frank in these posts, particularly involving religious history. If you don’t like it, don’t come here. Simple as that. I will be discussing religion as I come across them, so I will be starting with LaVeyan Satanism. Seriously, it’s not what you think it is, give it a chance. I’ll be onto Asatru after that though. Feel free to contact me at someonewickedblog@gmail.com

May the Force serve you well.

The BottleBlog

Having made casual reference to a new job in my last post, I was told that the job would make an interesting piece of subject matter for Someone Wicked, dealing with society on the front lines; suburban liquor store.

But I’ve gone a step further, and have created the BottleBlog, straight from my workplace to your screens. A personal view of a particular side of society with someone from particular views on it. Enjoy.

“Thank You For Choosing Transperth”. My ass.

My apologies for the lack of updates in the past months.

So recently I had the joyous experience of travelling on the Transperth rail system. Groovy. Oh the fun of the hustle and bustle of being forced into close-quarters with people going about their lives, and a few whose next steps in the path of life had damn well better involve a shower…

Travelling on public transport is a good reminder that you’re not alone in the world, but at the same time you do have that moment where you view the world with contempt and a few may even mentally use the words ‘drones’. Some people do look like they have no personality, don’t they? Which is amazingly untrue, it’s just a shame that some jobs require suits and uniforms and such. If you haven’t noticed by now, or if you’re newly exposed to my rantings, I don’t really like the forced aesthetic uniformity that so many employers look for…

So anyway I was on the train at around 9PM, and I was on the way to a friend’s house for a relaxing evening, when I received a message that I’d have to go further on the train than I originally thought. And here I was faced with a conundrum; I did not have the correct ticket required to get to my new destination. A thought flickers through my mind; ‘if I get off the train, there’ll be nobody around, no guards, barely any lighting and an hour’s wait for the next train’.

There’s not a word in earthly languages to describe my thoughts on this, so I will summarise: Fuck that.

Travelling on buses trains is a risky business as it is, especially when it comes to safety, don’t even mention reliability, comfort or punctuality… So I decide to stay on the train, for my piece of mind, safety, and for the safety of my girlfriend who was travelling with me. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but two minutes later, but who do I spy, with my twitchy left eye?

Only the illustrious lads known as Transperth Revenue Protection. Or, as they’d prefer to be called, Train “Guards”. Yes. Never around when you want them though. That’s not usually their fault, people usually only misbehave when authority figures aren’t around. That’s really a human condition issue, or if you want to make it Transperth’s fault, a bureaucracy issue; there should be enough guards to have them on every station and train to really have that image of “safety” that they like to flaunt.

Next thing I know, I’m being issued a fine. Yay. Bad enough that they doubled their minimum fines a few years ago, might I add. A fine for choosing safety over their moneygrabbing? Hmm… okay. Seeing as I am so nice I explain my predicament to the guard, who to my amazement, actually understands and responds in understandable English.* But nonetheless, I am fined and he says to go down and explain the situation to their staff and it may even get withdrawn. Yay.

So I do just that. I go down to their “customer service centre” or whatever the hell they call it, and fill out a form explaining the problem at hand the same I have here, minus the cursing, pop culture references, song lyrics and loquaciousness I use in these posts. I had to keep it short and sweet, because that’s what you’re meant to do when filling out incident reports. Also because I don’t credit their staff with overmuch intelligence, nor the company for wanting to issue them with the correct dictionaries and thesauruses required to understand my profuse verbiage.

Today I received a letter from the Public Transport Authority, letting me know that the concern for my own safety wasn’t really enough reason to withdraw the fine. Hmph. I guess without fear of assault charges they don’t really withdraw these things.**

And what are all these encounters punctuated with? “Thank you for choosing Transperth”. Like any of us would if we had half a choice in the matter. Give us another rail and bus system and you could guarantee that Transperth would lose a large amount of customers. Unless the newcomer was somehow less competent than the incumbent rail system, which I can really only see happening if they wanted to fail.

I’m starting to wonder what I’m pissed off about though. Is it just the fine, or is it the fact they’re so caught up in moneygrubbing and “revenue protecting” that they didn’t withdraw it, even if my objection to the fine is due to safety issues? What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them, on the comments section, or on Facebook.

 

For newcomers and folk who haven’t checked the “About Someone Wicked” page, we do have a Facebook Group, as well as the Wicked One himself being on Facebook. Find him as William Kaede.

* – Disclaimer – I am by no means racist, nor discriminatory against people that can’t speak English. Quite the contrary, I’ve been known to throw racists out of my workplace. I just don’t think people who can’t easily communicate with others should be put into a customer service role or any other job where they’re forced to converse with the populace, such as security or train guarding.

** – I have been fined before, but it was withdrawn for two reasons; their bus driver gave me the wrong ticket in the wrong zone, and the train guard literally grabbed me at the station when I was passing through. The thinly veiled threat of assault charge worked wonders in that case.

We Are All of Us

Each and every one of us is a walking universe; a chaotic yet orderly mass of contradiction. Everything is based upon situation, context and perception. We are all special and unique in our own ways, and some moreso than others. And while we may judge a first glance based on appearance, true understanding of a person, including ourselves, can reveal the very simplest truth is that no one human being can ever be a pure anything.

Every one of us has the potential to be, if they aren’t already, an exception to a rule. Ranging from simpler, widely-believed social stereotypes to the intricacies of subcultures, nobody can ever completely subscribe to a label or stereotype. For everyone is subject to the sensitivity of context and can never be summed up by something as simple as a word.

I’ve seen saints become sinners and the blind become seers, if only situationally. The most open-minded individual can be a closed-minded bigot in situations and their own ways. I have seen surprising insight and creativity from an illiterate person. Not only is a human being subject to contradicting themself, but also very able to contradict your perceptions and assumptions of them.

We don’t always think of other people as human. We’ve all had that moment where we wonder if we’re the only person who thinks, or feels, or knows, in the way that you do. We all think, we all feel, we are all individual universes unto themselves. We dehumanise strangers and antagonists in our life, whether by impulse or conscious arrogance. I can assure you, that no matter what someone else looks like, or how you perceive them, that they are just as human as you. Because that’s what they are.

Stereotypes, while having a basis of truth in some aspects, are made redundant by any knowledge of a person. We apply these things to strangers and people we’ve just met; judgements borne of unknowing, and defend our friends and family from them. And there have been some people who perfectly fit stereotypes at a time, they will always have a side to them that completely contradicts it.

To me, there are absolutely no absolutes, and I go one step further from saying that the world, and people in it, are not black and white but shades of grey. No, the world is the entire spectrum of every colour, and more, than the human eye can perceive. The world is as bright and varied as you choose to make it; from the black and white of a closed mind, to the entire spectrum of awareness that the truly insightful can achieve.

Each person in this world was once a one-in-millions chance to become one of the seven billion human beings living on this great blue earth of ours. We are all special and unique like everyone else; ever fluctuating messes of contradiction, hypocrisy and emotion.

And to me, these paragraphs can be summed up in a singular, solitary sentence that means so much more than words could describe, simplicity belying the truth. We are all special and unique; we are all human, just like you.

This post was inspired by This Piece of Work on DeviantArt.

Our Global Image

Every country has an international stereotype that is often over-blown exaggerations of a particular characteristic. Whether it’s the angry Italian, the snooty Frenchman, the loud American, the drunken Irishman, or the sleepy Mexican, these stereotypes are at the forefront of racism and international profiling. As for Australians… thanks to the Aussie fad of the 1980s, started by Crocodile Dundee, the Australian stereotype has pretty much been a friendly, laid back kinda dude who may or may not wrestle gigantic reptiles while drinking oversized cans of Fosters.

But in more recent times, with the advent of the global community known as the Internet, word has spread and I no longer think this is the case. With a certain ignorant bigot in an underserved position of power, preventing us from having a R18+ rating for videogames, we were the butt of jokes on the internet. Next came the Banning of Small Breasts scandal and the hilarity continued. New internet tags appeared, like “Not Safe for Australia” when referring to content with small-breasted women.

And then with the advent of the Australian Internet Filter, despite protests and campaigns dedicated to spreading the word of this injustice, Australians have shown their true colours to their countrymen and the world; apathetic ignorance. Choosing to just not care about something which affects their daily life more than they realise. The internet filter affects all of us, ranging from the most basic internet use (Facebook, Youtube, schoolwork) to the most avid of cybersurfers.

But no, the population seem to have chosen to just kind of ignore this and hopes that it goes away, in what is being proven to be the true Aussie spirit. And thanks to this pathetic example, it seems that the anti-censorship movements, myself included, have been proven right; we were the test-run. Testing the waters to see how populations react to censorship like this. Now the European Union is going to implement a mandatory filter, and are hiding behind the same guise of ‘protecting the children’ that the Australian government have.

Google, Microsoft and even President Obama himself have been highly vocal against the Rudd Government’s proposed Internet Filter. And after a few TV spots with Minister Conroy, who has repeatedly proved his incompetence, the Australian people still refuse to look into this. It’s highly disappointing. How stupid, how ignorant can a sizeable majority of a westernised country be to not understand the threat this poses? This is the worst example of censorship seen in a Western country since the rise of the Nazi Party pre-WW2.

I have this to say. A warning to the European Union. Be prepared. Just because Australia took this laying down, does not mean that your people will. Europeans, do what you can. Spread the word. This is happening here, and you’re next. Americans will be facing the same problem if a Republican makes it to the White House in2012. Internet Censorship is going to happen all over the world and when it’s over, regardless off what happens, people will look back and say; “it started in Australia. It’s their fault.”

No Chance and No Future

I’ll spare the lengthy introduction, the fancy wordplay and the extensive rant and put it to you simply; it is a very difficult task to find a job right now. There’s three particular groups of folk who employers want at the moment; kids who are under 18, experienced workers over 25, or foreigners who’ll work maximim hours for minimum wage.

I am none of the above. And that has made it virtually impossible for me to get a job where I don’t run the risk of losing my position to one of the above categories. I have more-or-less approaching the point where I am ready to buckle under and take a crap job with worse pay, if only because it’s my only alternative to joblessness.

A lot of places, specifically in the computing / IT industry, demand a minimum of three years’ experience. Experience that I can’t get because there’s no jobs available in the industry that don’t require that experience. And it’s horrendously aggravating to get a job, even at McDonalds, because I’m over 18 and thus actually have to be paid adult wages.

It’s not just affecting me. So many people out there are jobless, or being forced into terrible jobs that have no career options because of the latest trends. How are we supposed to gain experience without being given a chance? That’s all I want, and that’s all so many other people want; a chance.

Job-hunting is a painful endeavour at the best of times. I’m a certified computer repairer as well as trained in IT. Five years ago, advertising everywhere was saying that these were two avenues that would lead to long-lasting, highly paid careers. It’s gotten to the point where I put the donate button up on the website in the hope that it’ll provide additional funding for the continuance of SomeoneWicked as a registered domain as well as attending to my cost-of-living.

Australia, you keep preaching about giving people a fair go. Where’s our chance? Where’s the fair go for Australians who need work? It’s as I said. We’re not being given one. We have no chance, and without that chance, we have no future.