Your Story

It’s election time again in Australia and the government is on the ropes with the first real opposition in over a decade. This time there is a real threat of them losing.

With the last couple of elections the government has been given and taken the opportunity of finding an enemy for the masses to focus on and to take there minds off the other political issues that might be of any embarrassment to the government.

First it was to join our comrade in arms George W. Bush and go and fight the new menace of terrorism which threatened the very nature of our society(of which Iraq had nothing to do with), then it was the invasion of our precious country by the Arab Hordes including men, women and children in leaky boats traveling from Indonesia hell bent on invasion (no, probably just survival).

So it worked in the last couple of elections, so what will it be this time?

I’ve noticed that as the time is getting closer, nothing has arrived in the form of a natural or man made calamity for the government. They have used an event in the past to help them distract us from the real issues so what will they use this time? The date that an election must be called is fast approaching so what will be the created menace that will surface?

If it doesn’t develop naturally it’s possible to create it, just follow the formula.

Choose a healthy bunch of some minority, preferably one with little or no voting base and significantly different in some way (sexual, religious, ethnic or culture). Ensure that the rest of the Australian community has little knowledge of and is ambivalent about them. Find a point where they could be in conflict with some aspect of the general community no matter how tenuous. Pick on the issue identified and beat it up out of all proportions and show that it is of national importance. Then show a proactive attitude towards this issue as if the Government is the only ones who can solve it and let it go on and on and on in the media . Hopefully it will blowup into a huge ruckus and everyone will be distracted from the real issues which will be swept aside as the election is played out and the masses will buy that the Government is protecting us from a non existing threat.

Imagine the brain storming that went into it.

“Ok guys we need a minority to pick on, who do you recommend?”
“The Asians?”
“No we need their votes and trade.”
“The gays?”
“No we need there votes and there are too many now.”
“The Arabs?”
“Nope used them last time, they won’t fall for that again.”
“I know lets chose a minority that is so small we can lose their few votes, one that is physically and culturally different to us, one with a different religion and one that the rest of the country doesn’t know or care about. Lets pick on the Sudanese…”
“The Who?”
“The Sudanese. They come from Africa, their black and there isn’t many of them. Now the angle???”
“Have any of them been in trouble?”
“A couple but no more than any other portion of the population.”
“Great that’s the angle. Cultural differences cause Sudanese to not fit Australian Values.”
“Brilliant!”
“Now we need a patsy to bring this up in the media, not someone too high profile in case there is any fall out and some one we can distance ourselves from if necessary?”
“Hey does any know Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews number?”
Link

It’s around us everywhere. Violence, destruction, mans inhumanity to man. We’re told not to go out, to barricade ourselves like a medieval fort from the barbaric hordes that are about to descend onto us. But sorry I don’t see that around me. Sure it’s on the box and in the papers but I live in a peaceful community where everyone I know isn’t threatened or harmed. Am I naive?

Well it looks like I may be right just check out this TED presentation by Steven Pinker and you may get why I don’t feel fearful. It’s just not there. The points that Steven makes at the end of his talk about empathy rings profoundly true for me.

I’ve always thought that we probably don’t live in particularly violent times but there is still some violence going on and I feel that the lack of empathy is why we continue to allow it.

As I mentioned in a previous post it is my goal with this podcast to allow people to develop some empathy with others through their stories so that we can see that we are not that different from them.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk[/youtube]

Recently a good friend of mine has asked me to get involved in helping him roll out his new product. Ok, it’s not a high tech product but we all still have to live somewhere and this is for the building industry.

Brett has developed a much needed system for quickly installing a vertical stainless steel balustrading. He has done a lot of research on the concept and has found a much needed gap in the market for vertical wire balustrades as the existing systems involve complicated tensioning systems often involving many expensive stainless steel fittings and complicated installation systems.

What I think he has come up with in the Sentrel Balustrading System is a neat, visually light product that resolves the problems of horizontal cable systems and the dangerous climbing foot holds they present while maintaining the prevention of penetration from some one through the balustrade.

When he showed me the finished panels I was surprised that they look so neat and this I found was due to the hardwood railings being pre-finished before assembling so there is no need to paint after the cables are installed.

The reason I’m mentioning this is Brett has asked me to show this around and I’m hoping that the income from this will help to enable me to spend more time on Your Story Podcast which is ultimately what I want to achieve. I will be having a conversation with him at some stage so you will hear about this when you listen but also many years ago he had an amazing life changing experience that I would like him to share with you.

If your interested in contacting me regarding Sentrel Balustrading contact me at ian@sentrel.com.au

Humans are funny animals aren’t we. Lets look at relationships.

We all want to connect, to be with someone, someone in our life at whatever a relationship means to the individual. Some only want someone for the occasional hang out or friendship or maybe just a sex partner. Others want someone for everything to share hobbies, holidays, work, sex, family/friends, everything! But I think it is a very rare individual that is truly happy to be always alone and to live in isolation as is shown by the fact that the ultimate form of punishment is solitary confinement. I feel that people who genuinely enjoy their own company and aren’t retreating from some pain or suffering still enjoy friendships and the interaction of society. There may be exceptions but I have yet to meet one and if they are out there I’m sure they are extremely rare.

Considering how much we yearn to form community and want to be with others, the amount of effort we put into finding someone special, a soulmate it’s interesting how poorly we do it. Our communities breakdown into tribal conflict and our personal relationships breakdown after a time despite our expectations that they are to remain forever. We want it, we crave it, we have the drive and the systems, biologically and intellectually to connect but we don’t seem to have the mechanism to make it work forever. There seems to be some conflict between expectations and outcome!

Now I must come clean… Yes, I’m also talking about myself. I’ve done the euphoria, the first flush of relationships, I’ve been well and truly beaten with the smitten stick a few times and it feels great. I’ve moved into the relationship with the expectation that it will last forever, to be two elderly people holding hands in the street going through life together. I’ve also had the disappointment pain and hurt as the relationships have ended and dealt with being divorced and a single parent. I’ve also consulted from this page for answers about why life is so sporadic. So I know what it is like and I still want to connect with others.

The problem I feel isn’t that we want relationships, that’s fine. The problem isn’t that relationships end either. The problem stems from the conflict that we feel that relationships should form and not end. Why shouldn’t they end? Maybe having a relationship end is a good thing, an opportunity for something new.

I can hear you… “NOOOO….”

Why do we form relationships? We have a yearning for companionship, sure. We have a biological urge to procreate, sure. We want to form an alliance for strength and power, sometimes that occurs also.

Here in the West we have a divorce rate of between 40% and 60% and I often notice of the remainder the vast majority of relationships are challenging and definitely not what they would call ideal so the percentage of relationships that are as the individuals had hoped for is probably in the single figures. Cast your mind over all of the relationships that you know and consider how many are wonderful and fully functional, even then are you sure, as we have all seen the perfect couple separate.

If you were about to get on a plane or boat and you knew that your chance of surviving unscathed was five or ten percent would you board? These are our odds as we go blindly into marriage wishing that we will be different. Remember research shows that the stress of divorce is similar to that of someone close dying.

So my thought is to take from the old saying “it better to love and lose than never to love at all”.

Considering the odds we would be better off assuming that relationships will end and to enjoy the ride on the way, embracing every moment, as we can’t assume that things will last as ultimately they won’t. After all it will change and it will end, it’s either separation or death we just don’t want to think about it. So get over it and get on with it, unless you want to be by yourself and miserable.

But this isn’t the way we are told it’s supposed to be. Find your soulmate, fall in love, marriage, kids, house and they live happily ever after. Right! Sorry, maybe for the rare few but generally it doesn’t seem to work like that.

Lets go back a few hundred thousand years or so when the human animal is walking around the savanna of ancient Africa. We are living in a small tribe of ten to fifty individuals. Many of us are interrelated, occasionally someone new joins to add to the mix. One day two people look across the camp fire and something stirs in them. Attraction is there, the primal urge says to each that this would make a good combination for children and after some negotiation it’s on and we have a new member of the tribe. The mother along with the rest of the tribe raises the child and the father is there as support doing the provider thing for the tribe and offspring but able to drift about. The mother is basically bound to the child from conception till about four when it is independent enough to support itself somewhat. Sometime during this due to the pressures of the practical life attention moves away from the partner and others are noticed, attraction kicks in again and a new coupling is formed and the cycle starts again. One woman has mixed her genes with a few men and one man has mixed his with multiple women but they are still within the one tribe so they are still around all raising the children providing for the group and living within one large multiple person marriage called a Tribe.

Now if this situation is correct it lasted for a long time and would have been successful or else some thing like monogamy would have come along. But monogamy has come along! No, looking at the mix of human genetics it’s been stated that one in ten people send a fathers day card to the wrong person and that is the way it has been for all of human history! Monogamy is a myth and we’re not designed for it. In the Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins lays out his argument that it is not even about creating new people but about replicating genes and that it’s all about gene mixing, so one partner is not as efficient as multiple partners for gene mixing.

So why don’t we just go at it like rabbits with everyone and spread our genes wider than we do. Why do we want to form relationships and communities as we do?

Power and survival is why. A group is stronger than an individual and resources can be shared more efficiently. No one person has to do everything as there are others to do for them through the group as they also do. Within a partnership a stronger bond is formed to aid coupling, child bearing and rearing but after a few years the partner bond is less important as the tribe takes over the role as the child integrates into the tribe then the individuals move their attraction to someone new.

In our traditional Western Society we see this. They meet, hook up, fall in love and marry. That takes a year or two. A child is conceived and raised to about four. Then things get rocky start to break down and the couple separates. About seven years give or take a few. Ever heard of the seven year itch? Maybe philandering is more natural than we think.

A lot of people don’t separate, or play up, sure but are they still completely in the relationship like they were in those wonderfully heady early years? Mostly no.

So why stay together? For the same reasons as before Power and Survival because we don’t have the tribe to support us now. A couple no matter how dysfunctional the relationship is, has some strengths of support and assistance that an individual doesn’t have in the raising of the child and maintaining the survival of the genes.

People have known this for a long time. Until the mid 1700’s only the nobles in Europe were married and it wasn’t the necessary thing for the lower classes to do. Even then it wasn’t about love it was about power and prestige. Couples weren’t married, families were Wed. Couples/Families wed together to consolidate estates, form alliances and build power bases. Once a couple of children had been produced and the linage of the power secured the couple went their own way with matters of the heart and had affairs, lovers, concubines and all matter of flings. This still happens today. Look at the British Royals for a case in point.

Many cultures have arranged marriages and many of them last a long time as they know the rules, that it isn’t about love but about the big picture of survival of the group. Where arranged marriages are frowned on as in the West, where we have the utopian picture of love based marriage it still happens, just more subtle as often people are introduced within ethnic, family or social groups and it is only the illusion of freedom to find love but the restriction is to find it within the specific grouping. So the power remains local.

So the 50’s dream of the nuclear family was always doomed but we expect it to survive only because we have such a short life-span and limited history that comes with it. If only we were to look at the longer human history instead of just a couple of generations as we have seen things are different. We have been sold the story to such an extent that we believe it. I’m not sure why we were spun this story but I’m sure it’s something to do with keeping us working and consuming for the system as we know it to work. I’ll get back to you about that one.

So marriage doesn’t work, not even monogamy, what then? Lets look at what we are already doing.

We find, love, connect, separate… then we find, love, connect, separate… then we find, love, connect, separate. Well this is called serial monogamy. One committed relationship until completion then move onto another. That’s what most people have done, not just with multiple marriages but the relationships before settling into the supposed permanent relationship.

It starts with dating in the teen years where it’s seen as ok to cruise through a few relationships, not too many, then to settle on The One. Fancy that, we expect to have half a dozen immature relationships then miraculously find our soulmate and be content with that for the next sixty years. Not really surprising that it’s rarely achieved. However maybe the way in which we date is the practice for the way that we are supposed to do it. The way we start in our youth is the way of the human relationship dynamic, to hook up and then move. I’m Asian so I practice with Asian dating sites but I’m sure other people use all kinds of different ones, like Swirlr, etc – its the firs step when we get mature to more substantial relationships but ultimately there is a use by date and we move on. So lets just admit it, that’s what we all do!

It’s the belief that it is wrong to relate like this and the hope that the latest relationship is the one that will last, despite the evidence, that keeps us behaving like this. I think serial monogamy is completely functional if both parties accept that it is like this and accept that things will change and then when it does it will be time to move on to a new relationship. By going in with your eyes open the devastation of the separation won’t eventuate as it’s always expected and the appreciation of spending what time you have together is increased as you are aware that the end is inevitable.

With a mature attitude this news is only good and the relationship is enjoyed fully in the moment and the suffering of the separation is diminished and maybe in parting a permanent long term new form of relationship is formed. With this completed and all accepting the situation all move on and if all stay connected harmoniously the tribe is supported and the circle of participants grow. Giving support and power to the group, for the good of all.

Ok, maybe I’m just thick. But I get a libsyn account thinking that is where I’ll host my domain. But it seems that is where my podcast is going to be based. Then I set up a feed burner account and to burn my feeds through and in setting up the SmartCast feature they want me to post the image location. How should I know. My images are in my folders thats all I know.

I still don’t have any idea how to get the links over here to this blog let alone how to make it all so you only have to get here by punching yourstorypodcast.com, which will only get you to the podcast over at libsyn on the boring page and bypass feedburner anyway and you would never even get here.

This technology is a long way from being user friendly.

My analogy of this age is being like the early days of the cars is still correct. You have to be a qualified mechanic to really know how to drive this stuff.

Oh to be a Geek!!!

Well I just uploaded my first podcast. Unfortunately I’m still working how to pull it all together.

I’ve a domain over at libsyn(yourstorypodcast.com) and they give me a blog to host my podcast onto so I’ve posted my first episode there following their directions and the vidcast that Heidi Miller did.

The problem is I want to get this blog page over there to libsyn or a link back to here. I actually don’t quite know what I have to do but what I want is for someone to punch in yourstorypodcast.com and get this blog and the podcast episode is sitting there. Then when someone gets the feed which I want to send through feed burner I get the statistics and they get the podcast and all they have seen is this site as a blog and web page. I also haven’t got an email set up that is user friendly I want something like ian@yourstorypodcast.com but at the moment I’ve got to put up with yourstory@internode.on.net which is the one I have through my ISP.

For all of these reasons I’m not officially launching or posting to all of the networks as I’m not set up but I thought that the next logical thing to do was to get done what I can do and fix it to make it work as I understand it more.

How do I get this wordpress blog over to libsyn and get it working???

It’s been a couple of weeks and I’m still plodding away at the technology.

Yesterday I managed to get a fair bit done in garageband with the opening and the voice over introduction. It’s not brilliant but it’s a start and I’ll definitely be changing things as time goes by but I’ve realised if I take too long to get it right I’ll never get it underway. Also I realised that the best way to learn is to get started and fumble along the way and improve as I go so that is the philosophy I’m taking.

Today I was listening to the latest episode of Podcasting Underground and Jason mentioned using feedburner and the correct way to link it to my WordPress blog attached to my own domain which I now have over at Libsyn.

Wow! I’m going to have to set a bit of serious time aside to get my head around on how to get my blog over to Libsyn then link it back to Feedburner so that when I eventually post the podcast onto it the feeds will correctly feed through the way that they are supposed to go. God am I rambling… Yep. I’m not sure how all this works so I’ll just leave it for now and come back later.

I’ve also organized another two interviews so at least I’m slowly getting the raw material together. Bit by bit it’s all coalescing out of the fog but what it’s taking shape into I’m not sure. Stay tuned…

Last night I got on my less than 24 hour old twitter account that I only have two friends on and I find out that Cameron Reily is about to do a skype conference with his Sunday night chat version of G’Day World so I thought I listen to him a lot and why not get on or at least listen.

I got pulled in to the call after just setting up my mic and interface again. I haven’t used it during a skype call before and I wasn’t sure how well or how to set it all up when all of a sudden I’m on and in the chat. After a bit of fiddling in the background with levels and pulling my headphones out of the mixer and plugging into the speakers I got it running ok but I want to improve things as I couldn’t monitor myself very well.

I haven’t been involved in that sort of opinionated conference with people I don’t know before so I felt a bit overwhelmed and a little nervous as I know it will go out as a podcast in the next couple of days and remain in the either for ever.

What it was though is a good exercise in doing this whole interaction/broadcasting thing and I feel that I should take the opportunity to do these whenever possible to hone my skills. I have so much to learn it’s overwhelming at times.