It would be nice, once and for all, to decide whether human beings are a high life form or just beasts who can talk. I don’t mean to be so facetious about it, but I do ponder from time to time just what is ahead for the race of men and women.

If we take a look at history, we can observe how, over centuries, ordinary people’s lives have been determined by great rulers. Information was spread or stopped according to its threat on power or its utility. Many great things have been passed to ordinary people from the minds of brilliant scientists, artists and philosophers. Some of these thinkers have been persecuted and killed for thoughts and ideas deemed threatening or subversive. Some achieved great fame and fortune.

But it’s the same story over and over. Power, threat to power, challenge wins, challenge loses. This side vs that side. Good vs Evil. Evil vs Good. Good was actually evil all along. Evil was mostly good, but a little evil.

In the 18th century, to earn a living from sideshows, travelling bands of what might today be called ‘carnival folk’ used to put children in pots of various sizes and let them grow. The child, growing quickly would grow into the shape of the pot. People could then pay money to witness such strange things. True or false?

Today, boys from Palestine and Israel and other places all around the world grow up in a similar way. They are taught that stealing is bad, that boys should respect their parents and that their way of life is right. They come to understand that what they do, they do for a reason and really, they are superior to those others who do different things and worship a different God.

Not just boys. Girls are also very good at learning. While the boys are running around outside fighting one another they are reading or talking, being told about many different stories and tales. Some of these stories have messages, some real, some not.

The strange thing is, all these children, if taught correctly, will grow up to firmly believe what they have been taught. The Jewish man has been brought up to believe that the Torrah is an accurate account of history. The Christian man has learned through many years of instruction that Jesus was sent from heaven and did lots of wonderful things. Even the man who was raised with liberal parents, can validly see the benefits of taxes and how they help to create an educated, successful nation. We feel satisfied that what we know has been given to us out of luck. We feel lucky to be born in our country or have the parents we had to teach us the Truth.

It comes down to survival more than anything. A child must learn what it’s parents tell it, it must preserve and carry on. If it does not learn, then it can’t benefit from the wisdom passed down. If you eat those berries, you will be ok, if you eat those you will die. Many things we learn help to give us a better life. But that doesn’t mean that everything we are taught is true. It may just be a Truth. By the same token, a parent naturally wants to pass it’s knowledge on to it’s child, in order to give it a good life (or afterlife). Not everything our parents believe are true though.

It is a wonderful thing, Truth. If it is real, it will have all the answers you need. If you are lucky, there will be people around you to remind you of the Truth, should you forget or falter. Says the man educated in Truth to his young son, “you know, in some parts of the world they have truTh. Ha, ha those poor fools, they really think it’s the Truth, but it’s not. If they really saw Truth, they would realize how great it is.”

Let’s have an example. Jimmy is from England. His parents taught him that Mishmash is the savior of all humanity. His most famous miracle was changing the skies from blue to purple, through green and back to blue. He thus made all the world realize that he was divine. He did more things too. He was personally related to God, hand selected to be his son. Somehow, someway, he managed to rise from the level of poor peasant to be the savior of the world. Of course, he didn’t write anything down, but some people knew of him and wrote stuff that they had heard down. Lucky for us, because that’s how we learnt of all his amazing powers.

Henry is also from England, in fact he lives next to Jimmy. Henry’s parents think that Jimmy’s parents are a bit strange. I mean, who ever heard of Mishmash and his stupid tricks in the sky? No, they brought up their son to understand that the real savior is Zook. Zook (praise God for his existence) delivered his message just recently and it was the final message, him being the last possible update. Admittedly God had misjudged the humans, but really truly Zook (p.g.f.h.e) was the last. He carried God’s message loud and clear and there was simly no rebutting it. Besides, if you didn’t believe him then you would definitely have an eternity of hell to realize just how stupid you were.

So who is right? Jimmy’s parents or Henry’s parents?

Well they’re both stupid aren’t they? Who ever heard of Zook and Mishmash? Everyone sensible knows that Christ is our savior and lord. Or was it Mohammed? Or John Smith, that mormon guy. Or was it that guy I saw on TV telling me about God…? It might have been Krishna if you were born in India, then again it could have been Buddha who showed us the way. Then again, I’m not sure what Jehovah’s Witnesses saw, but whatever it was it must have been pretty special. With all these different choices, how can we choose?

The answer? We don’t. It chooses us.

Think about it for a moment. If you were born in a different place, you would most likely be a completely different person with completely different beliefs. Do you think that you’d stil have the same beliefs? Are you confident you would still find the truth that you now hold dear?

Like it or not, we are all brainwashed. Look at how easily little kids believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny. They’re not rational, they’re not thinking straight. They don’t know that Santa’s movements are in violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and possibly a dozen other laws of nature. But here are the parents and pastors and preachers and school teachers filling their brains with more ‘true stories’. As hard as it was for the child to admit that there was no Santa, at least they still got presents at Christmas. But how is that child going to contemplate if he or she really believes in God? Hmm, on the one hand they have a nice friendly man in the sky looking out for them and loving them unconditionally. If they are good, they will go to heaven and have an eternity of pleasure. On the other hand, there is no man or anyone else in the sky, they have a short future of growth then decline and finally a vast eternity of nothingness. No wonder people don’t like to think about it.

Think I’m just saying this because I’m an atheist? Well it doesn’t just fall in the hands of religions to brainwash (although they do the most of it). What about Democracy? Try saying something against it. “You can’t not have Democracy, that would be like, evil.” But Democracy is just an idea, built around the Greek structure of small cities. Each city was a small unit, where all people can have a say and be involved. We have come to accept Democracy as the pinnacle of human society, when actually we just haven’t thought of a better idea. There are many problems with Democracy, especially the way it is stuck on everything like a social band-aid.

So I sit and I wonder. Sure, we have all this knowledge, these great discoveries, new theories, a more and more complete record of history. And yet, the leader of the most powerful country in the world still thinks that a man walking around on water is more likely than living things changing gradually over time. Religious people want to get into the schools and teach the children as early as possible their Truth. They were in my school, I’m sure they were in your school and I’m sure as hell they want more.

All we really have is theories. There are few solid facts in this world. It would be nice to think that all the answers were right there waiting to be discovered. In a way they are, because the amazing thing about the human mind is that it is capable of understanding many many wonderful and as yet unheard of things. We can use these wonderful instruments to perceive and understand the world around us. There are so many answers to questions we have had for so long, and they’re all waiting to be discovered.

But it is highly doubtful that all our answers are going to be found in one book. Especially not when many of these books are nothing more than carefully selected works, compiled and edited by conquerers, politicians and power mongers who manipulated other people’s beliefs for their own gain. The New Testament, for example, was put together four hundred years after Jesus died. Not only that, the scriptures were commisioned by a Roman emperor and carefully selected according to their utility.

This is common knowledge these days. The records are there to discover and while that Roman emperor and the Catholic Church afterwards did try to destroy all other records, some did surface and not surprisingly painted a very different picture. Did all Christians flock to read these scriptures and learn more about Christ? No way. Because some myths are too old to challenge. They become embedded in culture and custom and forbid us from thinking outside them.

Islam has a similar story. (taken from an amazon.com review)

“The story goes like this: From the first creation of the new faith beginning with the death of the Prophet, to the end of the 12th Century of our common era, Islam was dynamic, tolerant, innovative, and willing to learn from non-Muslims. The key to this dynamism and inventiveness was the practice of “ijtihad,” or “interpretation.” As the Islamic empire quickly swelled to include the Middle East, Persia, Anatolia, North Africa, and much of Spain, new problems of governance arose which were not addressed either in the Koran or in the “hadiths” (the stories about the life of the Prophet). So committees of learned men would consider the new problem at hand, the resources available in the Koran and hadiths, and would come up with an innovative solution which had some anaological connection with something or other in the founding texts. This solution would then be declared to be “Islamic.” That was how “Shari’ah” or Islamic law, came into being. Since none of this could have been gotten from the foundational documents alone, the procedure amounted to a practice of “progressive revelation.” So long as this practice was in effect, Islam persisted in its “golden age” during which it was the most advanced and creative civilization on earth.

But it all ended after the 12th Century. Why? A collective decision was made by the Islamic powers of that time, to “close the doors of interpretation.” Islam would no longer adapt to the world. The world would have to adapt to Islam. That was the beginning of the end of Islamic vatality, innovation, and worldly power. Islam became a fossilized civilization falling ever further behind its Western competitors, until by the middle of the 19th Century, France and England could colonise Muslim lands with hardly a shot being fired. Muslim lands remain today largely impotent and backward, and have to import most of their advanced products and skills from the West (or from Asian countries that have “Westernized”). ”

So why all this fuss about a universal truth? Who cares what people believe? You should care. Don’t fool yourself into believing that it doesn’t matter. Many of the things we take for granted today, our knowledge, or science, our advanced way of life, would not exist but for people who challenged what institutions said about the way the world was. Today, the Church isn’t allowed to kill you if you say bad things about it. Well, Salman Rushdie may disagree. However they will still fight every change, every scientific breakthrough, any evidence that the race of men are savoring the meal they have made from the tree of knowledge.

One day, and I hope that day comes soon, it will be plain to see humanity is in full control of the natural world around it. When we reach that day and we create a new world out of virtually nothing, well then we will realize that each one of us are Gods, if given the chance.

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I am planning a complete redesign of this site. I am growing increasingly annoyed at it’s lack of good style and it’s not right.

News first: I got a job in Japan and will be leaving Australia on April 29th. The job is only for 3 months, which is good, it will give me a chance to see Japan for a short time without leaving for too long. I plan to head on to a summer camp in Korea and then back to Australia again to plan my next strategy.

It’s a nice way of putting it, because it does assume that there is a strategy. As it’s late I won’t give it a second thought, I’ll just accept that there is some strategy going on and that I’ll know all about it someday.

[Editor's note: I never ended up going to Japan to teach]

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For someone with a website called ‘The David Code’, it might not surprise you to learn that I just read ‘The DaVinci Code’ by Dan Brown. Actually I read the book after I made the website, actually. It is an excellent book, with a good plot and intriguing history upon which it is based. Of course, many of us already knew that the Bible as written in todays form is the product of the early Catholic church’s influence. Such things stand to reason. In addition, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls a number of years back was further proof that ‘what life is like’ actually did happen. What I mean by that is, we live life every day and it’s dull, boring and relatively predictable. That’s how life is and how it has always been. Stories change it.

And predictably the Catholic Church has come out and declared the book a work of fiction which speads outright lies. A top cardinal advised people everywhere ‘not to believe these fairy tales’. I think he was talking about the Da Vinci Code and not the Bible, but I guess if I had to choose between stories about a mortal man with some great ideas and a son-of-God walking on water and coming back from the dead, I’d have to stick with the one which makes the most sense.

People have put faith in the church for centuries, thinking that they were right in their interpretations of the gospel. But history is written by the winners as they say. The Catholic Church via the Emperor Constantine had taken ownership over Jesus’ message and used it as a tool to control people. That’s why I don’t believe in topics which are taboo. We really have to analyze what we are told from childhood, because the same lies that tricked our parents could be tricking us. We have access to so much history now and so much information which conflicts with official doctrines. The only way that these doctrines can maintain their positions is to encourage a closed atmosphere and a forced taboo over some subjects. Presicely like the church’s reaction to this new bestseller.

I guess we are all somewhat at fault. Human history often has a short memory. We follow the doctrines we are given, assuming that past changes are correct. The people of Afghanistan, during the 70’s were relatively free. The women could wear the latest fashions and travel freely and safely. After the Taliban took over, that behavior was a great way to get yourself shot. Even the Taliban’s beliefs were formed after the Islamic faith underwent a stage of fundamentalism starting in the 1400s. This was around 700 years after Mohammed had died and was mainly a number of cleric’s narrow interpretations of the Q’uran. Societies such as Saudi Arabia and Iran still live under these interpretations.

In the west, during the early days of the British Kingdom, kings were installed by sheer force and manipulation. The principle of the matter was simply just to conquer the land and have it as your own. Nowadays, we keep our kings and queens simply out of a respect for tradition and a disease of people’s minds that somehow makes believe that those of royal blood are inherently better people genetically.

Throughout the world there are failures in the thinking of men and women. Ideas are false, beliefs are false, people choose the wrong things. And most importantly and I hope more people realize this, there are throughout the world people manipulating those false thinking people, encouraging the lies, untruths and half-truths FOR THEIR OWN GAIN. Don’t believe me? Observe.

Governments are example number one. You will rarely hear a government tell you that they want to reduce their size. They will tell you that they need to increase their size and add another department because you are in danger. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to survive. So, you pay more of your money in taxes to keep more of those people in a job. Giant juggernauts like the FDA and AMA, not to mention all the completely ridiculous departments and so-called ‘watchdogs’ which eat up valuable money and wind up costing more all round. Dave’s prediction: coming soon to a government near you, ‘Public software’. Governments will claim that letting private companies supply them with software is not in the interests of the people. Government software departments will rise to create software which is safer, more secure and freely available. (read: buggy, has more holes than swiss cheese, costs a fortune and solves problems you had two years ago).

Student Unions are a similar but current example. When the threat popped up to make unionism voluntary, the first ones in line to complain were the ones whose livelihoods depended on sucking money out of them. We were reminded of all the services that it provides and all the things we will miss out of when no-one pays their fees. To try and reason with this idea is like telling the mosquito to stop sucking and get a job. Services that people don’t need shouldn’t be given money. Services that are essential should be provided by the University. And services that are neither but make life fun, should be financed by smart business. It is in a University’s interest to have a blossoming Union. But the leechers know that the Organic Vegie Food Department and the magazine which is solely the voice of the socialist left probably won’t get any money. In any case, many people will fall victim to the warnings and think “maybe we do need to force people to pay money for a Union that they don’t really use much”. Essentially what has made the government back down from the VSU legislation was pressure and also the knowledge that unions do provide a good training ground for new recruits.

Having said that, there are many people within Student Unions who work their asses off to provide services for others, services which enrich the lives of all students. These people provide real services and I really believe that real services will be provided for, even under VSU.

What kind of news puts the opinion section before the breaking top stories? Oops.. let me fill you in..

I’m pretty much fully recovered from my operation now. My throat’s all better and I’m not in pain anymore. Other benefits include breathing and lack of snoring. Plus, now I feel like updating my page again, so posts like these can see the light of day.

Anyway, I started all this talk about the Da Vinci Code. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend it. Apart from a few unlikely plot twists it’s a totally engaging read. I finished it in 2 days. It would’ve been one, but people kept telling me things like ‘David, you smell” and “David, eat your dinner” so I got interrupted. In addition, I’m studying php these days to make my site interactive and database enabled. Actually, I realized that I knew it all along. The benefits of a Computer Science degree I guess….

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I got out of hospital today. In case you didn’t know, probably due to me not telling anyone, I had to have my tonsils (or something near my tonsils) taken out. I now suffer agony at everything that passes down my throat. Eating, I feel has always been a chore. Sometimes it can be fun, but mostly it is boring and takes too much time. Constant repitition and chewing and swallowing has now become even worse. It’s now boring AND painful.

Well, it was an interesting night. I went into theatre around 3pm yesterday, not really remembering how I fell asleep other than the anethetist saying to me that she was shooting some stuff up my arm so that I “wouldn’t remember”. I was about to ask her why I shouldn’t remember, but by then it was too late. The next thing I know, somebody is asking me if I’m fit and that my heart rate was too low. It wasn’t like sleep because you can wake up from sleep. It was this weird feeling of being unable to sleep and unable to wake and I hated it. But every 5 minutes someone was trying to wake me up and tell me stuff that I didn’t really care about. Was I alive? Great. Now let me sleep.

But it ended eventually and I managed to submit some comments toward the general conversation when my parents visited, although I did sleep between responses, so I’m not sure whether I was contributing anything valuable. After that, I spent a night trying to sleep and nurses trying to stop me sleeping by shoving things in my ears and cutting off circulation in my arms every hour. The lady in the bed next to me pressed her buzzer every 10 minutes, but still I managed to sleep.

Now today, I’m just hanging out, eating gingerly, drinking gingerly, walking around with a headache, but all in all feeling ok. All this for some sinus problem, but hopefully it will mean that my future will be snore-free. Not tonight though, I’m still blocked but I’m told it will all pass in good time. Just when I was getting in a regular habit of boxing and exercise, now I have to quit for 3 weeks until it all heals. Goddamn. Ah well, it’s all for the best. Now, for my early night…

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I have decided to make a concerted effort to get to bed at a reasonable time. Starting today. I always have the strangest hours and I sleep a lot. I don’t need all the sleep because I don’t do anything much all day. I woke up at 2pm today and that was only because my dad woke me. I probably would’ve slept for longer if he let me.

These days, I’m looking for a job. Only a month or so, something short-term. I don’t know if that’s even possible. I’m pretty quite damn sure I’m not working in Collections again. It really hurts my head to be nice to stupid people all the time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m great at it, but I want a good sort of challenge. Ideally, I want to be a copywriter. Everyone may have had the feeling of coming up with a good idea for a commercial or how to market a particular product, but I’m always doing it, and a year later I see it on TV.

Being a new man on the track of discipline, I’m going to use my head for good and write down such ideas and keep them to myself towards a portfolio which I will use to work in a top firm and then have an accident in my bathtub and start to hear women’s thoughts. Wait, there’s something wrong with that. Yeah, I know why, I don’t take baths.

Researchers at my old place of learning, the University of Melbourne, just revealed a breakthrough in the possible vaccine for HIV. They injected blood into rats, which tricked the rat’s bodies into thinking that it was HIV infected, which generated a huge immune system response. This could block the actual virus from getting in. It’s good news. But I was thinking. If and when they discover an effective vaccine for this thing, I’m sure that there will be a huge, huge rise in pregnancies and/or abortions. Not to mention all those other nasties. So I guess the era of free and reckless loving is not yet upon us. By the time that happens, I’ll probably have heart trouble and a bad hip and will be too grumpy to entertain after 9pm, so it will be of no use to me. But I will be able to complain about my grandkids by saying “in my day we didn’t have 10 member gang bangs with people we met on the subway” and maybe that will feel good.

Anyway it’s good news.

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Today I had to visit another doctor. I know what you’re about to say, “not another rant about medical expenses”. I’ll spare you. But I did pay a lot. Anyway, it seems that I am extremely well endowed. Only it’s not in the department I had hoped. No, it seems I have rather large adenoids, which are behind the tonsils. Which is the reason why I am always snoring (so people say… I never hear it) and the reason why I have had a blocked nose for the past oh I don’t know FOUR MONTHS!

So I’ll be heading off to hospital next week for a day or so while I get them whipped out. It’s not the best turn of events, but I always wanted to stay in a hospital overnight. I always get to see other people in hospital and eat their food, well now I get to do it. Trouble is, I won’t be able to eat anything after the take them out because it will hurt too much. It really sucks. But I get to sleep in a hospital.

In other news, did you notice the new layout? Let me guess, you are wondering what the David Code is? No, you’re not wondering. Didn’t think so. Fine, I’ll keep my secret genius cult to myself. We were going to have a special party, but now I think I’ll just have it by myself.

Today I decided, just for fun, that I would try and write some rap. I mean, I listen to enough of it so why not write some. It’s harder than I thought. Good rap I mean. Getting all those elements like flow and rhyme together is one thing, saying something interesting while you’re doing it is another.

So I started out with some stupid rhyme about a club, because hey, that’s what half of these songs are about, clubs, bitches, and guns. So I put them together like so:

Soon as I’m steppin in the club,
you can hear them hoochies sayin,
it’s a baller in the club,
look at the way that he be swayin
is his dick really that big
or is it the gun that he be slingin
but they’re wrong on both counts
it’s that cris that i been drinkin

..but it’s so stupid. There’s absolutely no originality to it, nor does it say anything mildly interesting. But I persevered. I changed my subject material. I went with something I actually know.

Choose a path,
Come boy you gotta do the math,
Gotta work hard to get those grades in every class,
And after you finish you’re gonna know a lot of shit,
And your life is gon be perfect everything’ll be a hit,

When the curtains came up, I was livin in a trailer,
Trying to do my best in school tryin not to be a failure,
Kinda worked out well, finished school and went to college,
And had no idea what to do with all the knowlege.

Cos you can read them books all day,
But if you got some bills to pay,
Them books ain’t gon help no way,
And then you’re smart broke ass will say…

Well it was better than before, but it still didn’t sound like a real rap. Not like, “his palms are sweaty/knees weak, arms are heavy/there’s vomit on his sweater already/mom’s spaghetti” You can’t just put words together which rhyme and tell a story. You gotta have beat and rhythm in your words. Interesting about those Lose Yourself lyrics I just mentioned is that they rhyme twice, at the end and in the middle. “palms/sweaty”, “arms/heavy”, “mom’s/spaghetti”. I know what you’re saying, what if Dad made your spaghetti, what do you do then? Well it just wasn’t meant to be. Move on.

I came up with one more… it’s a little more song like, but on a different subject. More of a chorus. It goes.

We got mamas on the streets liftin legs and slidin sheets~
Yo it’s a cold world
It’s a cold world
We got kids up in the schools pullin guns cos they ain’t cool~
It’s a cold world
Yeah it’s a cold world
Politicians on TV startin wars and tellin me~
It’s a cold world
It’s a cold world
Have we got answers no we don’t, are blamin’ oh for sho~
It’s a cold world
Man, it’s a cold world

So there is my first foray into the world of rap music. Will I be a mad rapper? Who knows.. The other night, my mum did make my spaghetti, but I didn’t get it on my sweater. So it’s a mixed outlook I guess. Oh well, another day another bitch in the club. Word to ma homies who made it this far through my crazy ass dope blog.

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