Turning 23 wouldn’t be a big deal for most people, but most people don’t age and mature — they just grow older.

Another year has gone by where the world has maintained its delusion of improvement, people have maintained their delusion of change, and the systems are functioning like they always have — sucking the life and blood out of the bottom and funneling them to the top.

News on television panders to its audience more than ever, with newspapers being slightly better in terms of intellectual stimulation, while television in itself dies a slow and painful death in houses of people that you and I might consider to be sensible.

My disdain for my own kind (i.e. people) continues to grow as I see how gullible and prone we are to be herded around like sheep by the big and intimidating but sweet talking dog hovering around us. That, and the fact that money still reigns supreme even though on the surface we say it doesn’t matter, that the value of what that money brings is higher. The truth is that people who don’t have money are trying to make it, and the people who do are trying to make more of it. The human resource is worthless, inefficient and easily replaceable. And the only reason it has survived in the work force is because it’s cheap. At least the barter system was more humane, if a little limiting. Maybe giving someone what they want wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Our sense of entitlement is at an all time high. “Entitlements” we have done nothing to earn. “Entitlements” we claim the right to just because we are born as humans and not animals. We want equality — between men and woman, the various social castes — but we want to be treated differently, with reservations and those “Women Only” seats on buses and trains. We haven’t made progress. We’ve just put a cork in our regression.

On a more personal level, being alone is purely a function of settlement and compromise. How much are you willing to compromise on your ideas and thoughts so that you can give the other people in your life their needed sense of control? The more you compromise, the less alone you will be. The most popular are the ones who are the least deviant. Then again, some of the most deviant are very popular as well, but are they deviant if they’re popular? The thing with being a rebel, an outcast, is, you’re only a rebel if you’re alone. And nobody wants to be alone. Not even the alone.