Maybe the problem is that I saw and understood too much, too soon. It makes me feel as though I am 98 in my head... I do feel very old in my heart. Maybe I should have learned to pace myself... as though that were ever an option!

Oh, to be free, even for a moment... I wonder when the shift occurred in my head - when I suddenly began not to care about society’s expectations and contradicting rules on me. I used to live for others, so to speak, which means, roughly, that everything I ever wanted to do was mostly linked to that need for acceptance among my peers. In that light, whatever job I wanted to do was always linked to: 1) answering a social expectation dictating that such and such jobs are to be sought after, and 2) the conditioned belief that the settings and rules that make up the reality I live in are the only ones possible, if not the ‘better’ alternative.

Now that I’ve questioned quite a few social dogmas, I realise what a prison we live in, and though I can reject false values and the pointless race for more materiality, I don’t seem able to figure out a way out. Why? Because it ain’t so easy to break out of jail, is it?

This is one thing that made me bitterly laugh some time ago: how on the one hand, you get so-called scientists (which should really be called wannabe gods) telling us how people born these days into the western world will get to live a hundred years... Woohoo, right? Isn’t that fantastic?... On the other hand, society doesn’t know what to do with its older generations - you know, the pensioners who are losing their pensions. So governments are hard at work to tackle the pensions problem, you see, and the budget deficit and all that, and so they look into how much more money they can take from the common man. They don’t once stop to question their corrupted system, though.

They don’t once stop to think: “Okay... Hang on a minute... Do I really need, as a PM or government bitch, to get xxx amount of money a year, and three cars, and three houses, plus one in some exotic island?”

Nope. They don’t ask themselves that question. They care only that the population gives them enough money to support us all while the black hole of deficit must come from corrupted ways whereby a few keep helping themselves. They don’t stop to think that beyond the issue of corruption, there is also the reality of choosing not to be so greedy in terms of technologies... But... Isn’t it too late, anyway? Our generations alive today are hooked on comfort and easy ways, and not one is ready to make the ultimate sacrifice of reverting back - or at least slow down so the shadow of a social balance is naturally restored over time.

Science and technology are the answers to everything, suddenly, and we don’t seem able to think outside the box, as usual. Perhaps it is that two hundred years ago most people were wearing the blinkers of religion that turned scientists and researchers into witches, but I ask you: what’s changed today apart from a reversal of roles?

Scientists and researchers have become the saviors, the ultimate means to enlightenment, I suppose, while all other options or lines of thought are relegated to the back. In the end, we are not very advanced at all. The landscape seems to be more advanced, but no matter what we do, all that truly ever changes is the viewpoint of a majority.

If what we are taught in history is remotely true, then capitalism was a ghost waiting to be brought to life. The timeline of history itself shows that almost every step mankind took was wired toward that ghost, culminating to our modern days where capitalism is once and for all alive. To get rid of it, chaos would be needed for a time. It is always the case, no matter how we look at it. Shifts and social changes, especially abrupt or profound ones, lead first to chaos before a rebuilding phase can ensue, and that breaks my heart. I already know who is always going to suffer the most: not the greedy, and not the corrupt, but the common man. The little people.

Anyway... What do I know? To know anything these days, you either need to be branded an expert in whatever field, or to have studied x amount of subjects. Common sense and logic don’t even have to come into the equation because all you really need to prove your point is a majority agreeing with you.

Fact.