a rite of passage

It is interesting to notice the changes in one's life merely for the fact that they have a piece of paper backed by some phony institutional reputation. I'll be damned if I ever figure out why government contractors are paid based upon the degrees of an individual rather than on the productivity of an individual. I've never seen such a situation in which total idiots are paid 50% more than those performing the same tasks with exceptional productivity.

Now it is I who is riding the "degree" gravy train like my father before me and his father before him. It is such an "average" way to live; conforming to institutional norms, meeting deadlines, and acting cordial to people, some of which are forever fucking you in the ass. I've always been fucked by some instituion or another, just in a far worse way while I was attending school and working at that shitty Hilton hotel.

Now, like my father before me and his father before him, I am to work for public funds gathered from tax collection and the looting of the social security "trust fund." I am to live on a subsistence from the military-industrial machine that would be a wet dream to men like Adolf Hitler who has alot to do with our current president, coincidentally.

How is it that the people of the civilized world tolerate the abuses of public funds that lead to contractors, altogether, accumulating hundreds of billions of public tax dollars in their annual profits?

One often thinks of the simmilarities that the western world bears to the ancient roman and greek worlds. The western world was modeled from those societies. As time advances societies remain as corrupt as before, there is not some gradual purging process as many might think. In todays incarnation of the entities like those in the past, the corruption has been reduced in some areas and and increased in others.

Individuals have more "personal freedom" in the modern day, but are subject to a society that is so highly centralized and grossly manipulated economically so as to produce a hegemony among the peoples. This hegemony is the result of the standardization of each and every aspect of one's life, little by little.

This hegemonic standardization cannot take place without inventions such as television in which people have a sort of idealogical hegemony fed to them directly via one way channels. This device has done more harm to people that I have known and loved than any other. I can scarcely communicate with most people, if they are watching television, unless a commercial gives them a "break" from their fix. Shows on cable try to homogenize values in ways that are conducive to the needs of the "sponsors" who want you to like and buy alot of useless crap and feel worthless emotions about the crap you buy.

While watching television, I feel as if i'm being crushed by an image of my life thats nothing but unreal; i feel as if i'm wittnessing the slow death of the dreams of humanity one by one. When will we realize that life is not about the beauty of a teenage queen or the realization of absolute good or evil? These stumbling blocks are keeping us from living in the present moment. They cause one to be indifferent to the moment at hand given the assumption that such sacrifices will one day lead to moments that are "superior."