lock the door, kill the light, no-one's coming home tonight

The more people I encounter in life, the further I am inclined to give up the hope of finding genuine, caring individuals who posess compassion and understanding. I hesitate to count the number of times that I have gotten to know individuals who lack an understanding of what it is to posess compassionate awareness; instead they put up a facade, which appears to be compassion and morality, but it is only insofar as they can achieve their own self-centered goals.

Sure, they'll speak volumes about their altruism and how they are out to learn and grow as a person, but, this so often turns out to be a colorful lie. Even though I, and I'm sure many of you, encounter these sorts of individuals time and time again, it is difficult not to be affected by them when their despicable presence worms its way into your life.

Yes, I'm angry, while I usually reserve my angst, I intend to express some of it here and now; I simply cannot contain it any longer. This shit happens far too much for it to go on without even a word of dissent. It is simply unacceptable and a sign of the degenerate nature of today's civilization.

Virtually no-one wants to take responsability for their actions anymore. Should you make an attempt at pointing out someone's misdeeds towards their own self or others, you are likely to be completely ignored or even violently opposed. I feel that this is because the animal-driven egos have taken over the minds of many of us. Those driven purely by their primative egos are little more than beasts because they lack the essential character trait: compassion. It would be fitting if they were to be reborn as some lower form of life, because the human form is useless to such a wreck.

Here are a few situations that I find quite unsettling, yet are commonplace:

• Someone claims that they will do something involving you during a certain time frame, but they don't.

Simple situation, yeah, and it happens all of the time, nonetheless I find it to be reprehensible. I usually like to think that the person has just forgotten, but when it happens over and over, I don't really know what to think. The only reason I can deduce is that the person really doesn't care about doing what they claim they will do; their ego complex has grown so large that they cannot even think of other people and their affect on them.

• You form a friendship with someone only do find that, one day, they are totally ignoring you and refuse to communicate their grievances or even ackgnowledge that you exist.

I had this happen recently when I made the mistake of meeting a "friend" from myspace. I met with them a few times and had a jolly good time. We seemed to have simmilar interests and be getting along just fine until they decided that they didn't want to have anything to do with me. Thats just fine, I'm all for carefully choosing the one's you bring in your life, but if you don't like something about someone it is pretty spineless to just ignore them; thats just childish and I have no respect for them anymore, not because they didn't want someone in their life, but because they lacked the ability to stand up and express their true feelings on the matter.

Well, I could go on and on with a long list, but I'll leave it at that for now, since I lack the inspiration to continue this in a meaningful way.

I'm not saying that I've never done any of these things, I certainly have, as has almost every one of us. In my case, I felt remorse afterwards for what I had done; I also felt a strong desire to change my ways.

My only hope, in divulging these dark thoughts, is that it may help some of you to realize that this is something to be avoided, when you find yourself doing these things. We are all flawed in many ways, but the least we can do is express compassion towards the others we encounter in this long and arduous life.