Sleep is probably my favorite pastime. In your dreams, anything can happen. The waking world, however, is much more fixed and much more depressing.

I'm not going to reiterate anything that everyone who truly looks already knows. Well, maybe just a little bit. Earth is a corrupt place. It always has been. The difference is now we have all the problems we've always had but in big, flashing lights. "Propaganda, war, greed, and lies, now available in HD!" It would be hard to ignore all of the obvious dilemmas, if not for the bigger, brighter flashing lights that take anyone who is willing away from their quest for truth.

The willing are many. You know them. They're your coworkers, your family, your friends. They're the majority. They're either eager to buy into any version of reality that leaves them not accountable for the current state of the world or not savvy enough to see through the lies. Or perhaps a little of both. Regardless, many words have been spent on this subject and I'm sure many more will be. And yet, everyday when I wake up, it's the same tired routine that it's always been. Consistency is undoubtedly the key, slowly hypnotizing the populace into a coma that they will never wake from.

But once again, I'm not writing this to reiterate what we already know. Governments are crooked. Every last bleeding one of them. Some are more powerful than others. That's why we have conflicts.

Am I overly simplifying things? Perhaps. But the sad reality is, the more you learn, the simpler things really are. It's the masses who have to buy into, at any given time, seemingly hundreds of different lies, complicating things to the point where one wonders how they can think at all when all their brain power is geared towards justifying one lie with another lie. I suppose that's why thinking isn't really in vogue.

However, I'm one who has to think. It's like breathing to me. There's nothing I can do about it. Drown it out with any number of drugs from time to time, but ultimately, when I sober up, the good ol' brain is still working. Yelling at me to do something. "Save the world," it says to me. Oh, this place needs saving, all right. But, ultimately, it always comes back to, what exactly can one do to make a difference?

I don't wish for any of this to sound like an indictment against those who are spilling their blood on the pages to try to enlighten. If not for the work of many journalists (the real ones anyway, not the "made for TV" kind), I would definitely not know what I know today. Yet, the entire effort feels empty at times. We shout into the wind in hopes that someone hears us, when what we really need is for everyone to hear us. And listen. And then be decent enough to care.

And that's impossible. Or, if you feel like being a bit more optimistic, highly improbable. In the end, we're not fighting against something alien. No, we're fighting against things that are innate to being human. We're fighting against ourselves.

Even the best among us would have to admit that in their "darker" hours, we feel the temptations of greed. We wonder what it would be like to be one of the people who make decisions that control the lives of billions. We get angry at our fellow humans, wondering how they can be so stupid. We get angry at their arrogance, their looking at anyone who doesn't buy into the state-sponsored version of the world as an uneducated fool. "I didn't hear any of that during my regularly scheduled programming, so that guy must be an idiot," they seem to say with their words and their looks.

For awhile, you just sigh and resign yourself to the fact that some people just, for whatever reason, won't understand. But the more that it happens, the more you think to yourself, "Maybe these people really are inferior to me." It's not a fashionable to admit, but it's there.

And that's really the long and the short of the history of humanity. Even though, ultimately you might be strong enough to dismiss these thoughts, there are others that can't. And those others feed off of this and use it to expand their own personal power and property. The only difference between the "policymakers" and the average Joe down the road who beats his wife, neglects his children, but works hard as hell to buy his next big screen TV is success. Simply put, some people are a lot better at this "capitalist" thing than others.

There's a war on and it's the same war that's been fought since the dawn of time. The war of self versus selfless. Those are interested in furthering their own desires and those who wish to help others. But until everyone on the planet unilaterally decides to put down the sword and help their fellow man, this war will never be over. Even the most optimistic would say that this is a touch more than "highly improbable."

So, why do some of us choose to continue to fight this endless battle? Call it faith, call it stubbornness, call it mind-blowing stupidity, none of us really believe that the battle is endless. We live for that "someday."

If you believe that the "someday" is coming, then I urge you do something to improve this world today. Talk to everyone you know about everything that you know. Even if they don't want to hear it, say it anyway. Resist society's efforts to silence you by shame. We all must contribute to this effort and there is absolutely no reason for you not to. Otherwise we'll continue to wake up in this Hell everyday until we die.

Perhaps that will happen anyway. But if there's the slightest chance of a peaceful, bright future, the one that people of all kinds have imagined for an eternity, don't we need to at least try? I can't think of anything that would be more important.