Day after day I find myself shaking my head; shaking my head at this society, at everything absurb that surrounds me; seeing it for what it truly is, what we truly have become, and where we will go if we keep on this path.  We have become like robots, each the same, supressed by this society, by formalities, pretenses and social conventions and we have lost who we are; lost all real personality, real joy, real love, real everything.


You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd.  You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation.  It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced.  In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers.  That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.  -Octave Mirbeau