Dear Oscar,

So I am doing my best to be accepting, and not place myself in opposition to others. There is a popular mantra in this day and age that we should learn to be more tolerant of each other, and more accepting of human foibles and peccadilloes. Of course I have made a very good start with you, because I try my utmost not to be judgemental of you and to accept the fact that you lived the life you lived, however it may have been interpreted at the time, and by history. All I can do in retrospect is simply keep lines of communication as open as possible. The aim is then to allow your preoccupations to remain under consideration, as indeed they undoubtedly are, all this time later. You started something, Oscar. You started trains of thought and investigations that have still not yet reached their conclusion, and unfortunately you were ended before you had a chance to bring any of your lines of enquiry to a well-considered ending themselves.

I am starting to wonder though just how far acceptance can go. If it is true and honest and open acceptance then it will have to also be willing to incorporate views that might be so counterpoised to one’s own sense of moral, social and cultural propriety, as to put it all in question. Do we have to, for instance, accept that there will always be a murderous element to human existence, as there always has been? Would it be possible to launch some sort of cross-societal and multi-cultural investigation into the causes and consequences of such behaviour and therefore to eradicate it? It does not have to be, and I think there is probably never a real justification for it. There is always some way in which such an act can be challenged and avoided. Does our sense of acceptance have to incorporate it because it keeps on happening, or perhaps should we be collectively working towards the point where what we accept is only the best of each other, which in itself would outlaw such negative behaviours? It cannot possibly be argued that a murder is the best that any individual can do. It must be argued that encouraging us away from behaviours that might lead to such an act would be the best that we can do.

There would be countless examples of challenging all that we tolerate, but may not wish to accept. Apart from crimes against each other there would also be the collective unacceptability of corporate agencies. Logging companies in the Amazon, petro-chemical companies pillaging world resources, over-fishing of the oceans, the denying of basic elements for life to swathes of the global population; I cannot help thinking that there is some awareness growing that such challenges need to be underway. That fills me with hope, Oscar dear.

As you do, Oscar. Whatever your failings may have been you have influenced a legacy of hope. Sometimes it is hard to see, but if we keep on expecting the best of ourselves I cannot see that anything other is possible. Working on, and thinking through, levels of acceptance may well be the dilemma with which we all have wrestled through time; I am sure you did.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.