ecology

Acceptance

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

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.

Under pressure

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder if you will be able to relate to anything that I am about to tell you.

You died over one hundred years ago, which seems to me to be a blink in the eye of the earth’s history, and just a moment in the history of humanity, and yet in that time there have been so very many minor changes to everyday existence, that I wonder if you would recognise at all the lives that we now have to lead. Your death, let’s face it, which was horribly premature, really only occurred a couple of generations ago, and had you survived into a ripe old age you may well have seen many decades of the twentieth century. To a young whippersnapper of today you could be a great-grandfather, and to me, teetering beyond middle age, you could have been a grandfather. But I fear my life experience would be totally alien to you, pressured as it is by the nonsensicalaties of the humdrum.

I think that even the language that I am about to use would not be easily understood, and have just put into quotation marks all those elements that I think you will have difficulty with. I know you cannot correct me if I am wrong, but I am not expecting to be wrong, able as I am to chart developments over a century or so.

So, these are the events that have put me under pressure today:

The ‘batteries’ in my ‘remote control’ for the ‘television set’ which I own have ceased to work, and so they needed to be replaced. Before I left my home to go to the ‘supermarket’ I needed to remember that given the effects of the current ‘pandemic’ I would have to take a ‘face mask’, and, because of the effects of ‘global warming’, a ‘reusable plastic bag’. I checked my ‘bank balance’ ‘online’ via my ‘mobile phone’, and set out. The pressure was building because funds were not as high as I had expected, and the ‘elastic’ on the ‘face mask’ is given to snapping under duress. At the ‘supermarket’ a ‘traffic light system’ shone green and allowed my entry, and I used the ‘hand sanitiser’ before wheeling out the ‘trolley’. Now the ‘face mask’ steams up my spectacles, so I had to remove them and put them into my pocket, along with my hat, because I could not put the ‘elastic’ of the ‘face mask’ over my ears until they were suitably revealed. This meant my head was cold, and I could not see clearly; I certainly could not read the all important ‘small print’ which accompanies every item under consideration for purchase. However my quest was underway, and the suitable ‘batteries’ were found, and there was a selection of different ‘brands’, all ‘advertising’ their differences, and their ‘price ranges’. Again, this prefigured more pressure; I had after all checked my ‘bank balance’, and wasting money on a supposedly superior ‘brand’ seemed foolhardy. I opted for ‘mid-range’, paid by ‘debit card’ at the ‘cash desk’, removed the ‘face mask’ outside the store, replaced my spectacles, and put the hat on to my now distinctly chilly head. I had not needed the ‘trolley’, so it was pushed back into position, but not before locking it and retrieving the coin which had allowed me to have it in the first place. Back at home I have been able to replace the ‘batteries’ in the ‘remote control’, and so can now happily while away the hours watching the drivel which is ‘beamed’ to me ‘digitally’ should I really wish to do so. A source of more pressure, I can tell you, besieging one’s mind with nonsense, empty aspiration, and of course endless ‘product placement’. Whatever you are able to understand, Oscar dear, I am sure you see that basically one can bring on one’s own demise in this day and age through ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’, through interminable pressure, and all for nothing, or very little, at all.

Forgive such selfish tripe, Oscar; I know you had greater concerns, but I do wish to highlight to you that what you miss by having lived a century or so ago is actually not so much. All of the significance of our current age, our successful mass communication techniques, our digital economies, our ease of availability and of indulgence, seem of little real value, bring endless personal challenge and discomfort, and their insistence adds to feelings of unending pressure.

Ah, to breathe.

I took a walk in order to achieve the above and so was able to breathe fresh air.

To breathe fresh air.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.