Filed under Gerald Accom 

Is it Fact, Fiction or Opinion

Published by Gerald Charles Accom on   

Dear All

Over the next few weeks, I will share some of my opinions with you; however, scrutiny might reveal that some of what I write could be considered factual or even fictional.  You are welcome to judge and challenge my views.

Ten years ago, I wrote something titled, “It is About I”, which could be read in a few hours. I shared some ideas intended to guide young teachers at the start of their journey and self-published on Kobo Books.  Without any marketing know-how and a skimpy budget, this little book quietly sat unnoticed on a digital shelf since 2015.

I was a bit tentative about some of the ideas I wanted to share and tried to please a potential critical audience by packaging a few things in a way that would not offend too many people.

This time around, I decided on a different approach and presented my latest opinions as a discussion paper. This discussion paper flows from the ideas I shared in “It is About I”, and it might serve as encouragement to me if readers read what I wrote in “It is About I”.

I will grab snippets from this previous publication and share them to find traction for my latest project. Should you wish to see what I wrote in “It is about I “, Click Here

Extracts from “It is About I” 

Synopsis

Societal problems are not new and were probably in existence for as long as humans have been around. If one could agree with Adler (2003: 3) that the first “humanlike creature, or hominid, was walking about in east Africa more than 5.5 million years ago,” one could argue that people have been trying to address societal issues for more than 5 million years and somehow, we still seem not able to get it right.

This in itself is almost unimaginable should one consider the ability of the human mind. Surely, a people who can land a craft on the moon should be able to find solutions to social problems on earth.

At what point does the human mind shift from a mode of explaining Calculus to students, to a mode of making inappropriate sexual advances to minor children?

 

CHAPTER ONE

It is about I

It is about I                                                                                                                                It is about the I in we                                                                                                            About the I in us.                                                                                                        There is an I in they                                                                                                          And in them                                                                                                                         As well as he and she                                                                                                  And their and him and her                                                                                          And me

That is why it is about I                                                                                              And will always be about some I

Is a world without problems possible at all?

Perhaps one could respond by saying, “Yes, if all the people are removed it would be an amazing planet”. But how likely is such a scenario? Maybe it’s just an asteroid away, who knows. Should that happen though, chances are that life in all probability will evolve from some simple form and history will repeat itself. Maybe…        Right now however, we are in more ways than one confined to planet earth and its population is growing in leaps and bounds.

The other very real aspect of our existence is that humans are mostly responsible for the things that are problematic on earth. I am not disputing the fact that massive strides in respect of technology and general improvement in our ability to manipulate our environment to suit our needs and wants have been made, but people are human. We have been more or less human for thousands of years and in being human we co-inhabit living space as human beings. It is this concept of being human that garners challenges in respect of living together in harmony. For any group of individuals, no matter how diverse or unique, living together in harmony poses a challenge and the size of this challenge is directly proportional to the size of the group. One could safely argue that the nature and number of problems increase with an increase in the size of a group. This becomes more apparent when one takes into account that this increase in number happens in a limited space with limited resources…