I’m not going to deny being an animal called human. Life is a learning curve. I, like you, can be counted by whether i chose to learn or not.

I don’t agree with some of my attitude at WickedMike.com. Far too often i was mocking of people, religion etc. I wanted a better world and was criticising the inferior life we’re living… but, too often, it seemed, uncomfortably, as if i was acting from an arrogance i hadn’t earned.

I still believe that we must fight for that better world but, more practically, when possible, from a position of tolerance and understanding, an attitude i’ve practiced for years. I’ve consciously used my platform here and on Facebook to support human rights (e.g. racial harmony and sexual orientation) so that it’s now, thankfully, unconscious (a part of me).

We must insert ourselves into the minds of others to understand why they see the world they way they do. More often than not, we can’t make someone understand us unless we understand them first. After that, we can try figure out the best version of whose right and whose wrong.

That doesn’t mean that we must be fools. Sometimes we have to accept a situation wherein there are those who have bigotry and unjustified self-righteous buried so deep in their psyche that no form of persuasion or debate will ever be successful. At that point, i become hard-arsed – i have no tolerance for those who blindly insist on destroying our world (or those people supporting them e.g. subscribers to the insidiously, deceitful, Knysna Knews). There is a normally a yang for the yin.

That yang includes our current politicians (ANC, DA and COPE). They deserve ridicule and condemnation for the distasteful way they’ve treated us. No tolerance is needed when fighting evil.

Also, i won’t be politically correct when it’s unnecessary. I call a spade a spade e.g. i will criticise Leisure Isle racism (which i have experienced) as much as i will fight against public drinking at Green Hole because i don’t want any more kids to drown. I will, for example, look at a sexy woman half my age and not feel guilty for thinking her sexy because no matter if she’s 20 or 50 years old, it’s the most human reaction that does no harm. I will appreciate the occasional buzz of beer but would be angry at myself if i ever lost control. I don’t support any religion but, so long as it obeys the law, will support a mosque’s right to exist as much as any church’s.

Our world is a difficult one but I want to be tolerant and understanding without being a coward.

I will never make everyone happy. That doesn’t matter so long as i’m an animal called human doing the best i can.

Back to WickedMike.com…with #RhodesMustFall as an example…

I don’t support those who want to destroy South Africa’s colonial statues. I don’t support those who want to preserve them alone. What should have happened, preempting that crisis of political opportunism, was for the old statues to have been moved to the left so that, chronologically, new statues could be added to the right. For example, having Cecil John Rhodes and Chris Hani, side by side, would have been more representative of all the human animals we have been.

I don’t forsake history but believe we can make a better history.

Which is why i keep all my WickedMike.com posts and early political criticisms at KnysnaKeep.org standing. Everything i have done, warts and kudos, has made me into the latest version of me.

Our online community gets very quiet over this week, some having fun whilst others, in the tourism industry, work their arses off. So i’m going to share, on Facebook, some of those older, personal, non-Knysna, Wicked Mike posts with you. Plus some music ones. Sometimes it’ll be to make you smile, other times to make your brain tick faster. All of it, warts and all, is me… the me who eventually found Knysna and fell in love with her.

See me.
Listen to my heartbeat; patter, patter, patter.
Feel my breath; stale, moist, growing fatter.
Taste my lips; blood-soft and salty sips.
Hear my thoughts; cultured, vulture fought…

www.wickedmike.com