BECAUSE of my experiences, my values, and my understanding of life, I am unable to support the firefighters' strike.

Nonetheless, I do sympathise with their predicament, for now they too, like millions the world over, have become victims of the system. Victims of pressure -- an irrepressible force which it seems we are unable, or indeed unwilling, to stop

But then it is after all a force of our own making, or maybe simply of our being. It is a force driven by humankind's insatiable appetite for more, bigger, better and faster machines. Driven by our desire for enjoyment, excitement, pleasure, and an easy life, and fuelled by the images and information that we receive on the machines we create.

To provide us with such an existence, we rely more and more on machines -- to move us around, to do our work, to communicate, to entertain, to manufacture, and machines to make us live longer. As a result, we are becoming de-humanised. Impoverished of human feelings, emotion and understanding, and driven by the need for more money in order to provide the machines we so desperately want and now rely on. The down side of this is that it creates more and bigger problems, more complex problems, and they are on us before we have found a solution to the last.

Survival has now become so much more than simply food and water. It has become a desperate need for the drugs -- prescription and illegal -- that make us feel better and help to cope better, a desperate need for the cosmetics that make us look better, and a desperate need for the machines that make our lives easier and more exciting. The paradox is that they all make life more stressful and, subsequently, we become sadder and sicker.

Furthermore, the increasing use of, and the increasing toxicity of, the drugs we use find their way back into the human food chain -- a deadly cocktail, a time bomb. It is a vicious circle that is getting more aggressive, more hostile and more deadly by the minute.

The firefighters cannot win against such irrepressible forces. Indeed, can any of us win? I sincerely wish we could so that everyone could enjoy a decent standard of life, a happier life, a stress-free life, and ultimately a peaceful life. However, in our civilised world of craving and excess, it seems that we are never likely to see it There will always be envy, hate and resentment, and consequently crime, violence and war.

It would seem that we are instinctively unable to create otherwise. Maybe if we could observe a little more patience, courtesy, respect and understanding -- slow down and settle for less -- then we might go some way to achieving an ideal world.

Allan Ramsay

Ashcombe Drive

Radcliffe