homeless rant
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- moth0
Considering my comfortable existence, I maintain a sincere drink habit which is probably not entirely healthy. It's not a huge stretch of the imagination for me to see myself slide of the ladder if I lost most of the things I love and was generally down on my luck.
I have plenty of friends and family which I know I can depend on before a pavement makes for a home. But if I were to remove all that...... that doesn't bare thinking about.
2 pay checks away indeed.
- hear, hear.paraselene
- Cool. I'm gonna crash on your sofa for a few weeks!moth
- spmitch0
nice one Kelpie
- chossy0
Couple of my old pals ended up on the streets for a while fortunatley they got things back together and managed to reconcile things with family and friends. They chose to do what they did as they said it was a way of escaping everyone and everything they knew. Lucky they had a strong enough family and friends to go back to.
- vespa0
"frankly I am tired of looking at them as I drive by to my job every morning"
I'm hoping you're not as horrible as that sentence makes you sound. I can only imagine that you are reacting against this homeless person making you realise that you are a slave to your job.
- spmitch0
slaves? yes I want to quite my job and eat out of a garbage bin - oh heaven from the daily grind
- kelpie0
so where is the hostility coming from? you absolutely don't think its a "I have to work, I'm in here every day, how dare those fuckers drop out"?
not even a little? hmmm?
- vespa0
dudes i'm not saying it would be fun to be homeless! clearly most people couldn't bear living like that so we sell our waking hours for money.
but the guy who started this thread must secretly resent having to do that otherwise why would he take offense to someone being homeless?
- kelpie0
of course it could be as shallow as not liking the way they dirty up his lovely neighborhood and remind him, uncomfortably, that their's poverty in the world. Poverty being a bit smelly and unpalatable. ew, look at their stained jeans
- spmitch0
there is something honest about saying, " fuck I play be the rules so should you"
- Machuse0
I think people need to look up the history of homelessness before they speak. The popular notion is that many homeless people got this way, when they were kicked out of the mental health care facilites during the reagan era.
Reagan made the point that giving certain individuals free health care in mental facilites wasnt fair and equal to the rest of the population without mental disabilites.Many people are homeless because of mental disorder, add that with not having an address, no place to take a shower. How do you suppose they get a job? Who would hire someone who hasn’t bathed in a week and generally looks homeless. What address would you have your checks sent too? How would you open a bank account? Do you have ID to open one with? How would you catch the train to work assuming you wouldnt just sleep outside your job until you got your first paycheck (of course meaning your still homeless)
Not all homeless people have mental issues, but you have to be cognisent of the history and realites of what your seeing , not just say - its my money and your lazy. Thats just too convienent of an answer, their might be something more behind the story.
- I encourage you to look it up for yourself - http://www.google.co…Machuse
- +1vespa
- spmitch0
finally a thread about something instead of the shite that permeates this fine website
- kelpie0
the thing which always gets me about people having a go at homeless people (or for that matter, any of the people on the periphery of their society), is that none of them exhibit any empathy at all - i
the standard statement is:
"why don't they pick themselves up and play by the rules? why should have to A. see them on my way to work, or B) put up with them panhandling; their are means to help themselves",
this is people making no attempt to understand that their is likely a story there; that that person is human and might not have the emotional means to match up to your prescribed step by step plan to get the fuck out of your rich middle class faces and stop crowding the pavement. So you drive to work every day and pay your taxes - good for you, you've won the modern society game, pat yourself on the back. The people you're complaining about are the folk who lost, the non stakeholders, and its a hard world if you're on the outside; the institutions there to help you are generally only funded enough to salve the guilt of the haves, not genuinely construct a system capable of helping the have nots. And maybe you're not capable at this time of making the tough steps to finding a 'normal' life; maybe the single minded conviction it takes to put yourself through the pain of that is beyond you. You know, I suspect its not the most conducive atmosphere to positive optimism about the future, living rough, whaddya think?
And even though they only effect your lives in tiny, unimportant ways, you still don't have the empathy to even just ignore them and leave them be, let alone try to help them yourselves.
- vespa0
i guess if the only life paradigm you know is the corporate one, you are trained to buy into all of its rules, so have a lot invested in that way of thinking.
empathy is not an asset in the corporate world so some people just never grow those skills. very sad.
- that's me trying to empathise with someone who has no empathy, arrgh it's horrible in here!vespa
- careful you don't find the higgs boson!paraselene
- Khurram0
Even with my recently acquired Ayn Randian callousness, I find it difficult to share some of the sentiments expressed here.
I do, however, refuse to allow myself to pity the homeless. I reserve that for the vain two-dimensional suburbanites trapped in a life of mediocrity and conformity.
- max_prophet0
what an ignorant, privileged cunt this McShite kid is
- spmitch0
it easy to point fingers at the wrongs of society from our electronic ivory towers
- moth0
Thankfully I don't think this issue is perceived as completely black and white in the UK as it seems to be in the good old US.
- cashfaced0
The Famous Bushman from San Francisco...makes 60k a year
- mcLeod0
its interesting to see how you all assume you know how I think. sure the initial post was worded harshly, but don't assume I am some Lebowski type who hates all homeless. My uncle was homeless and he was perfectly sane and drug free. he was just lazy and couldn't hold a job. I take it on a case by case basis. I have helped the helpless countless times but when I see perfectly able people not taking any initiative it breaks my heart, and whether its for compassionate reasons or selfish ones I just don't want to see it.
I truly thank all of you for all of your points (save for the useless insults on my character)