Not him, but it would likely be my own fault and weakness if I end up like that and people have every right to ridicule me for acting ridiculous. That is, pooping on the streets and leaving needles everywhere.
People turn to pooping on the streets and shooting up in the middle of the street because they have nowhere else to go. Getting hoisted out of rock-bottom is extremely difficult, and the longer you slip through the cracks of any kind of support the more cemented you get there. If society is kicking the ladder out from under you like this then respectability is the last thing on your mind. Being shipped off to a desert concentration camp is really the icing on the cake here.
The ("progressive") opinion that you express is ultimately de-humanizing. You take away all agency from people and treat them as mindless victims.
It's all the society's fault, awlays someone else do blame. People who poop on the street can't find any other place (perhaps, a bush?), people who throw needles on the street have no other place to take drugs (perhaps, the supervised drug injection site where they get the drugs?).
Empathy must come with responsibility and not with a patronizing de-humanizing pseudo-compassion. Which is, of course, just enablement under a different name.
This talk about not pooping on the street and not shooting up in the street is not really solving the material issues of homeless people. How does pooping in a bush or going to a supervised drug injection site get you out of abject poverty?
How is it not a structural problem when homelessness is a growing epidemic? Do you think that if every homeless person took a little more personal responsibility this issue would be fixed already?
> Do you think that if every homeless person took a little more personal responsibility this issue would be fixed already?
Yes. A little more personal responsibility leads to taking more and more personal responsibility. I dislike talking about homeless people as a homogenous group, but the visibly/street homeless need to take more responsibility for their life in order to improve it. There are many resources available that can make their journey out of homelessness faster.
Important to remember that every one of us are just a few accidents away from being ejected from society too. I try to catch myself when I'm looking down my nose at the bum who make a mess of my recycling because there is another richer person looking down their nose at me!
I don’t think I’m a few accidents away from what I see people doing every morning in the east village. I’ve been in four should-have-died accidents, when are you expecting me to abandon society? It’s a silly fantasy to pretend the average white collar is a few bad missteps away from the chronic detachment you see from these folks. We must live in very different worlds, my friend.
I really hope you never have to experience it, because it is a very nasty rug pull. No, it's not a silly fantasy, it's a deadly reality. As long as you produce value, you can enjoy momentary security. But take away anyone piece of your capacity to produce money: maybe your hands to type, or your brain to think- and all that security rapidly comes undone. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a rich family to fall back on or you live in a country with a generous welfare. But barring that, you absolutely will find yourself out on the street given the right circumstances.
Well, it is normal to have such feelings when people are harassed by those people. Yesterday, in Texas while I was harassed by kids. They used all the slurs and it was so bizarre to me. In California, I can't imagine the situation.
It only takes few people to ruin experience for all people.
I hope you never end up in a situation where people decide not only to leave you in pool of your own urine on the sidewalk, but to feel righteous about their activism to make sure you're left there.
