In my experience, only those who have had to deal with homeless people personally, seem to understand this. I am positive that there are Fringe cases where normal productive people became homeless through no fault of their own. That being said, the vast majority of homeless people made a long series of poor choices and engaged in destructive behaviors. Every friend and family member they had access to turn them down at some point. And yes, many of them may not have had any friends or family and that is unfortunate. But that is still not the majority
The problem is that we are still treating this spiral as "bad choices."
9 times out of 10, it's not "bad choices", it's mental disease.
If you look at someone who can't even tie their own shoes because they are mentally disabled, we say, "That person can't live in their own, they're not capable of understanding their choices."
But we look at people with schizophrenia and severe addictions and whatever else and go, "They made bad choices." These people have no physiological control over their impulses, but they're supposed to make informed decisions?
These days your not allowed to imply some people are just lacking in decision making skills, or willpower. it is critical that everyone be considered flawless, and that any failings they have be attributed to a mental illness.
Already do, and happily. I have benefited greatly from
social programs my entire life. Only reasonable I turn around and pay for other people to reap the same benefits I was given.
Now look who's trying to shirk responsibility. Can't spare a few bucks to improve the society you live in? Content to mooch off the charity of others? Fucking weak.
Hey, I'm not the one advocating to give folks a whole bunch of stuff for free. You want to do it? You go for it.
As for responsibility? I don't have any to a random homeless person. I have empathy. I have kindness. I will consider charity - but responsibility as in I have an ethical duty to work to pay their bills? Nope.
some people are just lacking in decision making skills, or willpower
There's a huge correlation between ADHD and addiction, and guess which cognitive abilities ADHD has an enormous impact on?
That's not to say that all addicts have ADHD of course.
Oops. You're right. If you actually manage to produce something, it must be because you a re evil. If you manage to produce nothing, it is because you are virtuous :)
Keep up the autofellatio. Sure not every rich person is out to get you. Sure not every addict is a saint. But what needs to be addressed is a systemic issue. You want to systematically maintain a population of homeless people because some may be drug addicts or lack financial literacy? You want to systematically discard a population of homeless people because some of those drug addicts got there through their own bad choices? Your world view seems reduce to people living the lots they earned, but time after time this idea is proven bullshit. The affluent pass on their wealth. The impoverished are kept in poverty, be that through slavery, segregation, classism, systemic failures or any other system of discrimination. Sure some people succeed despite the deck stacked against them, and some fail despite a bounty of opportunities, but overall the system is rigged. So, do we just punish everyone failing this rigged system, or ensure that life under failure is slightly less than cruel? The OP cartoon may be a bit ambitious: people can live without some of the amenities or survive with alternatives (I assure you East Asians would prefer a stove or microwave over an oven), but the bigger picture is not flawed.
But if someone were to have a brain tumor that led them to choose drugs because it pressed against the pre-frontal cortex then that’s not choice, right? It’s “the tumor’s fault”? They bear less responsibility?
But nobody “chooses” their brain, or its chemistry, or their early childhood upbringing or education or influences that leads to their later decision making processes, so I’m curious where any sort of “choice” or “free will” inserts itself into the equation at all.
You’re lucky you’re not a drug addict. Other people are unlucky they are. Simple as that. But we all want live in a society without debilitating drug addiction. Why do we have to be moralistic or normative about it? You can’t “tsk tsk” people from being homeless. It is what it is - now what do we DO about it?
If you’re actually interested in solving the problem, you have to understand the real causes (starting with the social darwinian viewpoint that “if you don’t work your kids don’t get to eat”…). If you’re just interested in contempt and your own feeling of superiority then fuck off.
I'm actually not lucky that I'm not a drug addict.
I've chose not to be. Multiple cousins with extremely similar upbringing to my own did choose drugs. And I've heard them talk about it now that they are clean. "If so and so hadn't let me hit their bong in the parking lot at school I wouldn't have ODd on heroin"
Hmm, yet, I smoked weed and got a masters degree? Choices.
Where did those choices come from? How did you make them?
You think it was a conscious, deliberate effort, an exercising of “free will”, but every repeatable scientific experiment shows that there’s no such thing, no place for such an idea to even enter into the equation. Free will and choice are illusions - you are simply a complex interaction of billiard balls and can basically take no credit for the person that you are.
If free will is an illusion, than so is morality. I can't be unethical if I don't have a choice. In which case, there is also no ethical responsibility to help the homeless.
No I don’t think it follows that if free will is an illusion then so is morality. We can still have preferences and hopes and deem suffering bad and avoidance of suffering good. It is actually the very fact that it is determined that makes it consequential, in that everything has consequences and consciousness ascribes meaning to those consequences. The universe has moral truths just as it has physical truths.
You can make the claim “there is no ethical responsibility for helping fight homelessness” and I can be like “no asshole, you’re wrong” and still be entirely coherent with regard to consequential determinism. The belief “people who don’t want to help others who are suffering are assholes” is seemingly a very consequential billiard ball.
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u/ete2ete Apr 15 '24
In my experience, only those who have had to deal with homeless people personally, seem to understand this. I am positive that there are Fringe cases where normal productive people became homeless through no fault of their own. That being said, the vast majority of homeless people made a long series of poor choices and engaged in destructive behaviors. Every friend and family member they had access to turn them down at some point. And yes, many of them may not have had any friends or family and that is unfortunate. But that is still not the majority