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Putting in a plug for a great book called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. https://www.amazon.com/Another-Bullshit-Night-Suck-City/dp/0393329402 https://ww

Putting in a plug for a great book called Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. https://www.amazon.com/Another-Bullshit-Night-Suck-City/dp/0393329402 https://www.amazon.com/Another-Bullshit-Night-Suck-City/dp/0... This is the book that humanized homelessness for me. I better understand how it can happen to just about anyone, the vicious cycles involved, and how it affects observers on a deep level. For the record, I found the article pretty annoying as well. Overwrought and vague. The best satire is (was?) subtle and yet incisive. This feels like a verbal pep rally. But maybe tastes are changing.

foldr 1y ago
The concept of humanizing homelessness fascinates me. It really does seem that the cultural default in the US is to view homeless people as subhumans who deserve to lead miserable lives. I’m not saying that this is what you yourself consciously believe(d), but it seems to be the implicit belief underlying much of the discourse around homelessness on HN and in the US more broadly. Normally when we talk about “humanizing” a problem it’s one that doesn’t have a directly visible human element. But everyone has seen actual homeless people. It’s not something that we are just aware of as an abstract problem. What exactly is the cultural barrier to seeing what ought to be very obvious? I.e. that homeless people are regular people who are down on their luck, or who are victims of broader societal failings.
- darkerside 1y ago
  I get that you are judging me for my perspective or past perspective, and that's your right (please don't deny it, just own it, it's fine). I don't think it's a cultural barrier. It's how many humans are generally wired. There are so many problems in the world that if you concern yourself with all of them, you'll be mired in inaction anyway. When you don't have time to help homeless people, you ignore them because to do otherwise would make you feel like a bad person. Pretty simple? Besides, I don't think it's so simple. Yes, there is an element of luck and society, but there's is also an element of personal responsibility. And only one of those is in the control of the "victim", so I still believe it's harmful to encourage that victim mentality, even when there is truth to it. What is your personal view on the homeless? What do you do when you see homeless people in the streets?
  - foldr 1y ago
    I’m not talking about ignoring homelessness. Of course people ignore all kinds of instances of human suffering. What I don’t understand is how homelessness could need to be “humanized” when it’s already rather obviously tied to the suffering of individual humans visible to the public. My view is that we need more housing and cheaper housing. This would do more to help than encouraging homeless people to take “personal responsibility”, whatever exactly that is supposed to mean. Is housing only for responsible people? If so, should I be required to leave my apartment and live on the street as due punishment for the irresponsible things that I do on a daily basis? Is there some kind of moral bar you have to pass before you can have a roof over your head? This is nuts. Everyone should have somewhere to live.
    - darkerside 1y ago
      And yet not everyone does. And even if you have everyone free housing, not everyone would take it. So now what? When you ignore a homeless person, you are depersonalizing them on some level. If you saw every homeless person as a some or a daughter, a mother or a father, a best friend, a laughing child, a person doing their best, could you really walk by? Probably not. And they were all these things at one point, perhaps not too long ago.
      - foldr 1y ago
        > And even if you have everyone free housing, not everyone would take it. So now what? Possibly nothing? If you have free housing for anyone who wants it then you'll have some residue of homeless people, but not nearly as many as there are now.
- danaris 1y ago
  The US has a very strong thread of Calvinist/Puritan/Protestant theology and thought running through its cultural foundations. One of the effects of this is a cultural predisposition to believe in something approximating the Just World theory—that is, that if someone is rich, it is because they are a better person (or blessed by God, or destined to be rich), while if they are poor it is because they are inferior people who deserve to be so. This cultural background makes it very easy for people to look at their own lives and see their successes as their own work, and their failures as bad luck—but then look at other people's lives and see both success and failure as being 100% a product of their own deserving. (When in reality, everyone's successes and failures are a blend of luck and merit, with a pretty heavy emphasis on the luck, especially the luck of what family you were born into.)
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - const_cast 1y ago
    This is correct. It goes deeper than this, too. Capitalist economies rely on a myth of meritocracy for labor. The end result is that we’re forced to view the homeless as lesser. We typically throw around words like addict, because we have to. If we admit that there’s homeless people out there who got so based purely on bad luck, that destroys the promise of America.
  - int_19h 1y ago
    It's not just a US thing, though. I believe that some form of this is pretty common in general simply because that's how people cope with the very fact that homelessness exists in the first place. Like, it's either a massive injustice that pretty much demands that you, personally do something significant about it... or it's "just the way it is", and you can look away. But this latter outlook requires some amount of dehumanization, so people rationalize that the best they can.
    - darkerside 1y ago
      100%. This is called the Fundamental Attribution Error, and to my knowledge, it is not at all unique to the US.
- anon291 1y ago
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foldr 1y ago

The concept of humanizing homelessness fascinates me. It really does seem that the cultural default in the US is to view homeless people as subhumans who deserve to lead miserable lives. I’m not saying that this is what you yourself consciously believe(d), but it seems to be the implicit belief underlying much of the discourse around homelessness on HN and in the US more broadly. Normally when we talk about “humanizing” a problem it’s one that doesn’t have a directly visible human element. But everyone has seen actual homeless people. It’s not something that we are just aware of as an abstract problem. What exactly is the cultural barrier to seeing what ought to be very obvious? I.e. that homeless people are regular people who are down on their luck, or who are victims of broader societal failings.

darkerside 1y ago
I get that you are judging me for my perspective or past perspective, and that's your right (please don't deny it, just own it, it's fine). I don't think it's a cultural barrier. It's how many humans are generally wired. There are so many problems in the world that if you concern yourself with all of them, you'll be mired in inaction anyway. When you don't have time to help homeless people, you ignore them because to do otherwise would make you feel like a bad person. Pretty simple? Besides, I don't think it's so simple. Yes, there is an element of luck and society, but there's is also an element of personal responsibility. And only one of those is in the control of the "victim", so I still believe it's harmful to encourage that victim mentality, even when there is truth to it. What is your personal view on the homeless? What do you do when you see homeless people in the streets?
- foldr 1y ago
  I’m not talking about ignoring homelessness. Of course people ignore all kinds of instances of human suffering. What I don’t understand is how homelessness could need to be “humanized” when it’s already rather obviously tied to the suffering of individual humans visible to the public. My view is that we need more housing and cheaper housing. This would do more to help than encouraging homeless people to take “personal responsibility”, whatever exactly that is supposed to mean. Is housing only for responsible people? If so, should I be required to leave my apartment and live on the street as due punishment for the irresponsible things that I do on a daily basis? Is there some kind of moral bar you have to pass before you can have a roof over your head? This is nuts. Everyone should have somewhere to live.
  - darkerside 1y ago
    And yet not everyone does. And even if you have everyone free housing, not everyone would take it. So now what? When you ignore a homeless person, you are depersonalizing them on some level. If you saw every homeless person as a some or a daughter, a mother or a father, a best friend, a laughing child, a person doing their best, could you really walk by? Probably not. And they were all these things at one point, perhaps not too long ago.
    - foldr 1y ago
      > And even if you have everyone free housing, not everyone would take it. So now what? Possibly nothing? If you have free housing for anyone who wants it then you'll have some residue of homeless people, but not nearly as many as there are now.
danaris 1y ago
The US has a very strong thread of Calvinist/Puritan/Protestant theology and thought running through its cultural foundations. One of the effects of this is a cultural predisposition to believe in something approximating the Just World theory—that is, that if someone is rich, it is because they are a better person (or blessed by God, or destined to be rich), while if they are poor it is because they are inferior people who deserve to be so. This cultural background makes it very easy for people to look at their own lives and see their successes as their own work, and their failures as bad luck—but then look at other people's lives and see both success and failure as being 100% a product of their own deserving. (When in reality, everyone's successes and failures are a blend of luck and merit, with a pretty heavy emphasis on the luck, especially the luck of what family you were born into.)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- const_cast 1y ago
  This is correct. It goes deeper than this, too. Capitalist economies rely on a myth of meritocracy for labor. The end result is that we’re forced to view the homeless as lesser. We typically throw around words like addict, because we have to. If we admit that there’s homeless people out there who got so based purely on bad luck, that destroys the promise of America.
- int_19h 1y ago
  It's not just a US thing, though. I believe that some form of this is pretty common in general simply because that's how people cope with the very fact that homelessness exists in the first place. Like, it's either a massive injustice that pretty much demands that you, personally do something significant about it... or it's "just the way it is", and you can look away. But this latter outlook requires some amount of dehumanization, so people rationalize that the best they can.
  - darkerside 1y ago
    100%. This is called the Fundamental Attribution Error, and to my knowledge, it is not at all unique to the US.
anon291 1y ago
[dead]