As religious or spiritual, would u blame a homeless person for committing a crime of desperation?

[Mindmaster]

Would you classify homeless as sociopathic if the individual was desperate enough to commit a minor crime to save their life from the elements? If an emergency winter shelter reached maximum capacity, leaving the homeless in below freezing temperatures, what would be their choice? Unfortunately this is a dilemma that many of the homeless face. During the financial crisis, many former well to do professionals found themselves committing minor crimes just to survive.

While I generally sympathize with their plight, I also realize that in most every case it's their own doing. Basically it comes down to this:

1) No where to live: Toxic, or involved in other life behaviors that make living with them difficult. Won't work a job or contribute to the person whom could house them.

2) No food. Too lazy to get food stamps.

3) Mental illness not an excuse. Most of the mentally ill are eligible for programs that assist them with all of their needs.

To say that is an excuse for criminal activity is a stretch, to say the least. Basically, you are saying that in some conditions it's OK for them to steal rent and resources that everyone else has to pay for. It's not... Whether they're lazy, toxic, or whatever it's their own job to get off their asses and do something about it like everyone else. Most of the time you can rent one room in a house for $200/mo and you can afford that working at McDonald's.

Ultimately, they choose that lifestyle to some degree because like like the pity party so while I feel no person should have to suffer this I also see the game. They don't want bills, obligations, having to keep up with their social network, or anything else. They're not down on their luck as much as they are unwilling to change... That's our fault how?

 

[Audie]

It makes sense. The alternative is always expensive

Makes sense in a rural setting, where people tend to know eachother, and not so
many people about.

NYC, not many fields to glean.

A widow I know, btw, is worth at least a hundred million.
That Deut. rule may not apply to her!

 

[Axe Elf]

I am currently living in a tent in 30° weather. I am sick cold and without water.

Are you serious? Is there any way I can help?

To address the question of the thread, though, yes, people must still be held responsible for their choices and actions, assuming that they are intentional actions, regardless of their social status, and the punishments should fit the crimes.

 

[oldbadger]

It makes sense. The alternative is always expensive

Those Mosaic and OT Laws are better than a sensible avoidance of expense. They were there to protect every single person.

 

[oldbadger]

Makes sense in a rural setting, where people tend to know eachother, and not so
many people about.

NYC, not many fields to glean.

The OT Laws applied to such cities as New York and London would provide for all the poor in their State or Country. The fields would be the errors, over-productions, spent sell-by dates, returns and rejects, and a % of all turnover.

It may happen in the way of a living-wage to be paid to everybody, such as Japan is experimenting with at this time.

A widow I know, btw, is worth at least a hundred million.
That Deut. rule may not apply to her!

Indeed. Nobody needs so much as she has. When a small % owns so much, and 90% own so little, then the system is ruthless and unscrupulous.

 

[allfoak]

Are you serious? Is there any way I can help?

Probably not.
April in Vermont.
This is homelessness in Brattleboro Vt.
Light Rain

33°F

1°C
Humidity 82%
Wind Speed E 10 G 25 mph
Barometer 30.17 in (1023.6 mb)
Dewpoint 28°F (-2°C)
Visibility 8.00 mi
Wind Chill 25°F (-4°C)
Last update 16 Apr 6:56 am EDT

 

[Audie]

View attachment 21077 View attachment 21078
Probably not.
April in Vermont.
This is homelessness in Brattleboro Vt.
Light Rain

33°F

1°C
Humidity 82%
Wind Speed E 10 G 25 mph
Barometer 30.17 in (1023.6 mb)
Dewpoint 28°F (-2°C)
Visibility 8.00 mi
Wind Chill 25°F (-4°C)
Last update 16 Apr 6:56 am EDT

That does not seem so good. I hope
your situation will improve every soon.

 

[Audie]

The OT Laws applied to such cities as New York and London would provide for all the poor in their State or Country. The fields would be the errors, over-productions, spent sell-by dates, returns and rejects, and a % of all turnover.

It may happen in the way of a living-wage to be paid to everybody, such as Japan is experimenting with at this time.


Indeed. Nobody needs so much as she has. When a small % owns so much, and 90% own so little, then the system is ruthless and unscrupulous.

You have some other system in mind?

 

[oldbadger]

You have some other system in mind?

Well, relevant to the thread title, I think that the Mosaic Laws are remarkable.

You mentioned a widow worth one hundred million dollars...? OK, so she won't need help, but that should not cause us to ignore so many poor widows, surely?

In fact it could be easy to apply such laws as already shown, adjusted to suit modern situations in commerce, industry and retail.

And so I expect it would be for you to propose something, anything, towards provision, protection, healthcare and safety for anybody who is homeless...?

 

[Audie]

Well, relevant to the thread title, I think that the Mosaic Laws are remarkable.

You mentioned a widow worth one hundred million dollars...? OK, so she won't need help, but that should not cause us to ignore so many poor widows, surely?

In fact it could be easy to apply such laws as already shown, adjusted to suit modern situations in commerce, industry and retail.

And so I expect it would be for you to propose something, anything, towards provision, protection, healthcare and safety for anybody who is homeless...?

for you to propose something,

Oh?

Your Mosaic Laws may well be remarkable,though
I doubt they are anything resembling unique.

Perhaps they could be modified, updated and so on,
made the law of the land in some way.

Try it in England.

As a general sort of thing, I am suspicious of any
sort of social engineering, and of the idealists
who wish to impose their vision.

 

[sun rise]

I know a lot of it has to do with the regulatory climate brought about by the blanket legislation we see going on all the time. I really wish they would have provisions made where exemptions can be instituted to help out the hungry and downtrodden.

I remember also there was an excellent program involving inexpensive modular "cubicles" that could easily house was homeless and keep them warm in inclement weather.

Again, I would blame the regulatory climate for preventing it.

In most all cases involving hunger and homelessness the government is always the one to point the finger to and in some ways being the cause for not thinking of viable approachable solutions where people get into and find themselves in these types of situations.

I don't know why but we don't think in terms of individuality when it comes to legislation only blanket policy where people get caught in the cracks and forgotten.

I'm sure there's quite a few restaurants out there and food companies that would love to distribute their excess (still good) food in helping homeless people have reasonably full bellies at night.

Housing could be accommodated as well. All one has to do is look at Japan and see how individual modular style alcoves provides a warm place to stay and sleep. Something like that could easily be instituted at minimal cost but the government just will not give the green light for these kind of things.

The climate and nimbyism makes it hard for shelter, but food and clothing can be handled by volunteer organizations. I'm happy to volunteer for White Pony Express out here which picks up food that would have been thrown out because it was not used that day in restaurants and groceries that throw out food because it's close to the sell by date and redistributes it to agencies that serve it the same day. Clothing is another aspect where high quality clothes that someone might give to a friend who had an immediate need is also passed along to those in need. What has been done here can be done elsewhere.

White Pony Express | relaying food and goods to those in need in Contra Costa County

 

[Thief]

Would you classify homeless as sociopathic if the individual was desperate enough to commit a minor crime to save their life from the elements? If an emergency winter shelter reached maximum capacity, leaving the homeless in below freezing temperatures, what would be their choice? Unfortunately this is a dilemma that many of the homeless face. During the financial crisis, many former well to do professionals found themselves committing minor crimes just to survive.

Excuse unedited grammar and broken sentences




Here are a few Links below:

Hungry homeless man gets arrested intentionally

Homeless and hungry man prefers a jail cell

A fifth of all homeless people have committed a crime to get off the streets



Homeless man holds up bank for $1 so he can go to jail and get medical attention | Daily Mail Online



'I asked to go to jail, rather than stay homeless'



Police: Homeless man breaks glass door, asks to go to jail



Homeless Harrisburg man gets prison term for 'crime of desperation'

Homeless man asks judge to send him to prison for birthday 'so he can wake up somewhere warm'

was it not David (not sure).....
who took the show bread from the Temple to feed his followers

seems he was justified.....

 

[1213]

Would you classify homeless as sociopathic if the individual was desperate enough to commit a minor crime to save their life from the elements? If an emergency winter shelter reached maximum capacity, leaving the homeless in below freezing temperatures, what would be their choice? ...

I believe there is always better choice and I think judgments should be equal, rich shouldn’t be judged any differently than poor. If it is ok that poor person does wrong things, it should be as ok that rich person does the same.

But I also think people should help other people.

 

[David T]

Would you classify homeless as sociopathic if the individual was desperate enough to commit a minor crime to save their life from the elements? If an emergency winter shelter reached maximum capacity, leaving the homeless in below freezing temperatures, what would be their choice? Unfortunately this is a dilemma that many of the homeless face. During the financial crisis, many former well to do professionals found themselves committing minor crimes just to survive.

Excuse unedited grammar and broken sentences




Here are a few Links below:

Hungry homeless man gets arrested intentionally

Homeless and hungry man prefers a jail cell

A fifth of all homeless people have committed a crime to get off the streets



Homeless man holds up bank for $1 so he can go to jail and get medical attention | Daily Mail Online



'I asked to go to jail, rather than stay homeless'



Police: Homeless man breaks glass door, asks to go to jail



Homeless Harrisburg man gets prison term for 'crime of desperation'

Homeless man asks judge to send him to prison for birthday 'so he can wake up somewhere warm'

And all the responses I have read here tells me that underneath our differences, Good is a common shared trait despite our differences. That ultimately always prevails.

 

[Punta Piñal]

Are you serious? Is there any way I can help?

To address the question of the thread, though, yes, people must still be held responsible for their choices and actions, assuming that they are intentional actions, regardless of their social status, and the punishments should fit the crimes.

But predestination essentially removes human responsibility and nullifies the need for social controls.

As a general sort of thing, I am suspicious of any
sort of social engineering, and of the idealists
who wish to impose their vision.

Society is a (complex) form of social engineering, reflecting the interests inherent in its structure. The economic elites play a significant role in formulating the discourse, tenor, and ideality of society. The professional segment of the bourgeoisie, at least in the West, tends to be paternalistic, hence patronising, in its outlook. Many of the "rational" atheists these days are also committed capitalists and members of the educated classes, and thus look askance at the lower strata instead of building alliances with them. Thus today's post-Cold-War elites are especially allergic to humanism and progressive ideology, and often seek to present themselves as above ideology and politics, when in reality they are aligned with the technocracy and narrow interests of their class and profession. Thus even their "altruism" is only superficially altruistic, not intrinsically so. And study after study has shown that charity neither resolves the roots of social problems nor furthers the independence of marginalised individuals and/or groups, but rather makes them dependent on the interests of the corporatist, corporate-controlled state and its upper bourgeoisie, as welfare does in the "democratic" West (and in much of the developing world). In the industrialised West, the mantra is that individualistic competition outweighs human bonding; in (some) postcolonial societies, the elites tend to hoard rather than redistribute resources.

 

[Audie]

But predestination essentially removes human responsibility and nullifies the need for social controls.

Society is a (complex) form of social engineering, reflecting the interests inherent in its structure. The economic elites play a significant role in formulating the discourse, tenor, and ideality of society. The professional segment of the bourgeoisie, at least in the West, tends to be paternalistic, hence patronising, in its outlook. Many of the "rational" atheists these days are also committed capitalists and members of the educated classes, and thus look askance at the lower strata instead of building alliances with them. Thus today's post-Cold-War elites are especially allergic to humanism and progressive ideology, and often seek to present themselves as above ideology and politics, when in reality they are aligned with the technocracy and narrow interests of their class and profession. Thus even their "altruism" is only superficially altruistic, not intrinsically so. And study after study has shown that charity neither resolves the roots of social problems nor furthers the independence of marginalised individuals and/or groups, but rather makes them dependent on the interests of the corporatist, corporate-controlled state and its upper bourgeoisie, as welfare does in the "democratic" West (and in much of the developing world). In the industrialised West, the mantra is that individualistic competition outweighs human bonding; in (some) postcolonial societies, the elites tend to hoard rather than redistribute resources.

That has little to nothing to do with social engineering,
but it is a lot of jarg. and gratuitous swipes at atheists, complete with quotation marks for them and their mental capacities.

The viciousness of prejudice against atheists has
declined, at least in the west, but it has been going
on for centuries.

IF sometimes atheists get a little testy when yet again
someone goes after their fav. whipping boy- those
awful atheists.... I mean, they gots no morality,no appreciation of nature or beauty, they are just bad!

If atheists get a little testy when someone starts in
again, is that a big surprise?

 

[Punta Piñal]

That has little to nothing to do with social engineering,
but it is a lot of jarg. and gratuitous swipes at atheists, complete with quotation marks for them and their mental capacities.

The viciousness of prejudice against atheists has
declined, at least in the west, but it has been going
on for centuries.

IF sometimes atheists get a little testy when yet again
someone goes after their fav. whipping boy- those
awful atheists.... I mean, they gots no morality,no appreciation of nature or beauty, they are just bad!

If atheists get a little testy when someone starts in
again, is that a big surprise?

If you do not understand the concepts ("jargon") I outlined, then the proverbial ball is in your court. Show an inclination to learn and research anything you do not understand. That is how I learned about those very things. I am interested in the history of ideas, but anyone can learn about it. You also fail to address any of the issues I mentioned, except to read your own agenda into my post, and to skewer my intention(s). Historically, the prejudice against atheists comes from religious people and class elites, for atheism justly threatened the corporatist society. While atheism is an ancient and variegated phenomenon, many prominent atheists since the Enlightenment also propounded economically revolutionary ideas, thus threatening the status quo. Today, however, many of these atheists have become the (class) enemy they originally fought against. I object not to atheism but to atheists' abdication of social responsibility by embracing the interests of the wealthy. Your class-based sensitivity is based on economics, not atheism, and inadvertently or not you play into the hands of atheism's enemies. A lot of American atheists do so. Not as many European atheists fall into the anti-progressive trap.

 

[Ponder This]

"As religious or spiritual, would u blame a homeless person for committing a crime of desperation?"

Yes, of course, but I might also forgive him and I might want to see what can be done to solve the problem. I do not desire to live in a society with lots of homeless people committing 'acts of desperation' all the time.

 

[Punta Piñal]

Audie, I recommend these sources, for starters:

What Would Marx Think about Reactionary 'New Atheists'?

In an 1842 letter, Marx wrote:

religion should be criticised in the framework of criticism of political conditions rather than that political conditions should be criticised in the framework of religion, since this is more in accord with the nature of a newspaper and the educational level of the reading public; for religion in itself is without content, it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition of distorted reality, of which it is the theory, it will collapse of itself.

Finally, I desired that, if there is to be talk about philosophy, there should be less trifling with the label “atheism” (which reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man), and that instead the content of philosophy should be brought to the people. Voilà tout.

Furthermore:

Blunden writes that Marx “opposed the influence of religion in the working class but only as one of any number of forms in which mysticism manifested itself, among which he numbered also the atheism of his day.” In other words, he saw atheists’ ironic obsession with God — the embodiment of the non-material, to which his entire system of historical materialism was opposed — as in the same category as the religious.

Finally:

Marx’s infamous “opium of the masses” quote is so often taken out of context. In context, one sees that Marx understands how religion can offer refuge to the oppressed and exploited:

Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Atheism — disproportionately frequent among the bourgeois, the privileged, the educated — is so often a product of one’s class. If the atheist truly wishes to do away with religion, the atheist should ergo address the material, class basis of religion, not write screeds about how “stupid” and “superstitious” the masses are (as many a New Atheist is wont to do).

Continued:

Ruling-class white male New Atheists have a serious victimhood complex; they constantly complain about how they are supposedly “oppressed” by religious society (but certainly not by capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, or patriarchy). Yet they write for mainstream corporate publications; they work at prestigious institutions or universities; many are household names.

Compared to criticism of capitalism, as Marx writes, atheism is hardly controversial at all.
...

Much to the leftist’s chagrin, the myth that capitalism is “inevitable,” based on “human nature” — or, even worse, on non-human nature — is rampant. Yet such an inane talking point is by no means a new one. The entire modern academic “economics” edifice was constructed upon the work (and therefore upon the ideological, non-scientific, and frankly irresponsible suppositions) of classical liberal economists, many of whom were interested and believed greatly in the notion of an immutable, graspable, perhaps even easily understandable “human nature,” independent of sociocultural and historical context.

Marx wrestled with these thinkers in his day, just as so many scholars today still scoff at the work of bourgeois economists who take as a given that human beings are invariably “rational actors” who act exclusively in their “rational self-interest” in markets with “equal opportunity” and “equal access to information” (not every economist makes these absurd presumptions, but they are the foundation of the neoliberal and neoclassical schools of economics that, although not as prominent as they once were, are still today all the rage; and these axioms are still presented and taught as supposedly incontrovertible concepts in the vast majority of Economics 101 courses).

On the manifold forms of religious apologetics:

My Review of Galileo Goes to Jail

I also have a roomful of books and have read widely since I was but a babe.

 

[Audie]

If you do not understand the concepts ("jargon") I outlined, then the proverbial ball is in your court. Show an inclination to learn and research anything you do not understand. That is how I learned about those very things. I am interested in the history of ideas, but anyone can learn about it. You also fail to address any of the issues I mentioned, except to read your own agenda into my post, and to skewer my intention(s). Historically, the prejudice against atheists comes from religious people and class elites, for atheism justly threatened the corporatist society. While atheism is an ancient and variegated phenomenon, many prominent atheists since the Enlightenment also propounded economically revolutionary ideas, thus threatening the status quo. Today, however, many of these atheists have become the (class) enemy they originally fought against. I object not to atheism but to atheists' abdication of social responsibility by embracing the interests of the wealthy. Your class-based sensitivity is based on economics, not atheism, and inadvertently or not you play into the hands of atheism's enemies. A lot of American atheists do so. Not as many European atheists fall into the anti-progressive trap.

The only thing I dont understand about your buncha jarg is why you want tyo use it As Feynman put it, if you cannot express an idea in plain English, you do no t understand it.

Address the issues that you brought up in non response to what I said, and then ball is in my court? ha.

atheists' abdication of social responsibility

Lovely.

Your class-based sensitivity is based on economics,

Nah. I've been harassed for being an atheist,
had "chink" written on my dorm room door.
Bible belt.

It is annoying but it is not my problem when other
people are bigots, it is theirs. If I am their "class enemy"
it is because they are jealous. Tough.

As for economics, not sensitive at all. I am from the
most capitalist place on earth, and my family has prospered
just fine. I dont flaunt it, but I sure could.

I dont care for American bigotry Back home, being an
atheist is not a topic. Here it can be another matter
altogether.

Elsewhere I recommended Amy Chua's book
World on Fire. Her discussion on the necessiry
for an economic safety net it right on, and
I would agree with it completely.

Oh well. Do we have an actual topic here?