One of the comments I saw elsewhere (more than once) was an appreciation of Olen's honesty in her examination of her own motives. On the surface that examination seems like an admirable thing. But artfully controlled "honesty" can be a very effective weapon when you are actually trying to assert control and express a relative position of power, and I think that that is exactly what Olen was doing. I never felt any genuine vulnerability in her account, just a display of reactions and behaviours for narrative effect. It might be deliberately done, or it might be unconscious; in either case it is an expression of privilege and an assertion of superiority.
"I am a vulnerable, self-reflective person; I am flawed (but interesting). That self-awareness and vulnerability make it okay for me to fire and then publicly trash someone who was in a (relatively) dependent relationship. And transform that trashing into (remunerative) journalism, of course."
enjay, you're right. But it doesn't change my point, which was that direct donation is less helpful than getting them to seek help from an experienced organization.
Xopher, what I take issue with is the implication that giving to an experienced organization is the best/only solution. I think it's important to understand that the population on the street is not a single monolithic entity; there are different components that have different needs, and the services for them may or may not be adequate or even exist. For this reason there is no simple solution to the problem as a whole, or even to the individual question of whether or not to give a panhandler money.
I live in the downtown part of a medium-sized city. Twenty years ago there were hardly any street people; I could walk all over the downtown and it was actually fairly unusual to see a panhandler. Now it's hard to walk a block without being accosted. The estimates in 2004 were that there were up to 1200 people living on the street, and the numbers had doubled in 2-3 years.
A comprehensive survey done by the city in 2001 found that "Symptoms of mental illness appeared from time to time in at least one third of [the street people] found." One of the reasons for this is that there was a decision made in the 1980s to close the big mental institutions. The idea was that community-based support would be a much better solution, and so it would—but the community support never materialized in any kind of meaningful way. These people are not on the street because they are careless with money, and their needs in terms of services are different from those who are unemployed and down on their luck or suffering from addictions. (Although one of the sad consequences of closing the institutions is that many who are mentally ill now also are addicted, because they are very vulnerable to being preyed on by the dealers.)
Also found in the report: "About one-half of those woken said they could not find housing because they have no income. They mentioned that they no longer qualify for social assistance or they have given up because the application process can take weeks or months. Others reported that in the past they qualified for Employment Insurance or student loans, but are no longer eligible. Most rely, at least in part, on recycling things they find in dumpsters and collecting bottles as a source of income."
Those who are simply down on their luck are caught in a catch-22 situation: you can't get social assistance unless you have a fixed address, and you can't get a fixed address unless you have money for a down payment. There are supposed to be mechanisms to solve this problem, but in practice they don't always work and people fall through the cracks.
The same study also found that 2/3 of the population suffered from severe addictions (and I would point out that means that 1/3 don't). This number included those who were unable to access services, some of whom made serious attempts to detox themselves. It takes a long time to get into a detox program (there are very few spaces), and you only get one month of treatment. If you can't kick your habit and set up viable support networks to help you afterwards during that time, you're out of luck.
All of these groups have very different needs (though they may overlap), and the services for them are very limited. The experienced organizations you cite can help with some problems, but not all. There aren't enough shelter beds in the city for all the street people, for example. So yes, I agree that it is important to give to those organizations, and do everything to support them, but that doesn't change the fact that some of the people out there are genuinely hungry. I think it's very important to recognize that, and not simply blow them off with an assumption that their needs can and will be automatically taken care of by charitable and public organizations.
So when it comes to the question of whether to give to panhandlers, there is no simple answer. Giving money to the organizations that help street people is a good thing to do, but what they can do is limited in scope, so it is not a complete solution. It also doesn't help someone who needs food or a roof over their head right now if they have been unable to access the support those organizations give. Giving food or buying someone a coffee is a good thing to do. There is no reason anyone must give money to a panhandler. But I can't always reliably differentiate between those who are going to spend the money on crack and those who are going to buy lunch or pay for a cheap hotel room, so sometimes I do give money to them, and I will continue to do so.
Even if they don't spend it on their next bottle of Night Train, people with wise spending habits don't tend to end up on the street.
People who have no savings (and many who are "working poor" do not earn enough money to have savings) and lose their jobs end up on the street. People whose life savings are ripped off by corporate malfeasance end up on the streets. Families and single mothers with kids end up on the streets. Abused kids end up on the streets. You and yours could very easily end up on the streets if things don't go well for you, and it would have nothing to do with your spending habits.
Teresa: thank you.
Kizmet:
To answer your question about slippery slopes: a slippery slope analogy is considered a fallacy because it asserts that one event must inevitably follow from another, but does not provide any credible evidence to support that belief. You can assert that event B will follow event A, and you might be right or you might be wrong. But if you don't offer clear evidence that one event must follow as a consequence of the other, your assertion is a logical fallacy.
Every society must develop codes by which to live, in order to protect itself. They provide a structure by which individuals within the society can live reasonably safely and securely because the rules are known, predictable, and generally adhered to. Morality is one of the manifestations of these social codes.
When slippery slope arguments are attached to arguments about morality, often part of the argument is that if Event A happens, there will be a movement of the moral line we use to differentiate between good and evil. It is suggested that with that loss of moral stability our society will lose its moral compass altogether, with a consequent breakdown of all moral behaviour. This position sees the movement of moral standards as being the cause of the breakdown of social structure. This seems to me to be the argument you are making when you suggest that accepting someone's wishes regarding being allowed to die under very specifically delineated circumstances is likely to lead to euthanasising the disabled.
The problem with this argument is that it ignores the actual evidence, which is that over centuries moral lines do move as societies change, within the larger social structure. Although individuals and groups at any given time may or may not approve of where those lines end up, the overall social structure remains and there are still rules. For example, there have been groups historically whose morality insisted that allowing mixed race marriage would lead to the breakdown of all social standards and lead to perversions such as incest, but somehow incest is still illegal; moral codes and their expression through law managed to survive. Societies may become more liberal or more conservative, but the structure of morality and laws remains. Although there may be individual circumstances occasionally in which changing one law results in another which is not directly related to it changing as well, there is no evidence to support the assertion that the consequence is guaranteed or even likely.
WRT my suggestion that ignoring Terri Schaivo's wishes in this situation would make it more likely that your wishes would be ignored at some time in the future: I was talking about the results of shifts in power, not shifts in morality. The point I was trying to emphasize was that this would have represented a transfer of power from the individual to an external agency, with consequent reduction of individual power. When power shifts from one agency to another, all relationships change because the ability to make choices or do things changes. These shifts are very complex and usually lead to unexpected, unpredictable and sometimes unfortunate results. Because there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that this is a common occurance (an obvious example is what happens when a change in political parties leads to changes in law), I don't believe that it constitutes a logical fallacy.
WRT to legal precedent,I don't know enough about how it works to have much of an opinion. I think there is a continuum, but legal precedent can't be absolutely rigid in its consequences, or we wouldn't have mixed race marriages, to go back to the earlier example.
I don't know what Enjay's definition of soul is,
The part that engages with life, on whatever level and to whatever degree is possible. I do not include the mechanistic function of the body. To me the body is a shell, not a temple; it deserves respect but not worship.
I don't know if he
She, actually.
One other thing I noticed—Teresa asked what was the spiritual good, what values were being defended in the Schindlers' finding joy in keeping their vegetative daughter's body "alive". You said:
Jesus' strongest words of judgment are for those who say "go and be at peace" to the helpless, starving, imprisoned and naked but do nothing. As I see spiritual good in serving these people not only for themselves but because whatever I do to the least of these, I do to Christ God Himself, I see spiritual good in this situation.
This includes an inherent assumption that there is good being done. In practice the effects of intervention must be evaluated on the merits of the specific case. You (I use the term generically) aren't doing good if you aren't meeting the actual needs of the suffering person. If you allow an individual no agency, you are respecting neither their wishes nor their value as a human, and you might actually be doing them great harm. If that happens the supposed "good" is only a performance of religious work (as opposed to the actuality) which makes you feel good about yourself.
At what point do we as a society say "No. Your life has value to us, despite what you said you wanted at one point."?* Or are the wishes of the person always preeminent?
The wishes of the individual should always be preeminent so long as they are competent. Choosing to end one's life should not necessarily be easy, but it should be possible under certain limited circumstances.
And I would suggest that everyone involved in the discussion go out and rent the movie Johnny Got His Gun (or read the book by Dalton Trumbo).
Kizmet:
I want to preserve it, not because she's going to get better, but because she's alive and there is value in her to me, whether or not she ever speaks another word or she has another thought. Her physical body - not a husk or a shell or whatever other euphemism has been (occasionally disrepectfully) used on this site - has worth. If we only value someone because of their ability to think, is this simply the inverse of only appreciating value of a body?
Your position with regard to the worth of the physical body means that physical life must be maintained even if that means extraordinary suffering for the individual whose life it is, and if the continuation of that life is against their wishes.
In practice this means that the physical life of the body has primacy over the existence of any presence or life other than the purely physical. In effect you are saying that the physical body—its mere existance—trumps what I would call the soul.
Let's say that I have a method of childrearing that is not mainstream or currently approved of by society at large, is frequently misunderstood and taken out of context, may be construed as harmful to a child.
Should my preference rule? Or should a social worker have the right to come in (without warrant, proof, opportunity to face my accusers, or conviction in a court that I'm guilty of a crime) and take my children, hold them in a foster home or other system, until I conform to an approved by the court method of parenting?
You are describing a power struggle between two external agencies holding responsibility for the welfare of an individual who is not considered practically or legally competent to make all decisions for themselves before they reach their majority. This is not equivalent to the situation of a legally competent individual who has made her wishes known.
When decision-making power is taken away from a legally competent individual, it is very easy to shift its location from an agency you approve of to one you don't, because it normalizes the transfer of power from the individual to any external agency. If Terri Schaivo's wishes had been ignored in this situation it would have made it much more likely that yours would be ignored in some other situtation in the future.
Just a few more thoughts to throw into the mix...
Over the last few decades obsessive self examination has become a cultural industry: what am I doing? why did I do it? what in my past set me up for this? where is my inner child? Nothing just happens; there is always a reason for it.
Along with this belief in root causes there seems to be developing in parallel (especially in the last 20 years) a belief that the root cause is always Someone Else's Fault. Well, it would have to be, wouldn't it? Because everything is Someone's fault, after all, so if it wasn't Theirs it would have to be Mine.
Align this belief in culpability with the fact that most of the issues around child-rearing come down to responsibility. Responsibility is learned; kids aren't automatically responsible, they have to be taught to be so. There's lots of variance in terms of where responsibility (adult or child) is considered to begin and end.
The intersection between the conviction of culpability and the assignment of responsibility is bound to be a flashpoint. Mothers seem to be at fault an awful lot of the time, I must say; whether you stay at home or go out to work, you can't win. Perhaps that's a cultural industry too.
Tort reform: never having to pay your victims.
Many, many familiar books whose recommendations I would second.... ah, for endless time (and money).
I don't think anyone has mentioned Candas Dorsey. I haven't read all her stuff, mostly because I haven't found it, but I very much enjoyed Black Wine (a Tiptree winner) and A Paradigm of Earth.
The Family in Baghdad site also links to the blog of Raed, another son. This is the same Raed from Salam Pax's "Where Is Raed?" blog.
` with my first example shot down so neatly, and I don't suppose V*nn* B*nt* counts either, I still contend that, as with most things, there are women who do it too.
Although I would agree that most offenders are likely young and male, I have argued with women whose online arguments are abusive and confontational. At least one is also extremely intelligent, well-educated and articulate. I know they are woman, and old enough to know better, because I have also met them face to face.
They make an obviously deliberate choice to be offensive (in both senses of the word) in argument. Perhaps it is because they have so little respect for their opponents that they can't be bothered to engage in civil discourse.
I have come to believe, however, that some people do it because they find it amusing. For them, nastiness is the point of the game, rather than a by-product.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 7 |
| 2004 | 4 |
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