I’m learning. That’s for sure. People have passionate responses to this subject. Especially people who are homeless. The psychological experience that supersedes and subsedes the experience is illuminating to me. I knew I was missing the details of individual experiences. I have never ever ever lost my home to circumstance and no addiction has ever taken me. How can I have compassion for the individual experience if I don’t know the experience? I think this is where the line is on ambivalence towards homelessness (at least those who don’t want to be a homehaver).
I have found that compassion has to be a large piece of it. If one chooses that homeless people don’t have feelings, then the whole picture is missing completely. It’s a human experience. There’s a large online community of homeless people telling their stories.
The shunning of the homeless from the homehavers can really be crushing.
In my next post, I will be outlining my process of thinking to show how it’s evolved on homelessness. I suspect that it reveals a hierarchical matrix of thinking where more information leads to higher levels of thinking. I also suspect that others on the homehaver side fit into this matrix at different levels depending upon how much awareness they have.
Stay tuned. This has potential to change the conversation. Instead of going back and forth with someone on how to proceed with a helping homeless policy, we can stop the discussion and say, “Listen, right now, you are on level 2 thinking and you more need information. Once you get this info and have some time to absorb, let’s talk again.”
I seem to lose compassion as well. Some people are born predisposed to alcoholism. It “runs in families”. The drinking is what causes the homelessness. Living on the streets can cause non-alcoholics to drink, to stay warm, as a form of escapism, but won’t turn them into alcoholics. Drugs are more from a free choice, as is gambling, and other addictions. Once addicted extremely hard to break them.
That’s not an expert opinion, just my observation. It’s nice that your daughter’s are learning compassion. I have a problem feeling comassion for people that sell their foodstamps, to have cash for crack cocaine. Then “cry” because they are hungry. If anyone gives you an expert opinion on that one, I’d really like to hear it.