Tent Cities In America Today
I would like to directly put a photo here of the tent city in Sacramento, California, which now reportedly has over 1200 “residents.” However, the images are copyrighted by Getty (among others) and they are well known for suing people for using their images.
So instead, I’m linking to the website of a radio station in Sacramento which has published the photographs (I’m assuming, with permission.) Reportedly, this is not the only tent city which has sprung up in our country of late; I have also heard this morning of one in Northern Ohio and I’m sure there are more.
Don’t write in and try to say those people want to be there or they deserve this. I’m relatively speechless and completely appalled. We are supposed to be more civilized than this, aren’t we? This is no longer “urban myth,” folks. Look at the photos, and think hard about the priorities of this country.
I’ve got nothing more to say except this directly contradicts the American “conservative” idea that people are living well on welfare and blah blah blah. (Of course, in general, the majority of conservatives in my opinion are not living in a reality based world anyway.)
No, you “conservative” jerks, people on welfare are living in tents. We’d better get this “we’re all in this together” thing figured out pretty quickly, or I’d imagine we’re going to see a lot more of this appalling crap.
I was all set to try to share something uplifting this morning…instead I’m sharing a piece of reality. Sorry.
God help us, and God help the people being forced to live like that. Furthermore, how do WE help them? As in, today?
Tipsy Dazy
Reality is ok as are the feeling(s) that may come with it. It seems the local community “should”, idealistically, be helping. We here, however, live in a culture indoctrinated with the idea that the government or some organization, corporate or otherwise, will make the ugliness go away. Indeed.
And so with like thoughts in mind I think a multitude of people are caught up in the machine of our time whereby we are disconnected from our fellow man by an unfeeling corporate body of rules posing as humane. Hammurabis Code, it ain’t.
Combine the legal environment with the general environment of selfish, non-consderation and you have an empty answer to such things as tent cities, which have been growing for some time as you are aware.
The European Union has a principal of subsidiarity which is “an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralised competent authority.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
How do WE help them? As in, today? Honey I got enough time and money challenge to take care of my own small matters. Why should I fell overwhelmed and guilty…AND responsible, for all the humanity in the various far and near regions of the world? The local community, in a humane world, would help these folk. But alas, probably time and money, with the weight on time, are probably against it.
On the bright side, eventually, (a prediction and a forward looking thought) this machine that feeds upon mankind’s inner resources by promising peace, joy and fulfillment through and by satiating man with material and egotistical desires, this system of ideas will eventually be known by human beings to be non-fulfilling in itself of man’s desires and man will, hopefully move into a space where what is common between men will be discovered and known and where one does not seek to profit at the expense of another but where service is rendered for service out of one’s own abilities and perceived inequality through money wealth or status is rendered null and void. In that kind of world these folk could most likely find “employment” of their talents and abilities.
Meanwhile, the unit of value we place in money may continue to serve to hamper us all from truly helping and touching our fellow human beings and meeting their needs through what we could offer from our own substance and abilities.
But, sadly and horribly, I have NO idea how directly to help these people but if I were there…and had the time…and the resources….
Admin
It would seem to me (at least at surface level) that if people on welfare are having to live in tents out of necessity then the welfare system in the US is woefully inadequate.
Ms. Sanity
Hi Tipsy thanks for joining in. I think you make some excellent and interesting points.
The concept of Subsidiarity is, I think, a good one, and will work splendidly in most areas of modern life; the availability of health care being in my opinion a notable exception.
I don’t think that we are meant to feel guilty or overwhelmed about people living in tents, in the US or elsewhere, but perhaps we are meant to feel a little responsible for whatever is happening, wherever, to our fellow humans, as we are all in this together. I’m sure that you do feel that way.
I guess the only thing I know for sure about this “tent city” issue is that it will not get solved or go away by being hidden or ignored, which is the way such things have typically been dealt with by the so-called news media for the last decade or so (at least.)
Sometimes I think the only way that we can directly help people is to be aware of their situations, “send them good energy,” and agitate/advocate for them when and where we can. Even that, which can feel like “nothing,” IS something.
I agree with you that money and our current (to overgeneralize) obsession with it does stand in the way of truly helping each other.
I also agree that someday people will see that prosperity is NOT a zero sum game (e.g. I get rich at YOUR expense…) that it is possible for us to enrich each other, etc.
But feeling guilty helps nothing and I doubt that’s why Serene put that post up…
You made me think, thanks!
Tipsy Dazy
Dear Ms. Sanity,
Firstly, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that Serene intended a guilt trip for those of us with more amenities. Not at all.
That was more of a personal comment on my frustration or feeling of helplessness when I am presented gut wrenching stories of such things as distant tent cities, distant starving children, distant cancer victims etc., and I am told I should feel better by sending money.
I don’t know why but that tends to make me feel both guilty and angry. Guilty that I am a part of a human race where these things can even go on and angry that they use what I guess I might term “morally mandated compassion” to induce people to get on the phone with their credit card. I think that it is a dark and gnawing, emptying and stealing deception to tell people they are doing something personally rewarding for themselves by buying off their fellow man in that respect. I also think it takes away from man’s ability to exercise his true thinking, feeling, creative and life giving flow to whip out a credit card and send $20 a month to be rewarded with a photo of a child in India.
By some accounts, I may be jaded. Although it is my personal belief and feeling that we need a human touch amongst and between our fellow man in order to truly help them and to truly know and feel we have helped them as well as to help and advance the human race and to lift it beyond the current and pervasive stream of thought that money and technology and science, without an accompanying warmth of heart, can solve all our problems.
I believe this general (cold…my opinion) and corporate and politically indoctrinated thought process may really serve to promote a feeling of distrust and therefore a (false) division and remoteness between men.
It doesn’t take a far reaching glance to see this distrust and personal remoteness in much of today’s world environment. This is true tragedy in a race with as much potential as the human race, a race WITH reason but which presently, isn’t a race OF reason. (And I can’t remember who said that)
I mean, how much am I really showing or maybe more importantly, experiencing that I care by sending a some of money to a need? Sending money involves little or no truly personal time, no personal committment and no personal involvement. My true involvement was likley my profession or occupation for which I exchange my labor and time for units of money. How (typically) unrewarding is this considering the majority of people are exchanging work for money, not because they feel a personal connection to the work they do?
But I think I may have digressed a bit.
For instance, (and this is a very narrow and limited example) how much more grateful and human do I and my family in need stand to feel if you welcome us to your home for a meal and I and my family share and experience the warmth of your home and the kindness of conversation than if you toss $100 into my beggars cup? And again, how much more continual aliveness may someone who welcomes a tent city family to their home feel than someone who writes a check to a faceless organization that promises to use the money to provide necessities to people who’s personalities will never come alive for them and never affect them? And in a barter of service for service (something often frowned on in America because the IRS demands tax value on most exchanges), the tent city family may indeed have something to offer an assisting family so that all are mutually served. Of course what I have expressed here is not very articulate, but woefully inadequate, nor is it meant to suggest I can or should support another family, that it is not possible to be “taken” etc., but is only meant to suggest a tone of mutual recognition among human beings which could begin to more fully satisfy fully human needs which I believe any honest soul would acknowledge range far beyond the material while also including the material.
Here is a parting thought:
Health and wholesomeness only come
when in the mirror of the soul of man
the whole community takes shape;
and in the community lives
the strength of every single soul.
From a little book called “Finding the Greater Self”, which is a series of translated meditations from Rudolf Steiner.
PCH
It’s just a thought…
Isn’t that just what a government and/or corporate America wants? Lack of cohesion and/or division means more easily controlled.
Ms. Sanity
I think you’re both right, PCH and Tipsy. The divisiveness and the “just throw money at the problem” is both wrong/false AND exactly what the government and the big multi national corps want.
They NEED us to be easily controlled… there’s a heck of a lot more people than there are “controllers,” so… they have a vested interest in the status quo.
One day this human race will have a much deeper understanding of community a la Steiner, but (cynic though I may be) I’ll be shocked if it happens in my lifetime.
On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly where the economic catastrophe is leading us. To the understanding that we are all in this together.
Tipsy Dazy
Yeah, interesting how money has come to the forefront of our vision as such a “unifying” social force.
Makes me think of a quote from a famous text that the love of money is the root of all evil.
Meanwhile you’ve got people like Bill Gates globe trotting and promoting chipping human beings. Google “VeriChip” along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.