WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Something Wonderful: How to Hijack Amazon “Prime Now” for Good
byVanderleunonDecember 13, 2017
Inspired.
More Information at:Amazon Prime Now. This link shows you where this service is available by zip code. The video shows you how via “Special Instructions.”
Touching. However, in the (former) U.S., people living on the street are almost all either mentally ill or addicts. A small percentage are con artists, but that is far more common in Europe than in North America. While getting these folks shod and into warm clothes is meet and just, what really needs to happen is re-establishing the paradigm of mental hospitals/asylums, which today would also include detox facilities. And the government should be kept as far away from these people as possible.
RickDecember 13, 2017, 12:50 PM
Where exactly is it that the homeless have to go without shoes? What city exists that doesn’t have dozens of churches and free stores set up for the express purpose of helping the “homeless?” Charity is no longer enough if they have to walk a few blocks to get it, now it has to be delivered?
bgarrettDecember 13, 2017, 1:53 PM
Sorry, but I believe most homeless are homeless by choice and are scammers. Giving them things rewards their behaviour.
GordonDecember 13, 2017, 3:26 PM
I agree, bgarrett. But people want to help. A backpack, some socks, long johns: these are not going to be traded for booze or drugs. And who knows? Once in a while, you just might help someone that really needs it.
Some folks living on the streets do lose everything–their sleeping bag, their clothes, whatever they have, because someone steals it, or perhaps their camp is cleaned out by the authorities. Clean outs have to be done; those camps are dangerous to everyone. But it really sucks to lose your basic stuff. And the gift of a sleeping bag–well, it means a warm night instead of a cold one.
Yeah, there’s a lot of scammers. And others who choose to be there. And it’s okay to be nice, even to them, in a non-harmful way, now and then.
VanderleunDecember 13, 2017, 3:38 PM
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
I felt free like that for a half a minute today. Let’s see, why was I feeling free…? Oh yeah. Other than my family, and God, I have no direct supervisor.
Hobos have no supervisor. No one to tell: “shove it!” No one to hear from about production, HR, diversity, customer service. Freedom, baby!
It’d be nice if a one-on-one helping hand could work once in a while. Ever try to talk to the mentally ill? Good luck with that.
Maybe the drugs/alcohol are actually just self-medication. Maybe that pair of shoes, sold on the black market, will pay for medicating that guy, tonight.
Jaded. That’s me.
Except I believe God does give something to the lost and poor beggars. I just don’t know his methods. A little unsure about Amazon, though…
Local churches are stuffed full of clothes, socks not so much (like underwear, its personal). Not many shoes either. But if you give a bum a new pair, he will sell it.
Rob De WittDecember 13, 2017, 8:49 PM
There’s something desperately creepy about this whole thing. I want to feel good about myself, but I don’t want to do anything but thumb my cellphone….
Oh what a good boy am I.
ghostsniperDecember 14, 2017, 4:06 AM
What is this, a narcissistic publicity stunt by a white privilege victim trying to assuage his guilt?
Eyeballz iz reel and everything virtual is, well, virtually fake.
Pushing button iz not pressing the flesh.
Get out there and cohabitate with some, um, peepz.
JoyfulDecember 14, 2017, 5:50 AM
Seems like a “win” for all parties: Amazon, product maker, delivery person, giver and receiver.
I get y’all… many, maybe most beggers and homeless are there by choice (it’s the streets or the psych hospital that is no longer open, they refuse family aide or exhausted their goodwill) but in that moment, when only you and God know what you think youre seeing, it matters not how they got there or why. It matters not how i became wealthy enough to be able to afford to buy stranger a sleeping bag or pair of socks without it denting the budget.
God knows our secrets and our reasons. As long as we are willing to stand for them when it matters does it matter.
MMinLamesaDecember 14, 2017, 6:28 AM
I know Bezos is a Master of the Universe-Amazon is a cut throat business looking to dominate the world and I’m hardly exaggerating. He bought the WaPo, once one of the most respected newspapers in the country, to give him political cover for his nightmare policies that don’t give a shit about us pee-ons. Yeah I get all that.
But and there’s that but, I have dealt with Amazon customer service over the many years and it is truly Grade A. Fact is here in w Texas, even the Big City I occasionally hit(Midland) is sorely lacking. Amazon isn’t.
One more thing, I hardly ever see panhandlers here. If you’re in w Texas and you’re not working, it’s because you don’t want to. Everyone takes a wrong turn and sure, I might give one $10 and he’ll use it to medicate, can’t help that, but to continue down the wrong path is a choice.
SuburbanbansheeDecember 14, 2017, 6:45 AM
If you often see homeless people or other people who seem down on their luck and not properly dressed for the weather, it’s pretty simple to carry an extra hat or scarf or pair of gloves in your stuff.
(Of course, some of us do this during the winter because we have a tendency to lose gloves and hats that makes three year olds look good…. But since we have them along, we can act on the observation. And since we live in a world with cheap decent gloves and hats, it’s not onerous.)
Kauf BuchDecember 14, 2017, 6:51 AM
Meh. Christmas Season notwithstanding…
HALF of those “homeless”
look like they were simply
too f’ing lazy to get a real job.
Handouts merely *encourage/reward* that behavior.
GordonDecember 14, 2017, 8:09 AM
Actually, one of the interesting things is that “special instructions” are actually noticed by the delivery people. I’ve done that on deliveries to the house, and the drivers pretty much ignore “put the box inside the porch door.” And don’t get me started on Domino’s Pizza. I have to get pizza delivered to retail stores now and then, and if I put “Ask for the XXX company people” on the order, it will be ignored in 30 minutes or less.
All that and my previous comments, it should be noted: Some guy, well-groomed, sitting on the sidewalk in winter in bare feet? That is a scam. It’s just like the guy who kicks himself around in his stolen wheelchair. People who need wheelchairs know how to operate them, and know it takes less energy to do hands on wheels than kicking the ground.
One store I serviced in a very trendy, upscale neighborhood, featured a guy, looked about 65 or so. He stood on the sidewalk next to the store, held a modest sign asking for “help.” He was there every day. Then one day, I’m walking into the store, and I see Mr. Panhandler driving through the lot in a very late model Camry. I mentioned it to the manager, who knew well who I was talking about. I haven’t seen Camry Man since.
PunditarianDecember 14, 2017, 8:47 AM
There is a tension here between wanting to act compassionately towards a distressed person, on the one hand, and wanting to avoid incentivizing non-skillful, counter-productive behavior. I admit that’s a difficult, narrow path to walk.
The charitable encounter, in which one person responds to another person’s expressed need, offers something to both sides. The softening of the heart, even the breaking of the heart, of the giver, may be more valuable to him than the filling of the belly of the recipient.
We have heard it was the custom of the Elders of the Jewish community in Vilna to present new legislation to Rabbi Eliyahu for his review. They once crafted a regulation restricting the areas in which beggars could operate. He did not send them a comment. After some weeks, the story goes, they asked him why not, and he replied that it was his responsibility to comment only on new laws, whereas this one was already old – it was “the law of Sodom.” The Sages traditionally held that one of the sins of Sodom was its laws against giving charity.
The Talmud reports that the Roman governor Turnus Rufus challenged Rabbi Akiva, asking if God loved the poor, why God did not support them. Akiva replied that the purpose was that through giving charity to them, the givers could be saved from the judgment of hellfire. (Bava Batra 10b)
There is also a legend that the Messiah is hidden among a crowd of beggars at the gates of Rome, distinguished from them because they change and clean their bandages all at once, whilst he changes his bandages one at a time, in order to be ready. (Sanhedrin 98a).
Beginning with the totalitarian philosopher Plato, almost all socialist states have outlawed begging as a form of “parasitism.” I think that beggars in the Soviet Union, if caught, were transported to work camps.
So the difference between the supposedly compassionate left-wing workers’ paradise on the one hand, and the harsh, cold, cruel capitalist hell, on the other hand, is that under socialism, beggars are imprisoned and enslaved to the State, but in a free market, free people are free directly to address the express needs of their fellows.
I’m wondering if the prescription that we are to give to the distressed is not one of the features that characterizes Judeo-Christian civilization, and distinguishes it from other cultures.
The Masons promise to give charitably to those who are deserving, and I think we are allowed (even required) to make some sort of judgment in order to avoid giving to fraudulent organizations and individuals, but the underlying impulse should always be to help.
Your mileage may vary.
Kauf BuchDecember 15, 2017, 7:00 AM
TO Punditarian
It’s the whole “voluntary vs mandatory” schtick.
Laying on the Guilt Trip to pressure people to do so (“you don’t caaare!”) is immoral as well.
But this whole “Be Compassionate Über Alles” CR*P enrages me…
…MORE than “You’re a SCROOGE if you don’t” (though they’re the two sides of the same coin).
PunditarianDecember 15, 2017, 8:24 AM
Thanks, Kauf Buch. You may be right.
Real charity can be only voluntary. Using the threat of violence to take away Peter’s property to give it to Paul is not charity. Giving because you feel pressured or coerced is not charity. Different communities have different guidelines. In Islam, there is a principle of zakat, which means giving 2.5% of one’s income annually. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, 10% is usually cited as a tithe, since that is the amount that the people were expected to give over to the Temple. In Arabic, zakat, and in Hebrew, tzedoko, are considered more or less obligatory, and something like a tax. I think the idea is to accustom a person to give, so that the actions gradually wear away the hardening and bitterness of the heart. Sort of like the idea of cognitive dissonance. That is, the mind will gradually come into harmony with the actions that are performed. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the cultivation of generosity, of giving without thinking about any return, are also encouraged.
One might argue that these traditions simply encourage passive acquiescence to taking, and that a beggar’s sometimes aggressive panhandling, which may include a veiled threat of violence, is in fact a form of taking. And that the admonitions to give simply serve to enable taking by the church or by the ruling power. That could be. But it might be that these traditions help create a community that is more pleasant to live in, for all.
I am thinking here about St Martin and his cloak, which became a relic carried into battle for the French king. Or the story about the man who gave his cloak to a shivering beggar, but then later beat the beggar for having sold the cloak he had been given.
The contrast in any case is with socialism, which seeks to eradicate the charitable impulse. The State is supposed to supply all the benefits of life to its subjects, and private charity is thus a challenge to the adequacy and legitimacy of the State. Private charitable institutions are extincted in thoroughgoing communist societies, but even in the semi-socialist States of the EU, which uphold a folk-marxist ideal and ethos, charitable giving and charitable associations of freely associating individuals don’t come close to approaching what is still done in the US.
Kauf BuchDecember 15, 2017, 12:57 PM
TO Punditarian
I posted this in the thread above, but it *directly* responds to what you wrote here:
“…being “against compassion” is EXACTLY the Leftist “rationalization” (sic) process which allows them to follow up with, “therefore, I’ll MAKE you ‘care’ by having the Government *force* to you to contribute…via an endless number and variety of degenerate social programs which I, the morally superior one, deem to be necessary and good”.
Look: I’m 1st generation American. From (1939 fleeing) European parents. I know the Communist fate/reality my relatives LIVED until 1991. I KNOW the reality the Left in America wants; it is NO different…and this CORRUPT “compassion” angle is just another tool in their bag of tricks. REAL compassion is ONLY voluntary, and we get enough SINCERE “calls” for it elsewhere. FORGET this “give a bum a backpack and shoes and he’ll be betterI’ll be able to pat myself on the back for moral signalling which doesn’t give a hoot whether or not that bum is a parasite and I’m encouraging MORE of that nonsense, or if he’s really in need (even though I 99% suspect he’ll just keep on grifting as long as he can get away with being a parasite).
Kauf BuchDecember 15, 2017, 12:58 PM
TO Punditarian
I posted this in the thread above, but it *directly* responds to what you wrote here:
“…being “against compassion” is EXACTLY the Leftist “rationalization” (sic) process which allows them to follow up with, “therefore, I’ll MAKE you ‘care’ by having the Government *force* to you to contribute…via an endless number and variety of degenerate social programs which I, the morally superior one, deem to be necessary and good”.
Look: I’m 1st generation American. From (1939 fleeing) European parents. I know the Communist fate/reality my relatives LIVED until 1991. I KNOW the reality the Left in America wants; it is NO different…and this CORRUPT “compassion” angle is just another tool in their bag of tricks.
REAL compassion is ONLY voluntary, and we get enough SINCERE “calls” for it elsewhere. FORGET this “give a bum a backpack and shoes and he’ll be betterI’ll be able to pat myself on the back for moral signalling which doesn’t give a hoot whether or not that bum is a parasite and I’m encouraging MORE of that nonsense, or if he’s really in need (even though I 99% suspect he’ll just keep on begging as long as he can get away with being a bum).
Kauf BuchDecember 15, 2017, 1:01 PM
TO Punditarian
Sorry, I’m trying to respond to your post, but I keep getting CENSORED!
PLEASE see my latest post at the thread above this one, called “Against Compassion”! HA!
Kauf BuchDecember 15, 2017, 1:02 PM
TO Punditarian
I’m 1st generation American. From (1939 fleeing) European parents. I know the Communist fate/reality my relatives LIVED until 1991. I KNOW the reality the Left in America wants; it is NO different…and this CORRUPT “compassion” angle is just another tool in their bag of tricks. REAL compassion is ONLY voluntary, and we get enough SINCERE “calls” for it elsewhere. FORGET this “give a bum a backpack and shoes and he’ll be betterI’ll be able to pat myself on the back for moral signalling which doesn’t give a hoot whether or not that bum is a parasite and I’m encouraging MORE of that nonsense, or if he’s really in need (even though I 99% suspect he’ll just keep on grifting as long as he can get away with being a parasite).
PunditarianDecember 15, 2017, 1:09 PM
Hi Kauf Buch, very kind of you to point me to your other response, I will try to have something intelligent to say over there. Cheers!
PunditarianDecember 15, 2017, 4:39 PM
Hi Kauf Buch, I think that what you are saying, at least as I understand it, is correct.
DrTedNelsonDecember 16, 2017, 9:09 AM
Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain’t got no cigarettes
Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I’m a man of means by no means, king of the road.
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
Touching. However, in the (former) U.S., people living on the street are almost all either mentally ill or addicts. A small percentage are con artists, but that is far more common in Europe than in North America. While getting these folks shod and into warm clothes is meet and just, what really needs to happen is re-establishing the paradigm of mental hospitals/asylums, which today would also include detox facilities. And the government should be kept as far away from these people as possible.
Where exactly is it that the homeless have to go without shoes? What city exists that doesn’t have dozens of churches and free stores set up for the express purpose of helping the “homeless?” Charity is no longer enough if they have to walk a few blocks to get it, now it has to be delivered?
Sorry, but I believe most homeless are homeless by choice and are scammers. Giving them things rewards their behaviour.
I agree, bgarrett. But people want to help. A backpack, some socks, long johns: these are not going to be traded for booze or drugs. And who knows? Once in a while, you just might help someone that really needs it.
Some folks living on the streets do lose everything–their sleeping bag, their clothes, whatever they have, because someone steals it, or perhaps their camp is cleaned out by the authorities. Clean outs have to be done; those camps are dangerous to everyone. But it really sucks to lose your basic stuff. And the gift of a sleeping bag–well, it means a warm night instead of a cold one.
Yeah, there’s a lot of scammers. And others who choose to be there. And it’s okay to be nice, even to them, in a non-harmful way, now and then.
Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you’d better lift your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal
I felt free like that for a half a minute today. Let’s see, why was I feeling free…? Oh yeah. Other than my family, and God, I have no direct supervisor.
Hobos have no supervisor. No one to tell: “shove it!” No one to hear from about production, HR, diversity, customer service. Freedom, baby!
It’d be nice if a one-on-one helping hand could work once in a while. Ever try to talk to the mentally ill? Good luck with that.
Maybe the drugs/alcohol are actually just self-medication. Maybe that pair of shoes, sold on the black market, will pay for medicating that guy, tonight.
Jaded. That’s me.
Except I believe God does give something to the lost and poor beggars. I just don’t know his methods. A little unsure about Amazon, though…
Love that Bob Dylan lyric.
Local churches are stuffed full of clothes, socks not so much (like underwear, its personal). Not many shoes either. But if you give a bum a new pair, he will sell it.
There’s something desperately creepy about this whole thing. I want to feel good about myself, but I don’t want to do anything but thumb my cellphone….
Oh what a good boy am I.
What is this, a narcissistic publicity stunt by a white privilege victim trying to assuage his guilt?
Eyeballz iz reel and everything virtual is, well, virtually fake.
Pushing button iz not pressing the flesh.
Get out there and cohabitate with some, um, peepz.
Seems like a “win” for all parties: Amazon, product maker, delivery person, giver and receiver.
I get y’all… many, maybe most beggers and homeless are there by choice (it’s the streets or the psych hospital that is no longer open, they refuse family aide or exhausted their goodwill) but in that moment, when only you and God know what you think youre seeing, it matters not how they got there or why. It matters not how i became wealthy enough to be able to afford to buy stranger a sleeping bag or pair of socks without it denting the budget.
God knows our secrets and our reasons. As long as we are willing to stand for them when it matters does it matter.
I know Bezos is a Master of the Universe-Amazon is a cut throat business looking to dominate the world and I’m hardly exaggerating. He bought the WaPo, once one of the most respected newspapers in the country, to give him political cover for his nightmare policies that don’t give a shit about us pee-ons. Yeah I get all that.
But and there’s that but, I have dealt with Amazon customer service over the many years and it is truly Grade A. Fact is here in w Texas, even the Big City I occasionally hit(Midland) is sorely lacking. Amazon isn’t.
One more thing, I hardly ever see panhandlers here. If you’re in w Texas and you’re not working, it’s because you don’t want to. Everyone takes a wrong turn and sure, I might give one $10 and he’ll use it to medicate, can’t help that, but to continue down the wrong path is a choice.
If you often see homeless people or other people who seem down on their luck and not properly dressed for the weather, it’s pretty simple to carry an extra hat or scarf or pair of gloves in your stuff.
(Of course, some of us do this during the winter because we have a tendency to lose gloves and hats that makes three year olds look good…. But since we have them along, we can act on the observation. And since we live in a world with cheap decent gloves and hats, it’s not onerous.)
Meh. Christmas Season notwithstanding…
HALF of those “homeless”
look like they were simply
too f’ing lazy to get a real job.
Handouts merely *encourage/reward* that behavior.
Actually, one of the interesting things is that “special instructions” are actually noticed by the delivery people. I’ve done that on deliveries to the house, and the drivers pretty much ignore “put the box inside the porch door.” And don’t get me started on Domino’s Pizza. I have to get pizza delivered to retail stores now and then, and if I put “Ask for the XXX company people” on the order, it will be ignored in 30 minutes or less.
All that and my previous comments, it should be noted: Some guy, well-groomed, sitting on the sidewalk in winter in bare feet? That is a scam. It’s just like the guy who kicks himself around in his stolen wheelchair. People who need wheelchairs know how to operate them, and know it takes less energy to do hands on wheels than kicking the ground.
One store I serviced in a very trendy, upscale neighborhood, featured a guy, looked about 65 or so. He stood on the sidewalk next to the store, held a modest sign asking for “help.” He was there every day. Then one day, I’m walking into the store, and I see Mr. Panhandler driving through the lot in a very late model Camry. I mentioned it to the manager, who knew well who I was talking about. I haven’t seen Camry Man since.
There is a tension here between wanting to act compassionately towards a distressed person, on the one hand, and wanting to avoid incentivizing non-skillful, counter-productive behavior. I admit that’s a difficult, narrow path to walk.
The charitable encounter, in which one person responds to another person’s expressed need, offers something to both sides. The softening of the heart, even the breaking of the heart, of the giver, may be more valuable to him than the filling of the belly of the recipient.
We have heard it was the custom of the Elders of the Jewish community in Vilna to present new legislation to Rabbi Eliyahu for his review. They once crafted a regulation restricting the areas in which beggars could operate. He did not send them a comment. After some weeks, the story goes, they asked him why not, and he replied that it was his responsibility to comment only on new laws, whereas this one was already old – it was “the law of Sodom.” The Sages traditionally held that one of the sins of Sodom was its laws against giving charity.
The Talmud reports that the Roman governor Turnus Rufus challenged Rabbi Akiva, asking if God loved the poor, why God did not support them. Akiva replied that the purpose was that through giving charity to them, the givers could be saved from the judgment of hellfire. (Bava Batra 10b)
There is also a legend that the Messiah is hidden among a crowd of beggars at the gates of Rome, distinguished from them because they change and clean their bandages all at once, whilst he changes his bandages one at a time, in order to be ready. (Sanhedrin 98a).
Beginning with the totalitarian philosopher Plato, almost all socialist states have outlawed begging as a form of “parasitism.” I think that beggars in the Soviet Union, if caught, were transported to work camps.
So the difference between the supposedly compassionate left-wing workers’ paradise on the one hand, and the harsh, cold, cruel capitalist hell, on the other hand, is that under socialism, beggars are imprisoned and enslaved to the State, but in a free market, free people are free directly to address the express needs of their fellows.
I’m wondering if the prescription that we are to give to the distressed is not one of the features that characterizes Judeo-Christian civilization, and distinguishes it from other cultures.
The Masons promise to give charitably to those who are deserving, and I think we are allowed (even required) to make some sort of judgment in order to avoid giving to fraudulent organizations and individuals, but the underlying impulse should always be to help.
Your mileage may vary.
TO Punditarian
It’s the whole “voluntary vs mandatory” schtick.
Laying on the Guilt Trip to pressure people to do so (“you don’t caaare!”) is immoral as well.
But this whole “Be Compassionate Über Alles” CR*P enrages me…
…MORE than “You’re a SCROOGE if you don’t” (though they’re the two sides of the same coin).
Thanks, Kauf Buch. You may be right.
Real charity can be only voluntary. Using the threat of violence to take away Peter’s property to give it to Paul is not charity. Giving because you feel pressured or coerced is not charity. Different communities have different guidelines. In Islam, there is a principle of zakat, which means giving 2.5% of one’s income annually. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, 10% is usually cited as a tithe, since that is the amount that the people were expected to give over to the Temple. In Arabic, zakat, and in Hebrew, tzedoko, are considered more or less obligatory, and something like a tax. I think the idea is to accustom a person to give, so that the actions gradually wear away the hardening and bitterness of the heart. Sort of like the idea of cognitive dissonance. That is, the mind will gradually come into harmony with the actions that are performed. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the cultivation of generosity, of giving without thinking about any return, are also encouraged.
One might argue that these traditions simply encourage passive acquiescence to taking, and that a beggar’s sometimes aggressive panhandling, which may include a veiled threat of violence, is in fact a form of taking. And that the admonitions to give simply serve to enable taking by the church or by the ruling power. That could be. But it might be that these traditions help create a community that is more pleasant to live in, for all.
I am thinking here about St Martin and his cloak, which became a relic carried into battle for the French king. Or the story about the man who gave his cloak to a shivering beggar, but then later beat the beggar for having sold the cloak he had been given.
The contrast in any case is with socialism, which seeks to eradicate the charitable impulse. The State is supposed to supply all the benefits of life to its subjects, and private charity is thus a challenge to the adequacy and legitimacy of the State. Private charitable institutions are extincted in thoroughgoing communist societies, but even in the semi-socialist States of the EU, which uphold a folk-marxist ideal and ethos, charitable giving and charitable associations of freely associating individuals don’t come close to approaching what is still done in the US.
TO Punditarian
I posted this in the thread above, but it *directly* responds to what you wrote here:
“…being “against compassion” is EXACTLY the Leftist “rationalization” (sic) process which allows them to follow up with, “therefore, I’ll MAKE you ‘care’ by having the Government *force* to you to contribute…via an endless number and variety of degenerate social programs which I, the morally superior one, deem to be necessary and good”.
Look: I’m 1st generation American. From (1939 fleeing) European parents. I know the Communist fate/reality my relatives LIVED until 1991. I KNOW the reality the Left in America wants; it is NO different…and this CORRUPT “compassion” angle is just another tool in their bag of tricks. REAL compassion is ONLY voluntary, and we get enough SINCERE “calls” for it elsewhere. FORGET this “give a bum a backpack and shoes and
he’ll be betterI’ll be able to pat myself on the back for moral signalling which doesn’t give a hoot whether or not that bum is a parasite and I’m encouraging MORE of that nonsense, or if he’s really in need (even though I 99% suspect he’ll just keep on grifting as long as he can get away with being a parasite).TO Punditarian
I posted this in the thread above, but it *directly* responds to what you wrote here:
“…being “against compassion” is EXACTLY the Leftist “rationalization” (sic) process which allows them to follow up with, “therefore, I’ll MAKE you ‘care’ by having the Government *force* to you to contribute…via an endless number and variety of degenerate social programs which I, the morally superior one, deem to be necessary and good”.
Look: I’m 1st generation American. From (1939 fleeing) European parents. I know the Communist fate/reality my relatives LIVED until 1991. I KNOW the reality the Left in America wants; it is NO different…and this CORRUPT “compassion” angle is just another tool in their bag of tricks.
REAL compassion is ONLY voluntary, and we get enough SINCERE “calls” for it elsewhere. FORGET this “give a bum a backpack and shoes and
he’ll be betterI’ll be able to pat myself on the back for moral signalling which doesn’t give a hoot whether or not that bum is a parasite and I’m encouraging MORE of that nonsense, or if he’s really in need (even though I 99% suspect he’ll just keep on begging as long as he can get away with being a bum).TO Punditarian
Sorry, I’m trying to respond to your post, but I keep getting CENSORED!
PLEASE see my latest post at the thread above this one, called “Against Compassion”! HA!
TO Punditarian
I’m 1st generation American. From (1939 fleeing) European parents. I know the Communist fate/reality my relatives LIVED until 1991. I KNOW the reality the Left in America wants; it is NO different…and this CORRUPT “compassion” angle is just another tool in their bag of tricks. REAL compassion is ONLY voluntary, and we get enough SINCERE “calls” for it elsewhere. FORGET this “give a bum a backpack and shoes and
he’ll be betterI’ll be able to pat myself on the back for moral signalling which doesn’t give a hoot whether or not that bum is a parasite and I’m encouraging MORE of that nonsense, or if he’s really in need (even though I 99% suspect he’ll just keep on grifting as long as he can get away with being a parasite).Hi Kauf Buch, very kind of you to point me to your other response, I will try to have something intelligent to say over there. Cheers!
Hi Kauf Buch, I think that what you are saying, at least as I understand it, is correct.
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I’m a man of means by no means, king of the road.