| We are all a product of our environment. Those raised in developed countries, especially those who grew up with money, or at least not without money, will have certain attitudes toward the poor and homeless that likely won't be the same as people who grew up in poverty. You had some horrible experiences as a kid. That sounds awful. I was mugged once as an adult, and that shook me enough, and took time to emotionally deal with. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have that happen to you as a child, and more than once. > but a developing country, where everyone is struggling to some degree, so the homeless there to me always seemed like they are homeless due to their own bad choices. This just doesn't make sense to me. You claim two seemingly conflicting things: that everyone is struggling, and also that those who have struggled more to the point of homeless must have gotten there through their own bad choices. Do you believe that everyone -- including your family -- who was struggling, was in that state due to their own bad choices? If not, it seems pretty arbitrary to draw the line at homelessness. Because it can be a very thin line between being housed or being on the street. > So either I am a psychopath I don't think you're a psychopath. I think you were scarred by your experiences, and decided to leave it at that. It's hard to have empathy for a group when some subset of that group has treated you so poorly, especially at such a formative age in your life. > or everyone here truly is a Western naive person who has no idea how the world works even if they were homeless I think "how the world works" isn't any one thing. How the world worked in your -- understandably very narrow -- experience as a child in your country is not the same as how the world works in some other country, which is not the same as how the world works in yet another country, and so on. I obviously can't say this for certain, but I expect that your experience was not even "how the world works" for everyone in your own country. > (to me being homeless in a Western country is something my brain cannot understand given that most such countries in Europe have wellfare states). Just because some governments offer large welfare programs, it doesn't mean that they're distributed equally or equitably, or that the people in need are able to navigate those systems all that well. Another commenter somewhere here pointed out that Germany's welfare bureaucracy is notoriously hard to figure out, especially for the mentally ill. Many homeless people have been so damaged by their experience that they aren't able to get the help they need. All of these problems do exist, I assure you, and yet you claim to be unable to understand that they do. Please take some time to think about that fact, and of the broader implications. You speak of the "Western naive person", but maybe consider that the people of the world are in a huge variety of different circumstances (both good and bad) than you originally thought was possible. And while some of them do end up using those circumstances to attack and exploit others, some are just genuinely in trouble and would appreciate some help getting back on their feet so they have the stability to get their life back on track. But also! Consider that those people who use their situation to try to attack and exploit others may have gotten to that point because they are just as cynical about the world as you are about them. You see one act that is the result of a culmination of their entire lives. You have no idea if they were always that way, or, more likely, they became that way as their circumstances crushed them. |