Exactly that. Homelessness isn’t a social issue that needs to be solved, it’s the consequences of the unhomed’s poor choices and absolutely nothing else.
Arguing with willful ignorance is fucking exhausting, you literally can’t get them to see past their blind beliefs because most of them wear “you can’t change my mind” like a badge of honor.
Not so much willful ignorance as backwards reasoning. They desperately want to believe the world is fair and they earned whatever success they’ve had in their lives, so they adopt beliefs that lead to those conclusions.
I struggled with it a lot in my 20s. If you’ve grown up with the idea that the world is basically a pretty decent place, it’s hard to accept how fucked up everything is, so there’s a natural tendency to try to explain away the things you learn about so you don’t have to confront the harsh reality directly.
it’s the consequences of the unhomed’s poor choices and absolutely nothing else.
Classical Liberal / Libertarian here and this is wrong. Life can be massively unfair / unkind and it’s not unusual for people, even ones who make solid choices, to end up in bad situations.
What so many of my Libertarian fellows seem to miss is that we’re allowed to have empathy. Do I want the Government taking my money to redistribute it? Absolutely not but that does not excuse us from acting on our own. In fact I’d argue we have MORE of an obligation for individual action to help those less fortunate.
Exactly that. Homelessness isn’t a social issue that needs to be solved, it’s the consequences of the unhomed’s poor choices and absolutely nothing else.
Arguing with willful ignorance is fucking exhausting, you literally can’t get them to see past their blind beliefs because most of them wear “you can’t change my mind” like a badge of honor.
Not so much willful ignorance as backwards reasoning. They desperately want to believe the world is fair and they earned whatever success they’ve had in their lives, so they adopt beliefs that lead to those conclusions.
I struggled with it a lot in my 20s. If you’ve grown up with the idea that the world is basically a pretty decent place, it’s hard to accept how fucked up everything is, so there’s a natural tendency to try to explain away the things you learn about so you don’t have to confront the harsh reality directly.
Classical Liberal / Libertarian here and this is wrong. Life can be massively unfair / unkind and it’s not unusual for people, even ones who make solid choices, to end up in bad situations.
What so many of my Libertarian fellows seem to miss is that we’re allowed to have empathy. Do I want the Government taking my money to redistribute it? Absolutely not but that does not excuse us from acting on our own. In fact I’d argue we have MORE of an obligation for individual action to help those less fortunate.
Come at me.