This is Real, That's Not

Interesting writing and perspective, though something about it leaves me feeling a bit uneasy. I think it's the amount of mind reading that the author projects on everyone. The author writes as if she understands other people better than they understand themselves. Everyone gets taken down a notch with some mind reading from the author, such as the forum member who had "mommy issues" to the conclusion that the primary reason MetaFilter users disliked her was that she "scared the hell out of them" and the assumption that others read her as upper class because she wore a t-shirt and sweatpants.

The mind reading extends all the way to the reader, with a veiled suggestion that the author's own mental models are superior to the reader's "broken" mental models:

> I encourage you to see this as a heavy dose of reality concerning where your mental models are broken. The only cure for what ails you is to start getting over your delusions and start adjusting your mental models to come up with a more accurate understanding of reality.

There are some interesting points in this writing, along with some thought-provoking perspectives on the nature of homelessness in America.

Yh, everything you’ve stated is incorrect. We all live in a society, homeless people included.

If everyone has to truly fend for themselves, why should anyone follow the rules? Who’s to stop people from taking whatever they want? And before you state that policing will force them to, who will force the police?

So to answer the question you never asked, yes homeless deserve help just for existing, not for their sake but for our. So that their bodies don’t become vectors for disease, so that their kids don’t end up the next generation of criminals and so that we can go to shops without being afraid.

> Being "good with money" [...] fixes nothing if there is no money to work with

To expand upon that accurate point: Having little to no money can hone your money skills to a razor's edge, because staying on that edge is how you eat.

Maybe. As a rough estimate I'd place it closer to the top 10% of the US. The 1% threshold is around $500k, whereas the 10% threshold is around $100k, which is pretty luxurious most places in the US (confounded by the fact that higher CoL areas have higher incomes).

On the other end of the spectrum, 50-70% of US families were living paycheck to paycheck even before covid, so I'd be moderately surprised if the top 25% could afford whatever they wanted at the supermarket.

DoreenMichele, one of the few people I can call a true realist in this world.

Barring the sexually-violent upbringing, our journeys have been very similar -- yet, the models ingrained into our psyches, different.

I feel it's a matter of temperament, how we look at these things.

Some are predisposed to be "glass half full" or "glass half empty," on an infinitesimally-parted scale.

I believe the most influential of these is: "I'm right, and everyone else is wrong" vs. "I'm wrong, and everyone else is right."

Or "I must learn how to make others see my way" vs. "I must become as others see me."

It's difficult to par it down to an intuitive phrase, but it's essentially whether or not you give in to the "pressures" of the world, or continue to rebel against them.

Whether or not you want to drink the Kool-Aid or sell your own.

At the end of the day, everything around us -- all its meaning, and the way our neurophysiology has categorized it -- is an illusion; it's completely made up.

You can believe whatever you wish to believe, so long as it's been registered before, in some way, shape, or form.

The comments in this thread, and the prevailing zeitgeist that being homeless is some great tragedy is one prime example.

I believe it's not.

Suffering or the lack thereof, is pointless. At its core, it's simply a heuristic your genetics have supplied you with, to make better certain you will survive and reproduce. Like any other heuristic (hunger, thirst, perhaps even suffocation), it can be overriden with enough conviction; whether you should or should not, is another matter.

I'm reminded of Pavlov's dogs. The more you resist against being broken, the harder it will be to bounce back when you do.

So, in a Zen Buddhist sort of way, let go -- it's unimaginably freeing.

For those of more stable temperaments, let the local fire department burn down your house for training, along with all of your belongings inside. I assure you, the results will be splendid; and all that baggage you've carried around -- material, and otherwise -- simply vanishes.

Poof; gone!

You have no past any more. There is nothing left to tie your sense of self down, and you're free to decide to be whatever you wish -- with the aforementioned caveat in mind.

Surviving great suffering makes the less trivial in comparison; so too does facing the fear of death make all others disappear.