Take one minute to think about this

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Zachstar

Prove to me that this man had no access to a shelter. DO NOT post crap about how shelters are bad places. Do they provide the basic means of survival or not?

quite a lot of preassumptions on your side, eh? You seem to know more about the story's event than even we over here, and the author of the article, and the police.

On paper it all is nice and well, you know. Just that in practice and reality - things often look very different, more complex, more difficult.

I will NEVER steal. Therefore I am in the clear to make such a statement.

Crystal clear. But you will steal at one time, my friend. Your misery just needs to be big enough. If you are up to decide wether to steal something to eat, or start the third week in sequence with nothing to bite and red circles before your eyes, and you don't obey your human nature at that point, you would be a stupid.

And let'S see what has come of your values once you had been 10 years a homeless, and being treated like a non-existing nothing by people - at best.

Maybe a shelter was not available. maybe it had closing hour already gone by. Maybe he did not know where to search. Maybe he already was too cold. Or had lost all hope. Or had fear, was ashamed, was afraid. Or was mentally derranged, or drank too much alcohol to stay warm. Or he was too hopeless or stubborn or to proud to ask for help - homeless people get looked down on all day long - if being looked at at all. Maybe his life has been like that since too long. There are a million reasons possible why this guy not headed for a shelter. And only a computer's processing can prove to be unable to understand these, and stick to nill-one-logic only.

Of a human witnesses, of course some more than just logic must be expected. Because what else makes humans human, and different to primitive animals reflex-automatisms?

You expect to be homeless yourself soon. But that is a description with many facettes and possible fates behind the label. As long as your socks and the skin and nails of your feet have not grown together so that only a doctor with a scalpel can seperate the two and in the process must remove greater parts of your feet's skin and upper layers of flesh since the textile has been grown into the flesh and in parts is totally surrounded by it, as long as you do not know how ashamed people can be to accept medical treatment for free because they know they haven't changed underwear since one and a half year or more, you can talk easy about the dignity in being a homeless.

Stop expecting people to behave like computers. Man is man, not some piece of digital logic-code always following the rule of what is "reasonable". Everybody working in any social-oriented profession or job, knows that, from the hospital-doctor to the streetworker. Where they do not learn this, they fail in their jobs miserably. and people only acting by the law of reason - are capable of the most cruel and inhumance crimes imaginable.

In the end I get the imprssion that some of the things that got said in this thread, are only to avoid any irritation reagrding the tools and means of luxurious christmas - by rationalising an individual's unwelcomed fate away. for the religious crowd here, christmas marks the birthday of the Christ, that is the major point in it - not the marketing show the muppets made of it. So see if you can bring your grim fingerpointing regarding this homeless man into conformity with what Christ has taught regarding "love thy next like you love thyself" and what he lived by his own example when sitting together with the pariahs of society of his time when having a meal. After all, he is your religious icon, so the obligation is with you - for me he only was a wise mind like many others, and I am free to agree with him or not. So think of it and see if you are in conformity with him when you act by cold reason only and demand the law's full range to rule over the suffering (deserved or not) of a fallen man - or sink christmas altogether. That at least would be honest by you, then. Those of you being without guilt - throw the first stone. Ideally at christmas day - that would be the best of all timings.