Public Insensitivity? Or is Enough Enough?

[Freiwillige]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Beggars should be forbidden. You feel guilty if you don't give them money, and you feel guilty if you do.

Actually this is so true.

[Krauter]

At Platapus and GR, I'm not disputing their right to pan handle or beg.

The whole point of this thread is to see whether seeing such things makes people insensitive about this or is it just society moving in that direction at all.


A for the who is right and who is wrong. Again I'm not disputing begging. I don't care if the guy is sitting there bundled up in a sleeping bag or showing me his amputated limbs, I'm not going to give him money.

What I meant by who is in the wrong, is compared to other beggars who sit there with a cup/sign what ever, are these people who try to play off of emotions (showing amputated limbs to bloody 4 year olds for christ sake) worse?

[Castout]

People are just getting colder in general.

Population has exploded and most people have to work very hard to earn their living often paycheck to paycheck. They are simply drained of energy and passion to care about anything else I suppose. And when you have to work very hard only to earn a little I suppose it would make you a little angry seeing someone begging.

[the_tyrant]

http://www.cracked.com/article_19004...cience_p2.html

look at number 1

Most of us are familiar with the bystander effect, an unfortunate phenomenon in which people in crowds ignore others in danger because they think that someone else in the vicinity will go to their rescue. But what about the generally dickish way people in cities act even when you're not being mugged? When you're in a small town, chances are that people will be friendly and happy to talk to you, and all you'll really have to worry about is being attacked by mutants while having sex in the forest.



In the city, however, everything from ordering food to passing people on the street will probably be accompanied by intense surliness. This is not because rural folk are inherently kinder, either: People from nonurban backgrounds tend to start acting the same way once they've been in the city for a while.

What The Hell Is Going On Here?

It's because of "urban overload," the incredibly large amount of information that those in urban environments must process. In one experiment testing the theory, a man wearing a cast pretended to drop some boxes of books while hidden observers counted how many strangers would offer to help. What determined the number of people who stopped to help wasn't whether passersby were wearing business suits or Stetsons, but whether a noisy piece of machinery was audible in the background. More than five times as many people stopped to help in a quiet environment than in a noisy one.


The study didn't come right out and say that headphones turn us into soulless monsters, but it was pretty heavily implied.

According to science, it works like this: Modern city dwellers must wade through thousands of potential social interactions every day. In order to deal with this, they must be selective about what they focus on. This leads them to unconsciously ignore "unimportant" information, whether it's a flashing strip club advertisement or an injured kitten.


"Ahh, they'll work it out."

The theory was first proposed in 1970 by Stanley Milgram, who observed that city dwellers try to cope by using "filtering devices." He meant it metaphorically back then, but the fact that we started stuffing real filtering devices into our ears as soon as they were invented means that his theory is holding up pretty well.

Another thing that social scientists have noted is that although most impersonal city interaction seems rude, it's actually also a form of politeness. Most of the time, people passing on the street or standing together in an elevator are not really ignoring each other.


Especially not if the office cafeteria served boiled cabbage for lunch.

Instead, we'll acknowledge the other person by looking at him briefly without eye contact and then looking away. This is called "civil inattention," and it works by letting the other person know that you see him, but are respecting his right to privacy. If we urbanites really didn't care about the people around us, we'd do stuff like point and stare if someone was wearing a funny hat. This technique allows us to walk the line between total blanking and overfamiliar creepiness, a balance that is of desperate importance when the crowded subway is forcing our elbow into someone's crotch.



Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_19004...#ixzz1EegiPDln

this seems to fit
I didn't quote the pictures though, so it might seem a bit odd

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by Krauter

What I meant by who is in the wrong, is compared to other beggars who sit there with a cup/sign what ever, are these people who try to play off of emotions (showing amputated limbs to bloody 4 year olds for christ sake) worse?

Everyone is in the wrong. Government for not doing what there suppose to do and protect the people there elected to do and the people who don't push there representatives to help those less fortunate.

But its also some part homeless's own fault. Choices they've made that where the wrong one. Whatever it may be.

Some people learn to late how nasty this world can be. Some still never learn. Its all about me me and not we.

[Betonov]

I'd give them some spare change if I had any

But I'd pick who will I give it to. Usually those who werent all in your face or smth, (my english fails here). If he just said: ''hey mac, got any change'' '' shure, here 20 cents that are lying in my pocket''. But some of them just step infront of you and go all: ''we are friend right (wink wink) how's about a euro??'' Those get nothing

[AVGWarhawk]

Within the laws, they have a right to beg for money
you have a right to not give them money.

In my county of MD you do not have the right to beg. It is a $500.00 fine and imprisonment. Beggers were numerous and getting very agressive.

No one is in the "wrong" here.

I believe the begger is wrong in the sense that he is disturbing the peace by begging. Again, here in my county the beggers were getting overly aggressive.

It is only when one tries to interfere with the other's right that there is a problem.

It is not his right in my county.

Personally, I don't give money to people begging in the streets. Instead I regularly donate to specific charities that I know put the money to good use.

Same. I'm sorry but I feel giving money only encourages the begger to continue.

However, if others wish to give money directly, that's their decision.

True.

We all do what we feel is the best. And none of us should feel guilty about it.

Agreed.

One day I watched a begger. He was begging in the parking lot for quite some time. At 5 pm he seemed to have punched out on his mental time clock. He then proceeded to drive away in his Ford LTD. He was a professional begger.