The Homeless as a Spiritual Test

The religion of pity strikes again.

Reading a local “informer” Facebook page (the only real way to get news in a small town) this morning and stumbled on comments from townspeople about the homeless who wander around the city. A middle aged woman (no surprise) had a long post browbeating those who had said (allegedly) mean things about these unfortunates:

This post is a perfect example of virtue signalling. Note the use of the passive voice: the homeless “fell on hard times.” Doing drugs and living on the street are like the weather: it just happens with no rhyme or reason! One day you’re just minding your business and then BAM you’re on meth and beating your children. Human agency just doesn’t exist, apparently. The “enemy” in the post, of course are faceless and nameless. These bad people had the intermity to speak poorly of the loser bums wandering around the downtown unlike this white woman who brought them a sandwich.

Yes, she is so virtuous! Giving cheese sandwiches to homeless drug addicts will end the crisis of their lives! The unchained maternal instinct strikes again! If these nameless bad people weren’t so judgy they, too, could have their lives changed by the homeless drug addicts.

Oh, the homeless will change your life alright! This is from my hometown in CA:

The spiritual instinct toward pity exemplified by the middle aged white woman above is the instinct toward death. That woman thinks she’s kind and decent but really she’s helping to perpetuate the collapse of decency and moral standards in the name of piety. She is far crueler than any of those who were “talking poorly” about the homeless. Mockery might actually get those bums to try and improve their lives. Being coddled is for infants, not grown men.

The photo from CA above shows the end state of being “nice” to the homeless: the collapse of law and order and the birth of tent cities and slums in the heart of a wealthy first world country.

What the homeless need is not womanly pity but manly commands. They need to be forced to get their lives back together and to become productive members of society. Those that will not accept help should understand that there will be no one to bail them out. They will only repair their lives if the stakes are existential. Some, unfortunately, will never be able to make that choice. Their souls are too broken. For these types there is nothing that can be done. That sounds harsh but the example of their failure will be a lesson to others. It will keep them from making the same mistakes.

Being “harsh” toward the homeless—forcing them to seek help or get off the streets—does infinitely more to improve their lives than virtue signalling and “life changing” sentimentality fests for the benefit of ‘pious’ women.

The homelessness problem in my hometown in California and in Hillsdale has exploded over the last 10 years. As Americans have lost confidence in their civilization and in the habits and mores that make it possible we see a concomitant rise in those who are simply checking out of normal human life. This is a horrible state of affairs.

The drugged-out zombies and mentally ill on our public streets living out of trash bags and tarp tents, mired in filth, represent a return to human life at its most degraded and repulsive state. A decent people would take the necessary measures to prevent this outcome. It would not tolerate such behavior. But the only path out of this crisis is what appears to our modern eyes as harshness—we must, as a civilization, recover the willingness to command and to become intolerant to those who would wreck our way of life. We lack that strength of will and so the problem metastasizes.