I just got home from an appointment in the City, enjoying my time without the phone a little and being with my own thoughts a bit. I went to buy stuff at the grocery store after I got ready, buying a shitload of Pasta just how an Italian should do. I then went to my appointment with my psychologist and an hour later I was out and about again, this time making a detour to the bakery to buy fresh bread and some croissants.
I got home, brewed myself a coffee, ate my croissant and started smoking my favourite brand of cigar.
That is all not important, what really is important is the faces and people I consciously ignored throughout my day.
A nomadic family band infront of the grocery store getting ready for another day of begging, stashing their sleeping bags and surplus apparrel.
The homeless old man getting out of the bakery in the inner city after getting his morning coffee.
The man taking a seat infront of the bank I am a customer of.
Another old guy actively calling out to me after I leave the bakery with a bag of bread and croissants.
I live in Germany, one of the richest nations on earth, one that belongs to the terrible Mafia that is the liberal empire of the West. The idea of liberalism -at least how I and some of my friends see it- is that we rape, murder and pillage somewhere else so that we enrich ourselves until we have our own idyllic societies, a demonic way of getting prosperous that I disagree with, yet this is the world we live in and the system I happen to live under.
If that isn’t terrible enough on its own, it gets even worse! The main problem is, that this system of ours evidently isn’t working out quite that well for everyone equally. The amount of homeless people I perceive every day is increasing. There are more drug addicts, there are more people sleeping in the streets, grown well groomed men that look me in the eyes and ask me with a wimpering voice if I can spare them a Euro, with me (a guy who aswell has money problems) deciding on a whim if I can accept their request.
I am sick and tired of it. I bet many are too but in a different sense. For many homeless people are equivalent to pigeons, a pest that you shoo away. Feeding the pigeons every day is discouraged because they will just come back on a daily basis getting their fill and you just have to put up with them; But in the end just as pigeons are a victim of our societies, the same can be said for the homeless.
Once upon a time these pigeons, these people, had a use in our societies. Roles to fill, things to deliver, a job to do. But as alternative ways of delivering mail came along, the job market became worse, we had no use for them pigeons anymore, no use for people anymore.
Economic catastrophies compound one after another, into one big pile of problems. People drink, people smoke, people go broke. The “free” animals we cared for now just fly around with us branding them as flying rats.
In the so called liberal world, there are winners and losers. Exploiters and exploited. Human connection, empathy and promises of a better future are made transactional. Every minute, 60 seconds pass in Africa and if you pay on a monthly basis right now, you will be saving the world, if you give the homeless person that you have been taught all your life is evidently beneath you gets a dime, you can feel like a good person.
But I do not feel like a good person. Why is it that people can get left behind and fail in our system so hard that they end up on the streets having to debase themselves every day to survive? Why is it my personal responsibility now to keep these people alive? Why aren’t we upset about a class of people being allowed to exist, who get treated like subhumans every day and that we are supposed to ignore them?
Homelessness, especially in a country like mine, has no right to exist. We could help these people, we could reintegrate them into our societies, hell, if we lived under a non capitalist, “illiberal” society we as a collective would likely erradicate homelessness, not with zoning restrictions, not with threats of or excercion of violence, but with programs that actually help people in tough times.
Give people the ability to move freely, give them a roof over their head, give them education and a purpose in life and make it worth their while!
What does the future hold for us now? The future of Germany, Italy, the UK, France, likely many other European countries, the present of the United States, is Fascism. Economic turmoil. The Starvation of the Arts. Slave Labour.
When you fail in today’s society, you can only “exist” on slave labour, or becoming a parasite.
If you do not succeed, you fail.
But why do we play this game in the first place? Why do we partake in this sadistic exercise?
And more importantly, who really wins in this game?