“There are Mother Fking bums in this Mother Fking house”:suckah:
“ahem” now then. A little kindness might go a long way. but there are a few questions about this matter that I would like to ask.
First, how long has this been going on? Has he changed or inproved in the time that he’s been doing this? If he has then there may be hope for him yet. Second, how old is he? If he is still a teenager then he might improve later in life and turn out to be alright(no garantees). Thrid, why was he arrested? I know of a preson who was arrested due to mistaken identinty. And finally, what is his situation? Is he just rebelling or is your mom the only one giving him support?
I know that you have answered some of these questions already, but from what I’ve read about this person and some of the responses so far it seems like he’s been prejudged a bit. My point is that we don’t exactly have all the facts here, I doubt anyone here has ever met the guy(note: I’m not asking or telling anyone to meet with him so don’t blame me for acting like an idiot), and the lack of a girlfriend by the age of 15 does not constitute evidence of mental illness. So nutcase remarks aside, this guy sounds like he’s just some punk who needs to be pulled aside and served a slice of get a life, and not some insane freak who needs to get his ABed (ass blasted) by Robocop.
Zep / DT : Where do I get enraged at people helping other people :P?
All I did was express my disdain. Furthermore, Cavelcade’s mom is not even exhibiting the trait you’re describing. Shes not dropping a quarter into a cup, she’s giving him more substantial and constant support from the sound of the story, with a specific objective in mind. My posts in this thread weren’t about attacking the mom for what she did other than saying she was retarded. My posts describing the situation were an answer to Cavelcade’s questioning to explain why I believed that, to give him an idea of what I thought the situation was about, which might or might give him some ideas as to how to deal with it from that point of view (or engender a discussion on that topic).
To answer “who cares”, I answered that I didn’t. Its her problem. I couldn’t care less about the bums or the people stupid enough to think they can make a difference.
SG: I have a different interpretation of what it is you said. I think you’re right that people are born with specific, unchangeable traits and that these traits are not necessarily things that people can learn. What I don’t agree on is whether that trait is good or not because I believe that depends on the way the trait is used. From what I’m sure everyone can tell in my previous discussions of what I think about our species: I don’t think its human nature to use these traits for good. Rare are cases of true self-sacrifice, people doing things at their own expense freely and willingly.
Example: you could say I have a set of traits that allowed me to be where I am. I can either a)make a plague and wipe out our species (not using my trait for good) or b) find the cure for cancer and win a nobel (using my trait for good). The traits themselves are neutral.
And where did I address you personally? I was generally stating my opinion towards the tendency of the attitude in this thread (mainly being it’s wrong of her to help the guy, funnily not because one seems to be concerned about her, but because apparently the majority seems to think he doesn’t deserve it and better be left to rot in the gutter and his mom being weird for even doing this; noticeably being very quick to judge considering the only person here who knows both the ‘bum’ and his mom himself is cavelcade).
Also, I don’t see exactly how "Your mother is naive and is living in her own bubble if she thinks she can make a difference. She is not analyzing the situation in all its detail and is only seeing what it is she wants to see […] " is a specific answer to either of his questions, nor really giving an idea on how to “deal with the situation”, nor is it “describing the situation”. It’s a subjective impression based on bits of information, and, I give you that, it’s probably as far as we’ll get in this thread anyhow.
Alright, so I was answering not only his counter-points but other individuals in the thread, like Weiila.
To get something done you need to understand the nature of the problem in order to solve it.
You don’t need more than the few bits of information he’s presented to make a point about what I said. I didn’t make an elaborate point about her as a person but 1 thing it is she’s doing.
Which might be enough for just that, but not the entire picture. You didn’t ask any further about this and waited for others to do so, so apparently bits of information are enough to make an elaborate point about one thing she was doing, yet at the same time judge the entire thing without knowing more about it? How can that provide any solid advice on what to do? After all,
And you don’t understand the nature by going for keywords and giving input solely based on personal experience.
Rephrase your statement, I don’t understand what you’re trying to say for what reason.
Analysis of personal experience, observations of others’ experience provides information. The application of information acquired has very consistently proven correct.
He still could be if he…you know…wrote a novel instead of begging for treats from Cav’s mom. I’m pretty sure “writing a novel” is still a prerequisite for being classified as a famous novelist.
I suppose I agree with you, but just more optimistically. I think altruism is rare, but mostly because it’s very hard to find a case where acting ‘good’ doesn’t somehow benefit you, too; even if you’re doing it for someone else’s benefit doesn’t really change the fact that it’ll turn out good for you, too. For example, if I like a chick and I know she likes me, I’ll look out for her and treat her well and stuff…but that works to my advantage, too.
Also, I think that even though peoples’ character traits aren’t necesarily used for ‘good’ all the time, I don’t think it’s really the opposite, either; I don’t think that, since you or I don’t go around commiting altruistic actions all the time, that we’re going to be the opposite, either.
But oh well. We’re totally on the same page, at least.
I don’t know. From my experience, none of these guys really hurt anybody. I had a friend from the punk scene who got evicted and was homeless, so when I hung with him, we hung with all the homeless guys, the drunks, the junkies, the psychos, and most of them are totally harmless. The truly crazy ones are the ones to look out for, since while they generally would never hurt innocent people, they might happen to view you as, say, a man who is going to poison them all with mustard gas and and grab at your face trying to pull your gas-mask off so you die with him.
The druggies are especially passive; pot pacifies, and unless he’s violent drunk (which, from your description, he is not), liquor generally will, as well. If he was a crackhead, smack junkie, or coker, maybe he’d have robbed you to get money for his habit, but with less hard drugs, that kind of stuff isn’t very common.
You were probably pretty safe and shouldn’t have been all that worried, is my point. I would’ve given him the sandwich or the 20 euro if I could afford it, but that’s because I have no problem with supporting his habit, and if eating twenty cents worth of my bread and a dollar, maybe, of the stuff in between made him a little happier, that’s cool. I won’t miss a couple slices of bread, cheese, meat. I certainly wouldn’t miss mayonnaise if he wanted that. I’d have given him the whole goddamned jar. I hate mayo. Shit, tangent. Anyway, I believe nobody inherently changes; people are predestined to be a certain thing or a certain way, it’s in how they go about it that free will comes in. Maybe someone is born an addict, and they use free will to become addicted to gambling instead of booze. Anyway, that aside, people never really change who they are. I won’t help him kick his habit, but he’ll feel better with some food or some weed, and that’s cool with me. Same thing as donating money so a kid gets a make-a-wish trip. Going to disneyland will not cure his horrific, fatal illness, but he’ll have a good time. The way I see it, your mom is helping him much more making him feel good than trying to make him quit. I support sandwich giving fully.
Although, I wouldn’t have invited him in if it made my kids uncomfortable and I knew that.
That’s utter nonsense. Again, people are perfectly capable of conscious, rationally-motivated change. It’s called self-discipline. People can spur others towards this through different forms of motivation. You would be basically supporting his hedonistic irresponsibility by failing to recognize this. The best thing to do would be to either try to effect some real change on the guy or cut the support so that (ideally) he is either forced to change in order to survive or wanders off somewhere else to perish.
It might be no skin off your back to hand out a freebie now and again, but if it encourages the recipient to live an existence dependent on other people, don’t you think you should share the responsibility for the inconvenience to others you might have enabled to happen by supporting this person? It’s not like even generosity is without negative consequences.
I personally think that if the guy’s going to change, then no particular actions will influence him a whole lot either way; if he can ‘change’, then he’s always had it in him. He just has to decide he wants to. You might make the argument (I suppose you are, actually) that helping him out is perpetuating his actions, and maybe it is. On the other hand, he probably isn’t going to change. If he wanted to be a self-sufficient not-loser, he probably would have taken the initiative to do that, already.
Free will[STRIKE]y[/STRIKE] vs Fate and “you are” vs “you become”. It’s simple, everyone who is not of my opinion can’t see the truth/is stupid. Trillian’s right.
I personally think that if the guy’s going to change, then no particular actions will influence him a whole lot either way; if he can ‘change’, then he’s always had it in him. He just has to decide he wants to. You might make the argument (I suppose you are, actually) that helping him out is perpetuating his actions, and maybe it is. On the other hand, he probably isn’t going to change. If he wanted to be a self-sufficient not-loser, he probably would have taken the initiative to do that, already.
I have the same view, pretty much. People don’t change - they just become more of what they were all along. Or rather, when they appear to change they’re just showing different sides of their personality. Also, people’s priorities change as they go through life, and when you have different goals your personality traits adapt to those goals.
Addicts stay addicts. Maybe they change what they’re addicted to, but people never really change.
Indeed, the inconvenience of telling a homeless person “No, sorry.” How will I ever live with the guilt of this blight upon society? Plus, I fully support people staying addicts. I don’t want some poor bastard going into withdrawl because I was too high-minded and elitist or too cheap to give him the scratch. I know he’s buying his drug of choice, but if it make him happy, why not? He’s hurting society much less than people our taxes go towards paying. Talk about supporting an existance dependant on other people and social guilt over something. If you pay taxes, you should have far more social guilt on your hands than giving a junkie a sandwich. You give a junkie some money, be buys some smack. You pay taxes, people are murdered with your money. I’d rather have innocent people’s invonvenience shared on my hands than innocent people’s blood on them, you know.
I’m not saying you should feel guilty about paying taxes, but I’d argue they go to a lot worse places than the dollars given to homeless people do.
Funny how often people use the phrase “people never change” when talking about a change for the better. When it comes to changing for the worse, nobody ever seems to doubt it being possible.
Funny how often people use the phrase “people never change” when talking about a change for the better. When it comes to changing for the worse, nobody ever seems to doubt it being possible.
Well, if you think people never change, when it seems they change it just means you’re seeing a side of them you never saw before. Most people try to hide their bad sides and show their good sides. Those things being said, its easy to understand why everyone thinks people can “change” for the bad Since change is only just discovering a side of someone that was always there but you never saw before, it only appears people change for the bad because people only hide their bad sides.
People always complain that friends, lovers, etc. “change” over the course of the relationship, and its almost always for the bad. But did they really change? Or is just you didn’t know them well enough to begin with?
I was generally stating my opinion towards the tendency of the attitude in this thread (mainly being it’s wrong of her to help the guy, funnily not because one seems to be concerned about her, but because apparently the majority seems to think he doesn’t deserve it and better be left to rot in the gutter and his mom being weird for even doing this; noticeably being very quick to judge considering the only person here who knows both the ‘bum’ and his mom himself is cavelcade).