Tales From Being Homeless

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Thanks Pav for your defense of me.

I shall harpoon myself in divulging my personal information because I am not afraid of others judging me and attempt to silence the idiotic skepticism of this thread.

I have no problem revealing my personal life in a philosophical forum because in my opinion one of the biggest problems of philosophy is that it is too theoretical and idealistic in that it lacks reality.

To Liz and SIATD, so you doubt my posts thinking me a fraud? You know nothing at all taking things out of context.

I have been homless off and on five years now. Before I met my fiance she was homeless six years straight.

Me and her both met each other in Seattle homeless which is how we got together.

My current living is one where were both unemployed staying in the apartment of a friend. It is tough where I am at because the landlord could possibly squeeze all three of us out onto the streets because of complicating circumstances. I don’t know where her and me will be two weeks from now. We could be on the streets again and I wouldn’t know.

I have been looking for work here where I live but have not been able to find anything substantial. This is why I have been talking to Pav about working at his hotel.

I am not receiving unemployment due to ineligibility. I have $00.00 to my name.

I only have a three hundred dollar food stamp card that has already been spent for both me and her for this month. She is receiving healthcare because she is pregnant where we are both worried about having our child taken away from us if our situation does not approve.

The only possessions we both own are a couple of small personal items and the clothes on our backs.

The only reason me and her both have I- phones which I am using to transmit this message is because I bought them when I was working at a temp agency for two months. I used two months wages to purchase those two I- phones and spent the rest of the money on rent for our friend. I lost the temp job for losing too many days due to illness.

The thread in question by Liz where I was discussing about purchasing a labtop is because I was anticipating a large tax return from the government for years of working odd jobs prior to this year. I was definitely shocked to find out how I owed six hundred dollars to the IRS where I received nothing this year something of which I did not anticipate.

In making that thread about purchasing a labtop I also did not anticipate being unemployed so soon again either. So here I am with my fiance only having been off the streets for five months now.

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Is that real enough for the both of you?

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In the summer of 2011 Seattle-

I made a friend of this pregnant homeless woman where I went with her to a hospital for the birth of her daughter. She was so happy when her infant was born as she loved her new born daughter.

I was there with her to witness the birth of her daughter.

On the third day of her daughter being born a child protective services agent of the hospital came speaking of how the state would take possession of her duaghter where she was not to be allowed to leave the hospital with her. It was there I came to know the sadness and outrage of a parent losing their child.

The state case worker was rude and arrogant calling her unfit to be a mother where the government was doing her a favor by relieving her of the newborn.

She tried to fight for custody of her child but lost.

On the fourth day of her child being born her daughter like property was swept away taken by the state.

It was here that I learned how the family has become nothing but the property of the state to do whatever it sees fit with. It was also here I learned the concept of people being considered too poor to have a family where those poor often enough becomes punished by the state.

A newborn snatched up viciously without concern of the mother was the event.

If you are poor enough the state tells itself that it has the authority to do whatever it wants with you and your family.

The mother tried getting state assistance for a assisted living household for her and the newborn but ultimately failed still because of a high number of people waiting for the same thing ahead of her.

There was simply too little help available.

Last time I saw the mother she very verbally spoke about how she wanted to die and then she simply dissapeared. I never saw her again afterwards.

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I used to watch those thugs tear families apart, children crying as the mother and father tried to hold on to them as the cops snatched them away. But really fucked up families like my crazy mother… literally crazy, was allowed to continue on. They target the ones who love and have a sense of family. Have you ever heard of Marsilius of Padua? His book In Defence of the Peace? I suggest you read it. Also, you need to leave in the morning for Ohio. No longer snowing. Even if pav isnt ready yet, you gotta go. Get some kind of part time job or whatever till you can ship the moo cow over. She cant make it alone perhaps, but youll lose everything if you stay. Move now, get a job and your state ID Card turned over ASAP. You can claim the child if need be, and get pav to vouche you have a address.

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Okay, James, you are what you say you are–just as I am who I say I am. It makes you angry if you’re not believed; it makes me angry if people assume I am what I’m not and use those assumptions to somehow degrade who I am. You’ve been homeless; I don’t live in a gated community. You are among the poor of this country who is struggling; my family is a part of the middle-class that’s fast disappearing. I don’t think your friend’s newborn would have been treated any differently in any other state; our child came to us through a voluntary adoption.

Children have been placed in foster care in every state. Some enter ‘the system’ and are passed from foster home to foster home. In order for them to become adoptable before a certain age, there must first be legal relinquishing by both birth parents. If one disappears and the other isn’t known, the child cannot be adopted.

Homelessness is a very real reason for Welfare Services to take a child. If a mother can’t care for herself, how can she care for a child? There’ve been cases where the mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and gives birth to a drug dependent child with functional disorders. There’ve been cases of young children returned to their birth mothers to face a life of abuse–even death–either from their birth mothers or from their birth mothers’ companions. I’d say, although I’m probably mistaken in your mind, that most of the kids are placed into loving foster homes where they flourish and grow into functional adults. There’s little difference, other than the law, between a loving foster parent and a loving adoptive parent–both of us cherish our children.

Go to Ohio. I understand what Pav’s offering you is another $8/hr. job. I don’t mean that to be snide, but you’ve had those types of jobs before. The minimum wage in Ohio for a 40hr work week is $7.70/hr., so you’ll be earning more than the minimum wage. If he’s also offering you a place for you and your family to live–go for it! Why hesitate?

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Nope. If you were working a temp job, and were missing days due to illness, then why buy not just one iPhone but two? For someone who appears to pride himself on how great he is/was/would be in a survival situation, this seems like lunacy. In fact, it would be lunacy for someone who was crap in a survival situation, let alone someone proclaiming himself the Bear Grills of Seattle.

So either you’re a fantasist, or a lunatic, or both.

IT JUST DOESN’T ADD UP. DO NOT BELIEVE THIS MAN.

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Given how angry Joker gets about things that don’t personally affect him, he doesn’t seem remotely pissed off at being accused of lying about this. There’s your reason.

But if you want further reasons, you’re talking about a man who claims to be an anarchist and a social Darwinist, yet complains that there isn’t enough state help for people in bad situations. You’re talking about a man who proclaims he’s been homeless on and off for five years, yet clearly has no sense of the value of things since as soon as he had some money he bought TWO iPhones, the most overpriced consumer electronics on the market. You’re talking about a man who bangs on about personal responsibility, how most people are pathetic leeches on the strong, yet is having a baby he has absolutely no way of supporting. You’re talking about a man who lies consistently about everything else he talks about, yet for some reason you believe him about this.

Frankly, I think anyone who believes what Joker says about anything is massively naive. His Disney-style sob stories not only don’t make any sense, they come from a perspective that is unlike any homeless person I’ve ever met. And I’ve met quite a few.

My prediction is that he might turn up, but will be a terrible worker because he considers the job beneath him due to his massively egotistical superiority complex/Darwinist world view. He will insult your customers, piss off the staff, blame anyone and everything else whenever he does something wrong and will ultimately resent you when you inevitably sack him. Now, I’m just guessing, but it’s a guess based on every single exhibition of Joker’s views, personality and behaviour that I’ve seen over the last few years. I could be wrong.

In any case, I applaud your efforts to help him, even if I do think trying to help him is futile until he abandons his fantasies and bullshit beliefs about the world.

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Your holyness has spoken!

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Pink Dildo is quite the character, right?

For some reason he thinks poor people are not allowed to own electronics or goods.

The shock of it all.

I guess he thinks poor people should just mope in their empty broken homes with nothing to do all the time like caged animals inside their kennels.

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Believe me Contra were trying to get to Ohio ASAP. It is a dead end up here in Wisconsin.

If all else fails we both would rather retreat to the mountains of the Virginias or the Bayou of Lousianna.

There is not much government in both areas and the wild has never failed me as sanctuary. Laughs.

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To Lorraine also known as Liz:

There is no hesitation on my part. The only reason I have not gone to Ohio yet is because me and Pav are working out the finer portions of the arrangement.

I have no problems with eight dollars a hour forty hours a week. I have survived on much less.

Besides everything will not matter much longer anyways with that whole global economic collapse and possible start of world war thing. I am a crash optimist!

You cannot know what it is like to be homeless until you have actually experienced it.

You must live in the gulag slums to know. You must have everything taken from you.

You must have all your individual independence stripped from you and be reduced to a life of slavery.

You must know what it is like being kicked out to the curb being called worthless by others being outcast. Only having experienced all of that would you know. You are nowhere close to that.

You being a government supporter it does not surprise me what you think about the mother on the account of what I have told. Was it not you awhile ago who said that not everything is so white and black? Now look at yourself with your own judgements.

The typical metanarrative is that most homeless are drug addicts or mental lunatics a view that the state likes pushed onto the collective conciousness of the general public.

The reality is much different where most simply don’t have the means to survive within society.

Until you have a child taken away from you forget what it is that you think what it is you know.

You don’t know. You only know what they tell you in what they want you to hear.

Their worldview is not to be trusted with all their conditioned and taught fake experts, agents, or service people. Obedient sychophants all of them.

Someday maybe you will understand where I am coming from.

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Not at all.

I think poor people who have lived on the streets for five years have a better sense of the value of things than to blow their first paypacket in a long time on something that is a vastly overpriced consumer electronic good aimed at people with more money than sense.

Though unsurprisingly you’ve found your usual means of avoiding the issue of your lies - you try to turn my position into something it isn’t and then attack it. A cheap and obvious tactic that does nothing to defend or justify your increasingly blatant deceit.

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To Preacher Pink Dildo Man:

Do you know how unbearable and boring it is having nothing all the time?

You try it sometime. Fat chance at that with your self righteousness.

You act like it is a crime to want or self indulge in something.

A i-phone is the most expensive thing I own. Kinda sad if you think about it.

In Africa for many individuals cellphones are the most expensive things they own too beyond the shirts on their backs.

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To Preacher Of The Pink Dildo Cult:

I am not complaining that the state is not helping me out enough or others.

I have forsakened both state and government. I merely pointing out it’s inadequacies and contradictions.

Yes, I do believe in social darwinism but only without government intervention in a existence of anarchy.

There are no rules, laws, or morality in the jungle and bush. There is only survival of the smartest, strongest, and ruthless.

It is for that reason government supporters who believe in social darwinism contradict themselves where they misinterpret social darwinism just like the global elites do.

You can’t be a government supporter and social darwinist. That is a contradiction.

You can’t have both.

In a existence of social darwinism there is no need for government as it is every person out for and defending themselves without aid for others.

That also means rulers can be challenged, competed, and targeted against daily face to face for power or resources something that is completely lacking in a government police state where rulers are insulated seperated from everybody else.

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I don’t think so.

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It is as articulated by my other threads.

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We’ll discuss them there then.

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Excellent call.

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So, how is your survival going, James?

Oh–I’ve also read that texting on an iphone is slow and error-prone–plus it’s hard to use for a woman if she has long fingernails.

Whatever, whether you use a phone or a computer for messaging, you still need to pay a usage fee to the cell provider–or the ISP.

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Many people in many cultures have nothing. They don’t whinge about being bored. Frankly, I would have thought boredom was the least of your worries when you’re struggling to get enough to eat or find shelter from the cold.

Clearly you aren’t in as bad a situation as you claim, if your biggest worry is boredom.

No self righteousness - I just don’t believe you. Simple.

Not a crime, just abject stupidity to the point of your story being unbelievable. If you were truly that stupid then you would already be dead.

Not really, I don’t judge people’s worth based on what they own. I judge their worth based on their character.

For your information, I don’t even own anything as expensive as an iPhone. You see, I too have very little money, but I don’t spend my time making up bullshit stories on internet forums whinging about how I blew all my food money on two iPhones because I was bored.

Like you’d have a fucking clue what goes on in Africa. And for your information, Africa is not one homogenous place you can just use as a premise in your increasingly lame, implausible and unbelievable arguments. The very fact you just point and say ‘Africa is poor’ shows how fucking ignorant you are about the rest of the world. You won’t find many Africans spending hundreds of dollars on iPhones - BECAUSE MOST OF THEM DON’T EVER HAVE HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS TO SPARE. Just as you wouldn’t if you were truly the broke homeless person you claim to be…

Q.E.D.