am i a mean person -- rant (Page 2)

No, that's being nice and being a human being.  The absence of treating them badly is NOT compassion. 

I agree completely and nobody said or implied anything of the sort. 

My former boss has a friend who is homeless. He has had the opportunity to go to the shelters but refuses because he does not like them. He has the opportunity to meet with counselors to help him find a job but there is always some excuse. He gets his welfare money and spends it on alcohol and drugs. I actually felt bad for the poor slob and let him stay in my apartment for three days gave him clothes and fed him and he still stole some stuff from my apartment. It is hard to be nice when someone only wants a handout and doesn't want to help themselves. There are jobs out there, yes that might be crappy but it would at least put money in their pockets. Everyone has gone through hard times but can make it work. The difference is these people don't want to make it work.

PS My boss also gave him 50 dollars when he brought him to my house to stay.

Oh good! Everyone! Chucky's here to save the day and make everyone like eachother and play nice.

Dude, what do stray dogs have to do with it?

Well, I would argue that a stray dog is a victim of humans and has no way to choose anything different. He merely survives. Which is a lot more generous than I figure you're willing to be to anyone with any less than a perfect life.

Of all the things I choose to argue. I protect the dogs.... LOL!  Chuck, I like you, but you're an a**hole.

I think I've now officially won the record for most quotes ending up as people's sigs.

I think this is funny though. What you said is so incredibly ridiculous that I don't even think people are going to blow up on you.

Yeah, but Ghandi didn't have quads like that! 

And to further blend threads, as Coredump said, karma's a bitch, Chucky.

Abraham, 

Life is full of difficulties. Many of these difficulties come in the form of unpleasant interactions with other humans. How you choose to interact with others defines who you are. To answer your question, you must first decide who you want to be. Then let your actions (and interactions) flow from that self-image.

FYI - I would have beat the tar out of the guy in Kinkos, not given a cent to the lady holding the door and kicked the beligerent bum yelling obsenities at me in the *** until he apologized - maybe even taken HIS money. Having said that, those that are habitually homeless (meaning not transitioning) are usually mentally unballanced, either naturally or through drugs. Having compassion for someone in a bad situation does not mean you are responsible for their circumstances or that you have to allow said person to abuse you.

These people are taught that intimidation works - and it does. They will invade your space, make aggressive eye contact and try to make you feel uncomfortable so that you will give money to get them to leave you alone. It pisses me off almost as much as the churches that invade the intersections by my house. 

Every time you give a vagrant money you are re-enforcing this lesson. It is not their fault, it's yours.

Hey, Fritoe....calm down.  Didn't I throw money in your cup that time?  Anyway, I will probably get tooled for this, but here is an entry to my Livejournal Blog from last summer on this very subject.  The top two paragraphs I pretty much already said in this thread, it's the end of this entry that I think is interesting:

CHARITY

You know those guys on the roads that sit on the ramp of exits with sad signs....."will work for food" or "Vietnam Vet" or sadder still, "hungry"? Well I give money to all of them. I know they spend it on drugs and alcohol, but I don't care. I can't look into the eyes of another person in need, whatever that need might be, and then look away. It does something to me, to look away would be to disregard that person's humanness. It's not that I think it's okay what they do with the money, but by me acknowledging them by giving them a few dollars it says "someone else sees you" "someone cares". And the best part is that I never tell anyone that I do this. My grandma told me that a good deed isn't good if you tell about it and I kind of like having that kind of secret.

I worked in a homeless shelter for three years as the Director of Volunteers and I went into that job as green as a willow branch. I thought that by working there I would dispel all the myths that homeless people are either lunatics or crack-heads. Well, I was wrong. Ninety-five percent of the people I saw come through the doors of Union Mission were either mentally ill or addicted to something.

During this time in my life I did a good bit of thinking about the types of people that work for these types of organizations, or just non-profits in general. I observed that most people I worked with were doing it on the surface because "they wanted to help others". A noble motivation but with an underlying gratification. By helping others it gave them the understandable feeling of "I'm good". But I think somewhere in the past of these noble workers was either a sense of their own worthlessness or an extreme amount of guilt.

These people, in my opinion, chose these types of careers to prove their worth to themselves or to convince others of their inherent good. The other scenario, to extradite themselves from some long buried guilt, acts as a payback to clear their slates. Most of them are not aware that somewhere along the way they picked up this guilt (parental, spousal, or other) and are trying to soothe themselves by helping others.

Both are charity cases, the homeless and the helpers. They each co-exist because of the other. There would be virtually no homeless if no one EVER helped them, and their would be no social service workers if there were no indigents. The point is we all need something and we are all here to see the humanness in each other.