an awfull feeling

[walton]

i know what the majority of replies will say, but here goes. a couple of weeks ago while walking throough the local park to the vape store, i asked a woman street person if she needed anything, she after a while said a coffee, having no change i gave her a $10 note. few days later, she stopped me and gave me my change!!
reason i said that was it made me think about where the hell i am. i have around 16 mods and often when i am looking around a vape shop, i will see a bottle of juice and yes i will get 60mm of it as a might as well try it thought. so i leave the shop with the coils i went for, plus 70-100 bucks of gear i bought as a afterthought,when i had the coffee incedent. it rocked me a little to think that i would not hesitate to spend a 100 bucks, yet a polite woman thought xmas had come cause she got a coffee. no she was not a pillhead or a wino, just a mid 40's woman forced on the street, every time i think i am hard up, i look at the 4 big screen tv's, the 300 buck mobiles and a couple of grand of vape stuff and i shake my head and wonder if i really know what hardship is.
yes there are junkies, alcos and plain lazy pricks and hookers etc, but there are genuine sad people out there, once i started looking i realised that when i feel down, i should smack myself in the mouth, i half finish a meal then bin it!

its a sobering world out there. a world that we could very well end up in. yes we all know about it,

but do we really?

 

[crazydmnd]

I can understand where you are coming from, but let me just say this. Without knowing the full context of her situation, be very, very careful about making false empathies where you are essentially speculating leading you to compare your perceptions of her and your perceptions of yourself. This can lead to a false sense of guilt, which I personally believe underlies quite a bit of the decay we are experiencing in our society.

Our lives are a series of choices. We do not and never will start out at the same place, nor end up at the same place. There is a malevolent movement enveloping us right now and it is most often called Equity. It is not what we should strive for, that is the equality of opportunity. No, this is the dark equality of outcome. One should ask themselves, when this movement was at it's heyday during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and elsewhere; this ideology, that we should all be equal, which sounds really nice and laudable to stupid intellectuals who do not live in the real world, nor understand anything about human nature, led to the murder and destruction of more people by their own leaders than anything else in all of recorded human history. Over 100 million human beings between Stalin and Mao alone. Why weren't most of us taught this in school? It seems rather important that we should have learned the lessons of the ideology.

So why the history lesson? For starters, I think we were purposely not taught about how this particular ideological revolution implemented specific steps after an emergency, it's tell-tale patterns of manipulation of speech, it's manifest dogma and the creation of political correctness... this may sound a little familiar? Well, when I was coming up, nobody felt guilty about success (in fact we looked up to it and strove for it), nobody felt guilty for having a color TV and VCR and a Nintendo, or even the 8 foot long G.I. Joe aircraft carrier. When we saw those less fortunate, we felt instead, "How could I help them?".

I think the way you are feeling about this can be traced to the cultural revolution we are now in full stride of. We are in the late stages of it as well. However, it has been going on for many decades, very slowly, and then, as they say, all at once. In fact, all the weirdness is related. There is the sense of a general antipathy towards competence and merit. All the crap about toxic masculinity is part of that. We have been taught no longer how to think, but what to think, leading to people being unable to think clearly and logically, surprisingly enough. Notice all these schools who are doing away with TAG programs, even grading altogether. We have made the last couple generations fragile. We need safe spaces, we can't listen to ideas that challenge our own, how we feel is promoted as all-important. When I was a kid, like 6 years old, I would disappear all day on my bike. I would wander miles away, through forests, swamps, strange neighborhoods, all over, and maybe be back by dark. A parent might be arrested for allowing this in many places today. These days, everyone gets their participation trophy, because we cannot allow anyone to feel bad. Believe me, this is by design. But that's another story.

Look, I spent over a decade doing some very nasty drugs, and there were times I was technically homeless. I have met all kinds of these people and gotten to know many of them, and let me tell you, I can't ever remember coming across anyone who was living like this by circumstance and bad luck alone. I am sure there are some good, hard working people who are just shit upon by the universe and get to this place, but I never met one. They were all there by choice. A series of choices they made. If you are honest, moral, and try to uphold your principles, you should never feel guilty.

 

[Lady Sarah]

Some people do make poor assumptions of those worse off than themselves. When I was homeless, (yet working) twice I had employers hand me a hundred dollar bill and tell me to go get change. I would walk to every establishment within several blocks to try to make change, only to go hand the bills back to my bosses and tell them nobody would break a hundred.

I believe they expected me to pocket the money and disappear with it.

 

[Train]

i know what the majority of replies will say, but here goes. a couple of weeks ago while walking throough the local park to the vape store, i asked a woman street person if she needed anything, she after a while said a coffee, having no change i gave her a $10 note. few days later, she stopped me and gave me my change!!
reason i said that was it made me think about where the hell i am. i have around 16 mods and often when i am looking around a vape shop, i will see a bottle of juice and yes i will get 60mm of it as a might as well try it thought. so i leave the shop with the coils i went for, plus 70-100 bucks of gear i bought as a afterthought,when i had the coffee incedent. it rocked me a little to think that i would not hesitate to spend a 100 bucks, yet a polite woman thought xmas had come cause she got a coffee. no she was not a pillhead or a wino, just a mid 40's woman forced on the street, every time i think i am hard up, i look at the 4 big screen tv's, the 300 buck mobiles and a couple of grand of vape stuff and i shake my head and wonder if i really know what hardship is.
yes there are junkies, alcos and plain lazy pricks and hookers etc, but there are genuine sad people out there, once i started looking i realised that when i feel down, i should smack myself in the mouth, i half finish a meal then bin it!

its a sobering world out there. a world that we could very well end up in. yes we all know about it,

but do we really?

Simple thoughts...

- there's always people worse off than me (financially and otherwise)
- there's always people better off than me (financially and otherwise)
- some of them "deserve it" - some do not
- you can't "fix" that, you can only be fair, be helpful perhaps, be kind, be understanding

If you give EVERYONE unbiased at least, and compassionate at best - consideration and treat them like a fellow person - then you are probably contributing positively to the world.

Some specific feedback -
I wouldn't for an instant feel guilt over having some stuff. I would, like you, be affected by the woman bringing me change for the coffee I intended - and likely would be motivated by her appreciation to do something more for her. Thanks for the story - it's thought-provoking, in a good way.

 

[walton]

Some people do make poor assumptions of those worse off than themselves. When I was homeless, (yet working) twice I had employers hand me a hundred dollar bill and tell me to go get change. I would walk to every establishment within several blocks to try to make change, only to go hand the bills back to my bosses and tell them nobody would break a hundred.

I believe they expected me to pocket the money and disappear with it.

i dont believe that my assumption was a poor one,

 

[walton]

I can understand where you are coming from, but let me just say this. Without knowing the full context of her situation, be very, very careful about making false empathies where you are essentially speculating leading you to compare your perceptions of her and your perceptions of yourself. This can lead to a false sense of guilt, which I personally believe underlies quite a bit of the decay we are experiencing in our society.

Our lives are a series of choices. We do not and never will start out at the same place, nor end up at the same place. There is a malevolent movement enveloping us right now and it is most often called Equity. It is not what we should strive for, that is the equality of opportunity. No, this is the dark equality of outcome. One should ask themselves, when this movement was at it's heyday during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and elsewhere; this ideology, that we should all be equal, which sounds really nice and laudable to stupid intellectuals who do not live in the real world, nor understand anything about human nature, led to the murder and destruction of more people by their own leaders than anything else in all of recorded human history. Over 100 million human beings between Stalin and Mao alone. Why weren't most of us taught this in school? It seems rather important that we should have learned the lessons of the ideology.

So why the history lesson? For starters, I think we were purposely not taught about how this particular ideological revolution implemented specific steps after an emergency, it's tell-tale patterns of manipulation of speech, it's manifest dogma and the creation of political correctness... this may sound a little familiar? Well, when I was coming up, nobody felt guilty about success (in fact we looked up to it and strove for it), nobody felt guilty for having a color TV and VCR and a Nintendo, or even the 8 foot long G.I. Joe aircraft carrier. When we saw those less fortunate, we felt instead, "How could I help them?".

I think the way you are feeling about this can be traced to the cultural revolution we are now in full stride of. We are in the late stages of it as well. However, it has been going on for many decades, very slowly, and then, as they say, all at once. In fact, all the weirdness is related. There is the sense of a general antipathy towards competence and merit. All the crap about toxic masculinity is part of that. We have been taught no longer how to think, but what to think, leading to people being unable to think clearly and logically, surprisingly enough. Notice all these schools who are doing away with TAG programs, even grading altogether. We have made the last couple generations fragile. We need safe spaces, we can't listen to ideas that challenge our own, how we feel is promoted as all-important. When I was a kid, like 6 years old, I would disappear all day on my bike. I would wander miles away, through forests, swamps, strange neighborhoods, all over, and maybe be back by dark. A parent might be arrested for allowing this in many places today. These days, everyone gets their participation trophy, because we cannot allow anyone to feel bad. Believe me, this is by design. But that's another story.

Look, I spent over a decade doing some very nasty drugs, and there were times I was technically homeless. I have met all kinds of these people and gotten to know many of them, and let me tell you, I can't ever remember coming across anyone who was living like this by circumstance and bad luck alone. I am sure there are some good, hard working people who are just shit upon by the universe and get to this place, but I never met one. They were all there by choice. A series of choices they made. If you are honest, moral, and try to uphold your principles, you should never feel guilt

I can understand where you are coming from, but let me just say this. Without knowing the full context of her situation, be very, very careful about making false empathies where you are essentially speculating leading you to compare your perceptions of her and your perceptions of yourself. This can lead to a false sense of guilt, which I personally believe underlies quite a bit of the decay we are experiencing in our society.

Our lives are a series of choices. We do not and never will start out at the same place, nor end up at the same place. There is a malevolent movement enveloping us right now and it is most often called Equity. It is not what we should strive for, that is the equality of opportunity. No, this is the dark equality of outcome. One should ask themselves, when this movement was at it's heyday during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and elsewhere; this ideology, that we should all be equal, which sounds really nice and laudable to stupid intellectuals who do not live in the real world, nor understand anything about human nature, led to the murder and destruction of more people by their own leaders than anything else in all of recorded human history. Over 100 million human beings between Stalin and Mao alone. Why weren't most of us taught this in school? It seems rather important that we should have learned the lessons of the ideology.

So why the history lesson? For starters, I think we were purposely not taught about how this particular ideological revolution implemented specific steps after an emergency, it's tell-tale patterns of manipulation of speech, it's manifest dogma and the creation of political correctness... this may sound a little familiar? Well, when I was coming up, nobody felt guilty about success (in fact we looked up to it and strove for it), nobody felt guilty for having a color TV and VCR and a Nintendo, or even the 8 foot long G.I. Joe aircraft carrier. When we saw those less fortunate, we felt instead, "How could I help them?".

I think the way you are feeling about this can be traced to the cultural revolution we are now in full stride of. We are in the late stages of it as well. However, it has been going on for many decades, very slowly, and then, as they say, all at once. In fact, all the weirdness is related. There is the sense of a general antipathy towards competence and merit. All the crap about toxic masculinity is part of that. We have been taught no longer how to think, but what to think, leading to people being unable to think clearly and logically, surprisingly enough. Notice all these schools who are doing away with TAG programs, even grading altogether. We have made the last couple generations fragile. We need safe spaces, we can't listen to ideas that challenge our own, how we feel is promoted as all-important. When I was a kid, like 6 years old, I would disappear all day on my bike. I would wander miles away, through forests, swamps, strange neighborhoods, all over, and maybe be back by dark. A parent might be arrested for allowing this in many places today. These days, everyone gets their participation trophy, because we cannot allow anyone to feel bad. Believe me, this is by design. But that's another story.

Look, I spent over a decade doing some very nasty drugs, and there were times I was technically homeless. I have met all kinds of these people and gotten to know many of them, and let me tell you, I can't ever remember coming across anyone who was living like this by circumstance and bad luck alone. I am sure there are some good, hard working people who are just shit upon by the universe and get to this place, but I never met one. They were all there by choice. A series of choices they made. If you are honest, moral, and try to uphold your principles, you should never feel guilty.

to give a bit more of an insight, after a few weeks of chatting i found out her husband was a builder in england as were his two brothers, building industry in uk went quiet, lady and hubby and son moved to australia. started well enabling them to move into a house on a couple of acres. he started his own business then a down turn in australian building industry hit hard. he carried the business through weeks of reduced income. his financial handling in my eyes was not to good, he heavily borrowed to push the business.meantime in uk builders had picked up and were busy. shortening story, brothers did well and moved to spain, the business in oz crashed, he hung himself. the lady lost her car house etc and as she was down on paper as a director, she was bankrupted and centre link the government body for unemployment benefits etc discovered that some monies had been paid that they should not have received. therefore she had her unemployment benefits slashed to repay the debt.life insurance was stuffed so zero cash. after house got repoyed th daughter killed herself.
her mum and dad by this time had passed away in the uk so she could not go back. ( i know this as i took her to centrelink and gave the details to my lawyer to check)
so in view of what i have heard from her and my lawyer, i got her into a house, and ensured she had clothing and furniture etc.
she does not drink or smoke. if i came across a similar situation again, yes,,i think i would do exactly the same as i just have.
i am very honest, i am very moral but in the past like everyone i probaly nicked lollies, and i have more principles than a lot of people, i turned down million dollar orders for my buisness on principle. i was orphaned 3 mins into xmas day, i was 7 ,brother 5. sister 18 months. dad 35. mum 32.
i learnt life the verey hard way, noboby to turn to tried suicide 4 times , so yeah life is a shit sandwich, the more bread you have,the less shit you eat.
i had me to guide myself, as i have been told' i make a great friend, but a c@#$ of an enemy'

stay safe buddy.

 

[crazydmnd]

to give a bit more of an insight, after a few weeks of chatting i found out her husband was a builder in england as were his two brothers, building industry in uk went quiet, lady and hubby and son moved to australia. started well enabling them to move into a house on a couple of acres. he started his own business then a down turn in australian building industry hit hard. he carried the business through weeks of reduced income. his financial handling in my eyes was not to good, he heavily borrowed to push the business.meantime in uk builders had picked up and were busy. shortening story, brothers did well and moved to spain, the business in oz crashed, he hung himself. the lady lost her car house etc and as she was down on paper as a director, she was bankrupted and centre link the government body for unemployment benefits etc discovered that some monies had been paid that they should not have received. therefore she had her unemployment benefits slashed to repay the debt.life insurance was stuffed so zero cash. after house got repoyed th daughter killed herself.
her mum and dad by this time had passed away in the uk so she could not go back. ( i know this as i took her to centrelink and gave the details to my lawyer to check)
so in view of what i have heard from her and my lawyer, i got her into a house, and ensured she had clothing and furniture etc.
she does not drink or smoke. if i came across a similar situation again, yes,,i think i would do exactly the same as i just have.
i am very honest, i am very moral but in the past like everyone i probaly nicked lollies, and i have more principles than a lot of people, i turned down million dollar orders for my buisness on principle. i was orphaned 3 mins into xmas day, i was 7 ,brother 5. sister 18 months. dad 35. mum 32.
i learnt life the verey hard way, noboby to turn to tried suicide 4 times , so yeah life is a shit sandwich, the more bread you have,the less shit you eat.
i had me to guide myself, as i have been told' i make a great friend, but a c@#$ of an enemy'

stay safe buddy.

If only more people wanted to help another like you, the world would be in a much better place.

 

[walton]

Simple thoughts...

- there's always people worse off than me (financially and otherwise)
- there's always people better off than me (financially and otherwise)
- some of them "deserve it" - some do not
- you can't "fix" that, you can only be fair, be helpful perhaps, be kind, be understanding

If you give EVERYONE unbiased at least, and compassionate at best - consideration and treat them like a fellow person - then you are probably contributing positively to the world.

Some specific feedback -
I wouldn't for an instant feel guilt over having some stuff. I would, like you, be affected by the woman bringing me change for the coffee I intended - and likely would be motivated by her appreciation to do something more for her. Thanks for the story - it's thought-provoking, in a good way.

yeah your dead right buddy, but it is scary, everyone is a couple of pay checks away from being on the street. imagine if you got divorced, you have to find a rental and a months rent up front, furniture. possibly a car, utilities turned on, children problems, changing bank accounts etc. its hard, it makes you look at what you have and just be thankfull. over here in oz i watch a seies on you tube called tales from the street, its where a guy catches up with homeless in philly? (i hope thats right lol) people can donate stuff if they want but yes they are true pill heads using tablets (blues?).
its hard to imagine when from across the world, looking at say venice beach? skid row, tent city. yes i know its expensive to keep them in jail but if they have say a minimum 6 month sentance, it might get them of the pills? i dont know, but its sad, even some crack heads or drunks have a reason they turned to these things, i am not blaming them at all. when they interview the women who are just spreading their legs for 100bucks. they say they can make 3k/week!! no house bills, mind all have 3,4 or 6 kids that have been taken of them.and they say a blue pill is 5 bucks so they must take a lot of them!!
look i think prostitution should be legalised, i mean if your wife found out you had visited a one, yes she
would be a bit pissed of, but you wont know prossies name,birthday,etc like you would if you were having an affair! no ladies i do not think its right either, if i was feeling frustrated i would be thankfull i have hands.
look, life can be good or bad, but dont say you make your own life as you dont. you may be happy but if wife/hubbie wants a divorce or if you lose second income, you cant plan for that. just imagine when you are lying in bed readind on a freezing night, a lot of people are lying on a piece of cardboard! even a prisoner in jail has food,a bed,and how water.
ok, sorry for this book, join me in a vapeeee yeah
cheers all, i wish you well.




































9

 

[VapeOn1960]

I din't read the entire thread (although I am interested...l honestly) maybe (in some way) this will make sense:
I know I feel like this sometimes...

 

[VapeOn1960]

I could really get more into it (my sister that we lost... don't really want to talk about it... long story) But it is never an easy story... every person is different and every solution is different. OK, I'm sort of choking right now... it's too personal but just want to say I do understand. And (even though I am really like this super strong personality (I'm right and the whole world is wrong? LOL it keeps me strong... there are times I have felt the low down just want to die blues (did I say that out loud?) damned tourettes (I actually have mild epilepsy) OK TMI (that means too much info) have no idea if this post just tripped everyone out or you really get it... I feel so much for this (even if I didn't read the entire thread) Just really wanted to say I do care... for what it's worth.

 

[walton]

I could really get more into it (my sister that we lost... don't really want to talk about it... long story) But it is never an easy story... every person is different and every solution is different. OK, I'm sort of choking right now... it's too personal but just want to say I do understand. And (even though I am really like this super strong personality (I'm right and the whole world is wrong? LOL it keeps me strong... there are times I have felt the low down just want to die blues (did I say that out loud?) damned tourettes (I actually have mild epilepsy) OK TMI (that means too much info) have no idea if this post just tripped everyone out or you really get it... I feel so much for this (even if I didn't read the entire thread) Just really wanted to say I do care... for what it's worth.

take it easy my friend

 

[dubya314]

Simple thoughts...

- there's always people worse off than me (financially and otherwise)
- there's always people better off than me (financially and otherwise)
- some of them "deserve it" - some do not
- you can't "fix" that, you can only be fair, be helpful perhaps, be kind, be understanding

If you give EVERYONE unbiased at least, and compassionate at best - consideration and treat them like a fellow person - then you are probably contributing positively to the world.

Some specific feedback -
I wouldn't for an instant feel guilt over having some stuff. I would, like you, be affected by the woman bringing me change for the coffee I intended - and likely would be motivated by her appreciation to do something more for her. Thanks for the story - it's thought-provoking, in a good way.

This is beautifully written, and perfectly stated, imo

 

[VapeOn1960]

take it easy my friend

I'm fine now. I guess between the alcohol and thoughts about my sister it got to me.

 

[walton]

I'm fine now. I guess between the alcohol and thoughts about my sister it got to me.

its a good emotion, we all see things differently, but we all hide pain. yes ladies, men cry to.

 

[Bliss Doubt]

i know what the majority of replies will say, but here goes. a couple of weeks ago while walking throough the local park to the vape store, i asked a woman street person if she needed anything, she after a while said a coffee, having no change i gave her a $10 note. few days later, she stopped me and gave me my change!!
reason i said that was it made me think about where the hell i am. i have around 16 mods and often when i am looking around a vape shop, i will see a bottle of juice and yes i will get 60mm of it as a might as well try it thought. so i leave the shop with the coils i went for, plus 70-100 bucks of gear i bought as a afterthought,when i had the coffee incedent. it rocked me a little to think that i would not hesitate to spend a 100 bucks, yet a polite woman thought xmas had come cause she got a coffee. no she was not a pillhead or a wino, just a mid 40's woman forced on the street, every time i think i am hard up, i look at the 4 big screen tv's, the 300 buck mobiles and a couple of grand of vape stuff and i shake my head and wonder if i really know what hardship is.
yes there are junkies, alcos and plain lazy pricks and hookers etc, but there are genuine sad people out there, once i started looking i realised that when i feel down, i should smack myself in the mouth, i half finish a meal then bin it!

its a sobering world out there. a world that we could very well end up in. yes we all know about it,

but do we really?

I really believe Geordie, that when we love each other as best we can, we are creating the world we want to live in. When you showed a homeless woman your care, you created an increase for everyone, including yourself.

I try to treat beggars with love and respect too. What they are doing is the hardest kind of daily work, and often there are mental health issues that make it impossible for them to have a job or function in a way we think of as "normal". Even those you refer to as lazy, alcoholics, junkies, hookers, didn't one day just decide to choose life on the street. There will almost always be a history of abuse, trauma, deprivation, and again, mental illness, and nobody can convince me that continuously hustling on the street is lazy.

Bless you for caring.

 

[VapeOn1960]

@Bliss Doubt , I couldn't have said it better.

 

[VapeOn1960]

https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople

 

[Serena25330]

This thread is a beautiful reminder of why and how much I love our community

 

[walton]

you should love everybody the same,the things you and i take for granted, are other peoples dreams.

 

[walton]

I really believe Geordie, that when we love each other as best we can, we are creating the world we want to live in. When you showed a homeless woman your care, you created an increase for everyone, including yourself.

I try to treat beggars with love and respect too. What they are doing is the hardest kind of daily work, and often there are mental health issues that make it impossible for them to have a job or function in a way we think of as "normal". Even those you refer to as lazy, alcoholics, junkies, hookers, didn't one day just decide to choose life on the street. There will almost always be a history of abuse, trauma, deprivation, and again, mental illness, and nobody can convince me that continuously hustling on the street is lazy.

Bless you for caring.

thank you for looking at it as you do. words from a david bowie song are so so true..

" here i stand foot in hand,talking to my wall, ime not quite right at all.
but ide rather stay here, with all the madmen, than suffer with the sad men roaming free'
yes ide rather stay here with all the madmen.as ime quite convinced they are all as sane as me"

i think the sad men part is mostly true. i was feeling cranky over something when i saw a young girl in a wheelchair using her chin to steer it. boy was that a wake up call.

its easy to think..why am i here? but i wonder if that smiling girl in the wheelchair thinks of that? i dont have the power to know the answer, but in that instant, she was smiling and that one smile was more than i had done that day. she obviously has a better outlook on life than i do, if i have to buy something to makes me smile..is it worth having?

 

[walton]

I can understand where you are coming from, but let me just say this. Without knowing the full context of her situation, be very, very careful about making false empathies where you are essentially speculating leading you to compare your perceptions of her and your perceptions of yourself. This can lead to a false sense of guilt, which I personally believe underlies quite a bit of the decay we are experiencing in our society.

Our lives are a series of choices. We do not and never will start out at the same place, nor end up at the same place. There is a malevolent movement enveloping us right now and it is most often called Equity. It is not what we should strive for, that is the equality of opportunity. No, this is the dark equality of outcome. One should ask themselves, when this movement was at it's heyday during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and elsewhere; this ideology, that we should all be equal, which sounds really nice and laudable to stupid intellectuals who do not live in the real world, nor understand anything about human nature, led to the murder and destruction of more people by their own leaders than anything else in all of recorded human history. Over 100 million human beings between Stalin and Mao alone. Why weren't most of us taught this in school? It seems rather important that we should have learned the lessons of the ideology.

So why the history lesson? For starters, I think we were purposely not taught about how this particular ideological revolution implemented specific steps after an emergency, it's tell-tale patterns of manipulation of speech, it's manifest dogma and the creation of political correctness... this may sound a little familiar? Well, when I was coming up, nobody felt guilty about success (in fact we looked up to it and strove for it), nobody felt guilty for having a color TV and VCR and a Nintendo, or even the 8 foot long G.I. Joe aircraft carrier. When we saw those less fortunate, we felt instead, "How could I help them?".

I think the way you are feeling about this can be traced to the cultural revolution we are now in full stride of. We are in the late stages of it as well. However, it has been going on for many decades, very slowly, and then, as they say, all at once. In fact, all the weirdness is related. There is the sense of a general antipathy towards competence and merit. All the crap about toxic masculinity is part of that. We have been taught no longer how to think, but what to think, leading to people being unable to think clearly and logically, surprisingly enough. Notice all these schools who are doing away with TAG programs, even grading altogether. We have made the last couple generations fragile. We need safe spaces, we can't listen to ideas that challenge our own, how we feel is promoted as all-important. When I was a kid, like 6 years old, I would disappear all day on my bike. I would wander miles away, through forests, swamps, strange neighborhoods, all over, and maybe be back by dark. A parent might be arrested for allowing this in many places today. These days, everyone gets their participation trophy, because we cannot allow anyone to feel bad. Believe me, this is by design. But that's another story.

Look, I spent over a decade doing some very nasty drugs, and there were times I was technically homeless. I have met all kinds of these people and gotten to know many of them, and let me tell you, I can't ever remember coming across anyone who was living like this by circumstance and bad luck alone. I am sure there are some good, hard working people who are just shit upon by the universe and get to this place, but I never met one. They were all there by choice. A series of choices they made. If you are honest, moral, and try to uphold your principles, you should never feel guilty.

yes you are right on your words ie ruski president with 13 rolls roycw cars and the present one who is possibly the richest man in the world (but soon to be dead) i ran. rode my bike all day the same as you, yes we make choices and we gloat or suffer at the outcome we live by our decisions. that i can handle, when an event happens that involves you but it comes as a shock b eing unexpected and unwanted
then it becomes harder to do.