Of course, there is the shitty thing where people are so disconnected that they attempt to talk 'to' someone but end up talking 'at' them instead... but at least then there is the chance for communication and understanding.
To me, this is the pertinent question: if people are homeless "by choice" - meaning they had some other option - why is our society structured in such a way that being without shelter and security seems like a better option than the alternative? How could things be different so that no one would "choose" to be homeless?
To some, the value of doing what you want is greater than the value of the physical structure. That could be because they consider time extremely valuable, they don't value a home as highly, or because they hate the work. It's usually some combination of the three.
A lot of voluntarily homeless just see "society" as the entire list of rules of what you're supposed to do (go to college, get a job, buy a house, settle down, have kids) and reject the whole of it. It could be that you've seen enough to think that the entire system is flawed, so you just bail on all of it. It could be that those ideals just don't jive with you personally and are completely unappealing. That's how I felt when I dropped out of college and moved to China for no good reason. (Homelessness came after that). I was on track to be an investment banker or something, but hated the idea a little more each day until I finally said, "f this, I'm out" and started vagabonding around Asia.
Maybe there is an element of mental illness, I don't know. I had lunch with a psychologist once and he tried saying, "Seriously, listen to me, you are mentally ill." I guess he thought I was crazy - maybe I am - but I never went in to see him. I had no interest in altering my mind with drugs. I like who I am, even when it is difficult to interoperate with the rest of society.
When I was homeless, security was worthless. I still think it's largely an illusion, but that's a different topic. Freedom to do what I loved was well worth not having a home for. Working happened to be the thing that I loved, and I especially loved tech. I worked 16 hour days - I just wanted to work on my thing not someone else's thing. If I had enough runway to afford a House I would have done that, but I didn't. So living in a Honda civic it was. It didn't really bother me, to be honest. A bed is a bed.
Now I am married and have a baby on the way. I still don't care about security, but they need it, so ok I'm kind of reformed in that way. Luckily we're now funded so i still do exactly what I want all day. I don't know what would happen if the company failed. It's just not an option.
Err. Psychologists don't use drugs. Perhaps you should reconsider this one.
Some things, it turns out, are best addressed chemically.
Efficacy of drugs used to treat seriously ill Clinically Depressed patients; slightly better than placebo, and that might be stretching the data?
Drugs used to treat anxiety; the one's that work, for awhile, are addictive.
It seems like every few months, a researcher is questioning "best addressed chemically" approach. This month is long term use of antipsychotics on Schizophrenics: maybe these drugs affect the long term quality of life?
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
So does untreated schizophrenia.
A well known tension in mental health treatment teams is between the psychiatrist (who stereotypically will want to medicate everyone) and the psychologists (who stereotypically will want to talk to everyone).
"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
Luke 12:16-20, Seneca, or some time working in insurance might do just as well.
No matter how much you own and how much you've got things secured in your life, all you need is one gravel under your shoe and you can fall and hit your head so as to never go back to the life you had. Wealth, job, relationships... they can all be torn down should things go majorly awry.
Security is an illusion of control, and in life you never really have any real control.
The idea of 'security' should be represented as a spectrum, like white to black with grey in the middle. The ideas of perfect security or total insecurity— the white and black ends of the spectrum— only exist in our minds (Not in the real world.) Thats what you're talking about.
Don't focus on the extreme ideas- instead, think about the grey area of the spectrum with 'more security and more hassle' on one end, and 'less security and fewer hassles' on the other. Then you'll have a reasonable mental foundation to build your ideas on.
It's true that there are lots of things that we cannot control, regardless of money or power, but when we have more options we certanly have more control over our own lives and those around us. Money is a very effective way of increasing our options in life but there are other ways too, like having more knowledge or developing a skill, more meaningful relationships.
There are also those that can't/won't accept responsibilities like maintaining a house, paying bills, etc. Our society caters poorly to these people because we are not full-on socialist; adults must accept responsibilities to function in our world.
Those are two rough groups that come to mind.
I invite you to here to Eastern Europe, to see homeless people who are alcoholics and drug addicts, usually without any mental function except for thinking about how to get high and drunk again. They shit and piss over themselves, mumble, and harass people. They refuse to go to a shelter because then they'd have to stop drinking.
So yeah, I will say all homeless people are drunks and drug addicts who choose not to fix their life, and telling me that I'm wrong while living in Silicon Valley drinking your starbucks latte just makes you seem stupid.
Across the UK an iPhone is a trivially* cheap item.
1 months' rent in London would buy you a decent spec MacBook. 3-4 months' rent in a cheaper city would do the same.
Many people seem to have the viewpoint that it's some sort of irrational decision to not prioritise housing above everything else.
40 hour weeks making others obese so that I can barely make the rent whilst my boss buys his next car?
Trivial choice from where I'm standing. I do feel for those who have dependents, though.
* It is fairly common here for people to 'call out' welfare recipients as owning big TV's, iPhones, etcetera; as evidence as profligate spending. From my point of view, luxury electronics are for the poor and rich, and excluded from the middle classes. Why? Because the poor can never expect to build capital regardless, and the rich have capital already. Only the middle classes actually need to think about expenditure, because they may eventually be able to own property.
And I've seen it. I lived in eastern Ukraine (Gorlovka, Kharkov, Donetsk, Makyevka) from 2008 to 2010. I was a Mormon missionary, meaning I literally walked around all day talking with anyone who would talk with me. And yes, you're absolutely right, there are an absurd amount of people who live only to drink, especially in eastern Ukrainian mining towns after the economic collapse when all of the mines are closed. They would follow us around and harass us, try to pick a fight (didn't work too well when they were drunk) beat up the other bums (бомж), steal their money, and drink. Mostly just drink until they pass out in the park. I gave a couple grievni to a homeless man once who was asking for bread, and watched him literally take my money, walk to the nearest store and buy a bottle of vodka. He didn't even care that I watched him do it. It was my last time giving money to beggars. When we'd serve the homeless food from the church it was pretty much гречка (buckwheat) loaded up with salt, because we knew they were all either drunk or on a hangover.
But I also met Pyotr, a man who was seemed to be in his fifties. He was obviously incredibly intelligent, and had times when he seemed perfectly normal, and he despised alcohol (for ruining his family, he said). If he were diagnosed he probably would have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; I'm no psychiatrist, but he would take bundles of sticks and obsessively clean out the walkways and stairways until they were spotless. If he saw somebody drop a bottle in the park he would literally sprint to pick it up and throw it away. He dressed in rubber boots usually worn by older women, and just went around cleaning stuff all day muttering to himself. All day, every day. I liked talking to Pyotr. He even recognized that he had gone a little bit crazy, and said he did so when he was studying higher math at a local university. He was working at a level of math that was very theoretical, and he just snapped, I guess.
When I first met him, I thought he was drunk or high or something. He had a little bit of a twitch and talked so quickly that his sentences slurred together (not like a drunk slur, just a way that was very difficult to understand as someone who had learned Russian as a second language). But as I talked with him, it became clear that there was just something mentally off.
So by and large, I'd say you're correct; it's pretty hard to be truly homeless in eastern Europe. Most are intolerable drunks. But some aren't.
The point I was trying to make is that there are many, many types of homeless people. Of course, the vast majority of homeless aren't like the voluntarily homeless in Palo Alto who could easily get a job if they cared to. Being homeless in a country that provides a pension and housing for all is especially interesting, but not all of them are drunk assholes either.
I was (voluntarily) homeless in San Francisco for a while (http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in-silicon-vall...), only because I wanted to work on my company instead of get a job, and I had read enough Thoreau that I didn't care to give up the majority of my time in exchange for crap I don't need. So I could have gotten a job, but I deemed it not worth giving up my freedom for. Of course, that came with other sacrifices, but I considered it worth it at the time.
In doing so, I ended up hanging out with a wide, wide variety of homeless people. Some were punk kids who wanted to reject society/capitalism, many of whom were from broken homes. Some were mentally handicapped. Some had done enough of some sort of drug that they were completely fried. A few seemed very intelligent - one lost his job as a physics professor when he had sex with one of his students, and his family was so ashamed they wouldn't take him in.
Saying things like "homelessness is a choice" is true for some subset of people, but completely untrue for others. Most of the homeless I hung out with were very affluent and had iPhones and MacBooks (you don't find many forced homeless pitching VCs in Palo Alto), but when I was in the city it was a different story. More mental handicaps, more felons, and more people who had simply fallen upon difficult times.
The amount of willingness they had in the matter is a spectrum., as was the tech they used, the reason they were homeless, and their ages But they're all people, and most of them that I met were good people, with wants and dreams and desires mostly just like everybody else. Please don't try to say, "All homeless people are x."