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Introduction
“If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s gonna stop ’em.” -Yogi Berra, Baseball Hall of Fame catcher.
“If people do not want to change, nobody’s going to stop ‘em.” -Will Luden, Host, Revolution 2.0™
That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.
Continuing
In the 1960s in Boulder, Colorado, I was peripherally involved in a group that opened a “Free Store” in downtown Boulder. The noble, naive and unstudied motive was to provide free clothing, and eventually, medical services, to people living on the streets, as a way of changing their lives. With high hopes and the sense of being on a breakthrough, anti-capitalist mission, the store was stocked with a good starting quantity of clean, used clothing displayed on the usual retail racks and shelves. There was even a starter amount of medical supplies. The buzz started when the first street people came in. There was disappointment when the first “shoppers” took off the clothes they were wearing, dropped them onto the floor, put on fresh gear, and left without a word. The buzz turned to frustration, and finally to resignation as this scene was repeated multiple times a day. The “store” closed after a few weeks, with the street people (the term for the homeless at the time) complaining about the lack of selection as the volunteers stopped bringing in more clothing.
Do any of you remember what I call the “How many does it take?” jokes? One that comes to mind is, “How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?” A. “None, Microsoft just declares darkness to be a standard.” Now that I have prepped you, try this one. “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?” A. “None. The light bulb has to want to change.”
Ond of the things that makes jokes funny is the element of truth in them. Yogi was right that baseball fans must want to come to the ballpark. And it is true that an individual needs to want to change before anything new can happen. The free store approach in Boulder, and other free stores at the time, made the dreamy assumption that street people, if cared for and given clean clothing in good repair, would begin to change their lives, practically on the spot. The assumption underlying this naivete, was that “the system”, notably capitalism, was holding them down. Not true. Personal choices are what hold street people down. Personal choices are what holds anyone down, or lifts them up.
Today’s Housing First approach to the homeless makes the same unfounded assumption as did the philosophy behind the Free Stores. But it is not the system, it is not the absence of affordable housing; it is personal choices. And not just one or two bad decisions; it is always a series of poor personal choices over time.
Let’s take a look at the evolution of the terms used for people living on the streets:
There are successful pushes to change the terminology and dramatically raise the amount of taxpayer funding that goes toward “solving” the homeless problem. But there are no successful pushes to correct or alleviate homelessness. The number of homeless, the garbage generated, and negatively affected neighborhoods, continues to soar. Why?
Because the light bulb needs to want to change. Because you can’t go and force fans to come to the ballpark even if you offer them a free ride, anymore than you can force the homeless to change the choices they make about how they live their lives if you offer them free food and a hotel room.
So, Will, what’s the solution? The first thing to understand is that not all of the homeless can or even want to be “saved.” In fact, only a small percentage can. Many are quite happy with their so-called freedom and access to a variety of drugs. Others are so far gone with mental illness, perhaps either caused or amplified by drug addiction, that they either do not want to be, or cannot be, helped. There is a percentage of the homeless who will be open to change, and a smaller percentage who will be willing to do the required work at their end. It will take a combination of an assumption of personal responsibility by the homeless person, and a personal, one-on-one commitment by others in a position to help, both entities working hard over time, to win the occasional victory. To extract a homeless person from the tent village, and to do the harder work of changing their thinking. That newly liberated formerly homeless person can now stand on his own two feet, and is now in the perfect position to help others who are in shabby living conditions, with similarly shabby thinking.
The current strategy of throwing money and other resources at a largely disinterested, or even resistive, growing homeless population is doing absolutely nothing productive. Add in a permissive approach to tent and lean to villages on public property, and turning a deaf ear, with many critical reactions, to concerned neighbors and neighborhoods, and you encourage the growth of the homeless and their encampments.
Earlier we said that the solution to homelessness is a combination of personal responsibility and a one-on-one commitment from others. That is true about everything in life. This truth gives rise to the core, driving principles at Revolution 2.0 which are:
There is nothing easy about this path to getting things done, and easy never accomplished anything worthwhile. Being either personally responsible or for being your Brother’s Keeper is simple, straightforward, hard, and more than worthwhile. Doing both is very hard. And truly well worth it, and the only way to get anything truly beneficial accomplished.
Tell me what you believe. I and many others want to know.
As always, whatever you do, do it in love. Without love, anything we do is empty.
Contact
As we get ready to wrap up, please do respond in the episodes with comments or questions about this episode or anything that comes to mind, or connect with me on Twitter, @willluden, Facebook, facebook.com/will.luden, and LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/willluden/. And you can subscribe on your favorite device through Apple, Google, or Stitcher.
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Will Luden, coming to you from 7,200’ in Colorado Springs.
