WORKING FOR THE MAN

I travel, by train, most days of my life. I commute. Yes, I know. I’m one of them. I always thought I’d end up being an artiste, a professional writer, or a rock star. Someone who didn’t have to get up every morning and go to an office. But then, the real world took me behind the bike sheds with promises of a quick fumble and a wizards sleeve.

Not everyone can be a rock star, not everyone can be a professional writer, and I’m not everyone. But I’m everyman. And I go to work every day so I get to sleep in my own bed every night. Or if I’m really lucky (or unlucky depending on your point of view), share someone else’s.

It’s only natural then, that at least part of me gets annoyed by people who seem to think - or at least act as if - they don’t have to do the things the rest of us do because they are in some way special. As if working for a living somehow is below them.

Working for a living is below me, I know that : I know I’d make an excellent egotist. Or at the very least, a truly competent rock star : I can’t sing, I can’t dance, and I have spiky hair (at least, in the morning when I’ve just got up) so I should fit right into a boy band. But I know that being precious about survival isn’t going to help me survive, and so I work for The Man - whomever he is - and work for money so I can eat, sleep, and occasionally go to the cinema.

BEGGING FOR A LIVING

And so, I get a bit annoyed by beggars. Because in my mind, I feel that beggars have decided that they, in some way, are beyond the lives the vast majority of us live. That somehow, something as simple and basic as self-preservation is below them and that someone else should look after them.

But Mummy won’t be here for them forever. I believe that everyone should take responsibility for their own actions. I subscribe to the theory of personal responsibility. I subscribe to the theory that if you screw up, you’ve got to take the fall. It’s a false economy to try to avoid the responsibilities of your actions, and more than that, it’s a lie. Because someone, somewhere, has got to pick up the tab.

And so, as I travel on the train – or the tube, or whatever my preferred method of transport is these days – I’m sick of being begged at. By being accosted, assaulted by people who seem to think it’s my responsibility to put food in their mouths.

I'm sick of beggars and tramps who scream abuse, get violent, and threaten people who object to them sleeping against your front door. I'm sick of tramps trying to bully me into looking after them because they don't want to look after themselves.

SYMPATHY FATIGUE

So when I see someone whose homeless, it’s difficult for me to feel sympathy. Yes, that sounds hard and sounds unsympathetic, but I know for a cast-iron fact that no-one, no-one is born homeless. Even a pregnant homeless woman isn’t thrown out onto the streets with their child.

Life is series of choices. Each of us have at least some idea of the consequences of most of these actions : to make choices that could endanger us is firstly plain stupid, and secondly, plain stupid. And if you haven’t worked out that taking a shedload of drugs, or spending an enormous amount on credit cards you can’t repay, or whatever it is, then - and lets be blunt here - you aren’t going to win any science prizes.

Sure, there are people who suffer abuse from their partners, or their parents. But in those instances, there are still better options than being homeless. Not particularly pleasant, but in a choice of two evils, the lesser should always win out.

DEPRESSIVES ANONYMOUS

His friends and family, myself included, did all we possibly could to help. I travelled hundreds of miles to facilitate conversations between people who slept feet apart because my brother point blank refused to take any notice of anyone. Between us, we spent hundreds of pounds trying to rescue someone from homelessness.

He may very well have been depressed. But I don’t have a huge amount of sympathy with people who suffer from depression, namely because if I thought about going to work every day I’d get depressed to. I don’t expect special treatment : and anyone who suffers from depression shouldn’t get it either. Sure, that’s unsympathetic, but I don’t subscribe to the theory that people should get special treatment just because they want it. Life is hard, so just get used to it, and take it. To try and claim that you should have easy just because you’d like an easy life is bullshit. And what could be easier than living in one of the richest countries in the world?

All this, his homelessness, could have been averted if he had take any action to save himself. Through his action, and his inaction, the only possible outcome would be that he would be homeless. Sleeping in shop doorways and used for target practice by drunks. There was nothing else we could do. We researched every possible action, every possible option that was open to us, open to anyone to stop this happening. But there was nothing we could do.

Ultimately, it came down to him. His actions, or his failure to act, were the only things that could reverse the decline. And whilst everyone else did everything they possibly could to avert and reverse this, the only person who could save him from homelessness was himself.

But faced with taking action, or simply giving up and being homeless, he became homeless.

So when I see a homeless person I don’t feel sympathy. It’s not possible to say that that person brought it all upon themselves, but no person is made homeless entirely due to factors outside of themselves. Nobody forced them to spend an enormous amount of money on credit cards. Nobody forced them to shoot up. Nobody forced them to do anything, and it takes remarkably little effort to keep yourself from homelessness. Common sense and a bit of initiative.

And so that’s my theory of personal responsibility. Survival is the most important aspect of the person : and if someone has no sense of what they have to do in order to survive, or through their own actions they neglect their responsibility to the Self Preservation Society, I don’t feel any sense of responsibility on their behalf.

And so, to beggars. A beggar is someone who survives by living on what other people throw away or give away. And I’m suffering from a modern ailment : sympathy fatigue. I’m exhausted by having to provide sympathy to people who don’t deserve it : people who did it to themselves. Who had every chance any human being can have, and just pissed it away.

Picture this. A shuffling gait from a man twice my age, in work clothes, wearing the outfit of a manual labourer, begging at people in suits. And so, in a moment of kindness, the woman sat opposite me offered him her sandwiches. Hand made, wrapped in plastic and looking absolutely gorgeous. Well, they were brown bread, but it’s still a meal, and a damn fine at that.

And the ungrateful, begging cunt refused. Refused an offer of kindness. Refused food from the plates of others. Beggars obviously can be choosers.

Now, given wheat I’ve told you before, maybe you could understand why I never give to beggars. That person was so ungrateful, so arrogant that they refused an act of kindness, they refused food from the mouths of others because it was on brown bread. They deserve to starve.

What an ungrateful cunt. Make no mistake. I don’t give to beggars. They are not in their position entirely without some choice, some complicity on their part. And when you rely on the kindness of others for your very survival, you do not refuse it. Because without the kindness of others who are stronger and more thoughtful than you, you will be dead.

Good riddance? Well. Maybe not. But I don’t think we’ll be missing a Nobel Prizewinner there. Survival of the kindest. Not of the cruellest. Beggars can be choosers. And I choose not to be kind. Because if you refuse to take responsibility for even the most basic of responsibilities, your own survival, you can’t then expect to survive.