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How does a prosperous society combat insidious "compassion"?
The article then notes acts of violence including eggs thrown, paintballs shot, and one homeless beaten dead (though the motive is not specified). None of this seems particularly remarkable to me, as the base rate for being subject to intra-homeless violence and general excess mortality seems substantial in any American city.
Yet the article's top reader comments predictably shout from the rooftops "cruelty", "what happened to compassion", "these so-called Christians", "it's a war against the homeless, not homelessness". Worse, I don't get the sense this chorus is particularly performative as compared to other virtue signaling hobby horses. Instead, my read, based on nothing more than a decade-long familiarity of NYT reader comments, is that a majority of the readership genuinely believes the people of Kalispell, Montana to be deplorables as a result of their anti-homeless actions.
I haven't egged, paintballed, or beaten any homeless and don't intend to start, but I firmly believe that any city will be worse off if a "compassionate" genie magically conjured up 100 homeless people to live its streets; no comment on whether I think a city should welcome a "cruel" genie who's able and willing to magically poof away the same. I also understand second order effects and believe people respond to incentives. It seems to me, then, that every compassionate Times reader equals something like 0.0001 compassionate genies, and every cruel Kalispell resident 0.01 cruel genies. Mechanics and process aside, the end result is a San Fran full of growing compassion and ever more unhoused, and a Kalispell with a cruel lid on the homeless, and maybe even a reduction down the line.
The part I struggle with is, how does a society argue against compassion? Even if the rational counterarguments are themselves obvious, it seems like a fundamentally losing messaging game. We raise our children to be compassionate and we look for spouses who are compassionate. Trying to shout from the rooftops that compassion is actually bad when it comes to the homeless feels akin to telling the world that generosity is bad when it comes to tipping. Which is why I'm resigned that no matter how many articles are written about the tipping culture being out of control, it will creep up to more industries and circumstances and higher preset amounts. Similarly, I'm resigned that more tax and charity dollars will go to the homeless and the homeless industrial complex ad infinitum, because you can't argue against compassion, at least not outside of the ratsphere and among the voting masses.
But perhaps an answer is to change the framing entirely. Ivy League campus DEI would have never died from straight white men (and adjacent Asians) arguing how anti-white and anti-man the apparatus is; it's just not persuasive enough for the public long accustomed to hearing about oppression, systemic racism, patriarchy, and the value of diversity. Falling the accepted wisdom requires something entirely different, recently having one oppressed in-group fight another until the contradiction is impossible to sustain.
So is there an entirely different approach to beating back compassion when it comes to the homeless problem? Is it possible to effectively campaign for the cruel genie?
You need to make the public understand how chronic stresses add up and lead to obesity, cancer, etc. Someone soliciting 500 people at an intersection is someone giving 500 people needless stress. The negative consequences of this are not canceled out by the benefit to the homeless man. Same with a park — a person should be able to walk in one rare beautiful piece of nature without seeing sprawled junk and disheveled tents. The benefit of this stress-free nature exposure is, ironically, protective against the possibility of developing homelessness in the future.
Anyway I would write something like, “we have noticed an uptick in minor trauma and stress responses among our residents, including women and lower income minorities. We have traced this stress response to the individuals who are soliciting money to stressed drivers trying to watch for incoming traffic; this is not just distracting, but it reminds many residents of their own lack of financial stability. In order to safeguard our most at-risk residents from further stress, we are going to make soliciting for money in public illegal. We instead ask everyone to donate to a town-wide fund for our poorest residents. The town will match dollar per every $400 donation. We are also going to ensure that our parks are free from unnecessary stressors.”
Yeah, great answer. Chronic stress kills.
Unfortunately as @Fruck says, our entire worldview, especially the medical establishment, is firmly against chronic stress being an issue. Just take a look at muscular injuries. While many doctors such as John Sarno have done great research and essentially proven that most chronic injuries are psychosomatic, the modern establishment view within medicine is that pretty much all injuries are mechanical, and need to be fixed with surgery. The idea that chronic stress over time leads to emotional issues which lead to physical pain is a massive threat to the current medical system.
There are a lot of researchers, doctors, and therapists doing good work in the chronic pain space, but boy are they fighting an uphill battle. And just imagine trying to tell someone "Yeah well... you didn't really need that shoulder surgery that cost you (or likely other taxpayers) tens of thousands of dollars, but it was probably easier than getting you to do some self-reflection and actually fix your personal problems." It's not exactly a sexy argument to make.
While I'm no fan of the homeless, I really don't think chronic mental stress can cause SLAP tears.
No idea what SLAP tears are, but hey man the link between mental stress and physical injuries keeps getting validated to impact more and more issues that were previously thought to be mechanical.
Anything that is caused or exacerbated by ‘stress’ is an excellent candidate.
Personal bugbear: Superior Labrum, Anterior to Posterior. The labrum is a bowl of cartilage that provides passive stabilization of the shoulder joint, which in humans is significantly less structurally sound in exchange for a greater movement envelope. The labrum can be torn by heavy exertion at the edges of the envelope or by the proximal head being driven through the labrum, as in holding your arms rigid during a car crash.
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