Unfortunately, I completely agree with your opinion/perspective ....but my question is HOW can 'We the People' change this?! Are we too far gone? Too self consumed? Too isolated and disaffected? Is humanity alien to our species? Why can't people just go back to quietly living their lives, instead of forcing others to accept their lifestyles? This world has become utter madness. Biologically, Psychologically, and sociologically. Virtual insanity is what we're living in...yeah...
Warning, this is pretty long but i spent a lot of time and thought on it and writing it helped me actually solidify my position on things so thanks and i hope you guys read it.
Firstly, respect for not only being willing to have the conversation in the first place, but also being awesome enough to not just complain but seek a solution. Where do i start? I like to leave on a high note lol so I'll do the problem first then the possible solution(s).
Ok so hang in there with me, i have a fair amount to say about people and the general state of the world first, but i promise I'll get to your specific question in my typical long winded way. So we're starting with increasingly petulant, entitled, spoiled, sensitive, addicted, chronically dependent people raised poorly by addicts and electronics, who were never taught much of anything about homemaking, self sufficiency, economics, money management, nutrition, accurate world history or conflict resolution. Then add the human tendency to self sabotage, seek the negative out and to run from any hard work or change even if good until it's forced upon us, and the fact that escalation is human nature and we are stuck with nowhere else to escalate to at this point, and it's a bleak picture to start.
There's knowledge, which led to technology, which took less than a century to transform the world and started out as such an amazing achievement yet led to so much evil when pushed to its furthest point (science being corrupted by corporate interests, the loss of so many jobs being replaced by automation, and idiots playing God and doing dangerous and dark shit with dna now such as transhumanism, gmos etc).
Everything is exacerbated by overpopulation and trolls of humans pushing any and every possible concept to its furthest possible limits, and it turns out that when every next drastic progression/act is only a tiny bit further than the last one, it can be hard to find a place we all can agree on to draw the lines of what is ok and what is not, and the result is that we don't ever find that place to draw the line at all. Which is how good things like marriage equality then trans rights slid downhill into weird and bad things like identity politics and people cutting off their own limbs because they identify as amputees. Even originally noble movements that won the rights they should've gotten all along turned ridiculous dangerous and divisive when they kept finding more and more ridiculous goals to fight for, all because they just couldn't face either putting down the victim status they had clung to for so long, or be judged on merit instead of being handed fake approval based on status. Which is how the right to vote, drive, work and be autonomous turned into fart rape and mansplaining.
This all plays into why typical solutions may not apply in this interesting time, and our demonstrated inability amongst different groups in society to finally mend their broken histories and start practicing what they preach. That's i guess how we get into your question, the way we relate to each other globally. I hope you keep hanging out with me!
I never had an opinion on global immigration and overpopulation until i saw it on a smaller scale over the last decade plus that people have been steadily moving to my city, Portland Oregon, at the rate of over 110 a day, and that may actually refer mostly to families not just individual people, I'm not sure. A bad time to become a sanctuary city if you ask me.
And as i saw the safety net intended for portlanders get cut down because of all the other people that weren't even from here or invested in this city claiming entitlements, the lack of parking anywhere, the crime rate rise and the shit pile up in the streets, the 12 person tents inhabited by just one or two tweekers blocking the entire sidewalks, the well dressed foreign families begging for money for multiple things including gas for their car And money for a hotel for 4 people every night (um how about sleeping in your car while you save money for an apartment like anyone else would do?), i started formulating my opinions on global issues, and taking a ton of shit for them too.
And what's weird is that, even though i voted for Obama initially and still celebrate the civil rights movement that's made such great strides in the time that the advancement of technology took to destroy the world as we knew it, i started questioning whether integration of the nations or of people from different places really was as good of a concept in practice or if much like socialism and anarchy, it was destined to fail.
I'd question this, and feel bad for doing so, whenever I'd see things like how smaller or medium sized cities that had managed to actually solve their homeless problem by offering people treatment and housing like Salt Lake City did were then overrun by people from everywhere trying to claim their permanent housing, causing the whole program, and the entire housing first model, to shut down before it could even be implemented anywhere else. I think these things when i see footage of middle eastern immigrants in agreement talking candidly about how they all go to whatever country will give out the most money instead of following the law and going to the nearest safe country. Or when i see footage of entire trains full of immigrants throwing the food and water they were being given back at the people distributing them, and taking bottles of water out of their crying, confused children's hands and throwing the water back onto the platform. I think it when i see privileged black people at prestigious universities actually demand segregation from whites at universities and try to use violence to achieve it- the very opposite of what their own ancestors fought so hard for decades ago. I think these things when i hear about Chinese spies getting caught trying to leave the us with vials of biological samples; when i hear about sharia law pushing Muslims infiltrating Congress, taking over American and European neighborhoods with violence, assaulting robbing and raping thousands of Germans in just one night at just one event, and refusing to assimilate show gratitude or integrate; when i hear of the brutal torture and murder after brutal torture and murder of naive idealistic white hippie chicks who document their solo travels into middle eastern territory under active warnings of violence towards Americans to teach everyone that love solves all and that everything people think about Muslims/middle easterners is bigoted and wrong; when i look at how prisoners everywhere self segregate even in prisons that the prisoners themselves run.
So like you said, wtf is the solution? Well it's become apparent that no city or country can seem to solve its own problems or maintain a system of living while also giving those resources and space to outsiders, because whoever does will be flooded by them and the result will be everyone going without including the very residents that the help was meant for and needed by. It would ensure that the vets who risk their lives for this country don't end up homeless here then slapped in the face with the reality that their survival isn't even as important as those who have no claim here and talk shit on this country.
Oh and if the problem was simply the existence of capitalism, then every American city would have a homeless problem parallel to the ones in the liberal democratic cities that pay the most in benefits and holds addicts and criminals the least responsible for their crimes. Buildings have occupancy limits, why not cities or countries? Why do we tolerate so many cities shipping their homeless to liberal coastal cities that are already overrun? Why can't people seek help in their own city or country? We help so many countries with so much anyway, why come here?
So basically i support the immigration of grateful citizens willing to wait their turn and assimilate, as long as they are demonstrably contributing more than they take in government resources, and the immigration of people who have actually demonstrated danger to them that was unsolvable by any less drastic means than traveling to the nearest safe country, or unsurvivable without first moving elsewhere in their country. Those who commit violent crimes or a few instances or more of other kinds of lower level crimes should be deported each time they re enter.
Then you would have the problem of how to hold a mass intervention on this entire global generation so that so many weren't making a lifetime career out of having babies they can't care for or drawing more in benefits than taxpayers can pay in in that society. I have an idea for this, which is part of the good news.
Basically those who can't or won't adequately care for themselves would be at risk of civil commitment, and instead of jailing people on minor drug charges, that money and money from marijuana sales that doesn't go to schools can go towards making drug tx and job training more available to people, and anyone who submits to help of any kind including just food stamps would be in a program where the client identifies a dream career path to work toward with a counselor, barriers would be identified and worked into a tx plan that the recipient would be held to, and each month they can have one bigger task or a few smaller related goals that they will need to complete in order to get the help they've asked for the following month, with maybe one or two free cards a year when they didn't complete their monthly task yet still get the next months benefit. But we have to hold them responsible in some way or they would likely never better themselves and become willing to be self sustaining.
People will want to cooperate more I'm hoping when they feel respected and given the benefit of the doubt occasionally. I also know from experience that a great way to get an apathetic damaged person who has no interest in integrating into the society that never cared if they lived or died, is to give them opportunities to play the role of the person they see themselves becoming. Many will realize as they start accomplishing things that they had actually never reached or even set a goal before in their lives, and that there really is another better life out there for them that they never even imagined.
I think as long as a person is constantly moving forward and bettering themselves, the rate of progress doesn't matter so much. People can be met where they're starting at. To put it bluntly, sometimes you have to put things in selfish terms that even assholes can understand and tell them what's in it for them. If a client and counselor identify even smaller areas of progress to be made, like learning how to effectively communicate or control ones anger, that can be the focus of the work, or it could be bigger or more specific such as a recent widow who can't seem to function through their grief attending grief and loss counseling to help them manage their feelings and be employable. If a person is already licensed in their dream career such as i am in doing hair, and no legit barriers to employment can be identified, then the focus can be on helping someone like me get back to running their own business working for themselves instead of being a minimum wage slave for life again. Or help them pay for their CDL if they've already done the other work. Etc.
The opiate addicted people who can't seem to get clean on their own or even with the help of rehab after a certain amount of time, maybe 5 years, can go on methadone, which was also instrumental in saving me, because my getting well aka my literal survival was dependent on time management which had formerly been a low priority and a huge barrier for me.
Whatever barriers are identified in people may seem not worth investing in, but the payoff is getting them excited about living an honest life and achieving the dreams they had before the horrors of the world killed their hope. And after these barriers are addressed, the person will have no reason or desire to backside or continue to fuck their own lives off, ideally anyway. And it's proven that the better a persons social life and network is, the less likely they are to use drugs.
The other good news is that this virus scare is causing humanity to finally address their self limiting behavior, whatever it is. It's forcing people to make all the progress they can while there's a chance. And if we all get our own shit back on track and find something to live for, and start immediately employing some self imposed population control measures, then we can integrate more effectively again... But not while we insist on blaming others for our own problems and choices, or as long as we refuse to let go of past grievances and really try living in harmony.
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