When Prof. Moglen was discussing the wide chasm separating between what we know about the penal system and what really transpires behind prison doors, it occurred to me that this divergence between reality and unreality certainly isn't unqiue to the criminal "justice" system, and that the failure to bridge that gap often leads to a distorted understanding of human behavior in other contexts as well. In the case of the penal system, we witness some alarming absurdities: the father who thinks jail time will "shape up" his son, the politician who pads his resume with convictions, the prosecutor whose political ties pervert her duties as a public servant, and a community which thinks itself safer despite rising rates of incarceration and crime. These symptoms are no doubt worrisome, but I believe the same social forces operate in other cases as well.

One example that jumps to mind is homelessness. As a student at UC Berkeley, much of my morning treks to campus consisted of walking past people living on the streets (or, as many of us would call them, "beggars, hobos, tramps, bums," etc). The views of my peers can be captured by any of the following:

- These are people who deliberately refuse to find jobs

- Panhandling is a conman's day-job; the homeless actually lead comfortable lives beneath the rags

- Their reluctance to find shelter is voluntary

- Giving them change will only further solidify their dependence on others

It takes only a few days on the streets to understand that these are nothing but mere myths. Homelessness is not a voluntary, instantaneous decision but a slow downward descent laced with drugs, behavioral health issues and sheer bad luck - any one of us could fall prey to it given the right circumstances. But like Robinson's example, there exists a massive disparity between what we believe about homeless people and what actually transpires in the life and mind of a homeless man.

One could argue that the root cause of this ignorance is simply an inability to empathize with an experience none of us have ever had. If lack of empathy were the issue, however, I see no reason why the disparity between reality and unreality would grow to such a point that our reaction to shivering old men would turn from sympathy to disgust. Human nature, I believe, is not so pitiless. There is certainly something else at work here.

My hypothesis is that we project onto homeless people qualities that accentuate (and justify) the difference between our opulence and their poverty. We choose to believe that homeless people made a conscious decision to fail (in addition to other myths) to bolster our own belief that we've achieved success through hard work and perseverance. Ignorance, I suppose, is the price we pay for self-determination.

I know this topic sounds like a far cry from what we read about in Robinson's Metamorphosis, but my intuition tells me that the same social forces are at work in both cases. I dunno, what do you guys think?

-- YoungKim - 18 Feb 2009

I actually wanted to comment on Young’s post. But, somehow, it didn’t let me do that… Can someone help me?

• Hope I helped.

I used to volunteer at a small organization that serves food to the homeless in Los Angeles downtown. Once, the director of the organization asked me, “Do you know what the difference is between you and the homeless?” I don’t even remember how I answered. But, his answer was rather shocking to me at that time. He said, “The only difference between you and the homeless is the family/environment you grew up.” He went on to explain with the statistics that I don’t remember quite well… That a big percentage of homeless people were raised by parents who were alcoholic or abusive… Many were orphans or from broken homes… He gave me one example. He explained that people accuse homeless of being lazy and incompetent. He said that when you are raised with a total indifference by your parents, you actually get trained to become incompetent. According to his theory, if your parents are totally indifferent as to whether you do well or not in school, you lose an incentive to actually study hard. You are supposed to learn by observing, remembering, and then internalizing what behavior is rewarded or punished by your parents. For example, children raised by the indifferent parents might not even be able to learn that diligence is a good thing because they were never rewarded for it. (I don’t know if I explained his “indifference theory” well.) I accepted most of his statements, but secretly I thought in a dignified way that ‘The environment does not explain everything. There are people raised from the abusive parents and they don’t all become homeless.’ I think I was uncomfortable with the fact that I could also be homeless if I were born in that situation. I would’ve liked to think that I had a choice. I would’ve liked to think the homeless that I see when I serve food had a choice. I could not accept the fact that I have less choice than I think I have… I felt far more comfortable if I could just separate my world and the homeless’s world. I felt more at ease by not being fully aware of how privileged I am compared to others and that I didn’t earn the most of it. I think I was just not comfortable to see the injustice that was manifest right in front of me.

Well… yeah… Young’s post and our discussions in class reminded me of that experience. Now I understand more why I was rather uncomfortable with the statement that the only difference between the homeless and I is “where we were born”… I also wanted to say that I am really glad to be in this class. This class is the only class that makes me “think” about things…things that actually matter. When I come home after this class, I find myself just sitting and “thinking” about what we discussed in class. So, thank you, Professor Moglen and my class mates… =)

-- EstherKwak - 18 Feb 2009

I hope this doesn't seem like I'm talking past anyone here, but I wanted to add an observation from my own experiences. I spent a summer interning with the Public Defender Service in D.C. for the Mental Health division (I noticed in the old posts that someone in last year's class actually had the same position). My job involved helping people who had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital be released. Most people were committed for doing some act that a police officer felt made them "a danger to themselves or others" due to mental illness.

We had a significant number of cases involving people who did not seem to be mentally ill at all (and were eventually released for that reason). Their offense, as far as anyone in our office could tell, was that they were homeless. The police had to fill out a form explaining why they sent someone to the hospital, and some of them listed the only reason as homelessness or one of the symptoms (example: wearing a coat in July. The guy was homeless and didn't have any other way to carry around or store his winter coat).

It's interesting to think of these social institutions - prisons, psychiatric institutions - as a way of justifying or eliminating the discomfort that Esther mentions. If we can rationalize a person's circumstances and make them "worthy" of some kind of retributive institutionalization, then we don't have to deal with the larger questions.

-- MolissaFarber - 18 Feb 2009

At the risk of being criticized for being too politically correct, may I suggest that referring to people living rough as "homeless people" is preferable to "homeless" because it reminds both the speaker and the listener of the humanity of the subjects. I also appreciate that this class genuinely makes me think.

-- PetefromOz - 18 Feb 2009

It seems to me there is only one way to eradicate homelessness. Free Housing for everyone who needs it. If you want better housing, you can go pay for it. But if you don't have money, free housing for you, no question asked.

-- XinpingZhu - 18 Feb 2009

• This is the same as establishing a right to housing. Declaring such a right seems fairly straightforward, but any step towards implementation of the right is fraught with difficulties. To pick only one, where do people have a right to be housed? Does everyone have a right to live on Manhattan, or are some people entitled to be housed in Vermilion, South Dakota only? Societies that subsidize housing often have a system of residency permission, which means that if one has a right to live somewhere, one has no right to live anywhere else. Such a system may appeal to those otherwise too poor to have decent housing anywhere, but will likely be objectionable to those with sufficient surplus over subsistence to be concerned about civil liberty. Problems of at least equal complexity lie in every other direction from the starting point.

• A right to decent housing is also completely undiscussable because it would be socialism.