Public Ego Crisping: Signals and Other Signs
If my previous post, I mentioned how I had given a presentation at City Hall concerning the protection of homeless people. After a client visit I was driving south on Main Street. I was driving towards the publicly controlled intersection where City Hall is when an obviously intoxicated? man stumbled into traffic in an attempt to cross the street. We had the green light and he was obliviously jaywalking.
His action forced everyone to slow down and stop. He could not move very fast as he lurched forward, not looking at the traffic he was blocking. I had slowed down and could see a car in the left lane coming up behind me. I honked three times to both alert the car and the intoxicated person crossing the street that this was not a good situation. Fortunately, nothing happened as he stumbled onto the median before the car could connect with him.
Homelessness and intoxicated destitution is a world wide problem. The richest of cities have people who cannot make their ways in the world due to a range of social and mental health problems. What offends me and was the reason behind my botched presentation two days before was that we treat these people as annoyances at best and at worst as not even existing. In a future blog I will explain in more detail what my suggested solution for homeless people should be.
I cannot help but wonder at the coincidence. I am driving past the place where I talked to city officials about steps that need to be taken on behalf of people who are homeless and suffer from debilitating illnesses, feel that I was partially blown off, and then encounter a person who embodies the issues of recklessness and hopelessess in front of the same building.
Each one of us makes choices about the signals we wish to pay attention to. I am choosing to interpret this coincidence as encouragement for taking a stand about this issue. I am all the more convinced that this issue will not go away and the efforts and money we are spending on this problem is not working.
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