How should you think about the happiness of other people? Some Ancient Greeks think that there is a right way to live — perhaps in accord with nature or in contemplation of truth. Recent philosophers, maybe since Mill, hold the view that what other people get up to, so long as they do no harm to others, is their own business — they might add, their own ‘goddamn’ business. There are free spirits in the world, and not everyone thinks that the ordinary trappings of a so-called happy life are much fun. Some go further with the thought that happiness is entirely subjective — different strokes for different folks — and if a person says that he or she is happy, that’s all there is to it. There are no deeper facts than the individual’s judgement.
Consider a homeless man who lives under a roundabout in London in a hovel he’s built out of bits of wood and cardboard. They say he eats pigeons and cats, grilled on an overturned shopping cart. He refuses all offers of help — sometimes with threats, actual stick-waving pursuit, and extremely creative profanity. It’s possible that he has something called ‘Diogenes Syndrome’ (yes, named after the cynic who allegedly slept in a barrel), which Google will tell you is characterised by extreme self-neglect, living in squalor, lack of shame, apathy, and on and on. A man who might have it too died earlier this year, trapped in his house within filthy tunnels made out of his own rubbish.
Do we really want to say that if he wishes to live that way, it’s his business? For all we know he’s happy enough. Really? Can a life partly spent worming around in rotting rubbish be happy? Thoughts like these can lead to the conclusion that people can be wrong when they judge themselves to be happy or decide how they want to live — maybe there’s a fact of the matter, and it’s not a subjective thing at all. If they can be wrong about this, isn’t there room to think that we ought to do something about their lives whether they like it or not? Shouldn’t something be done, in that creepy phrase, for their own good?
Maybe you think the man in the tunnels ought to have been rescued from himself somehow. Maybe you think the man under the roundabout is nuts and ought to be put into some sort of care. His life could certainly be improved, couldn’t it? There’s got to be a life better than that one for him. I imagine he’d hate it, and he’d hate you for trying to keep him from whatever it is he does out there all day and night. Would he be right or would you?
I can believe that one form of life is better than another, without forcing that way of life on others, unless of course their way of life harms third parties.
In fact, the best way of life, in my opinion, is one in which people reach their own conclusions about what a good life is through reflection, that is, an examined life. However, it would be possible to decide through reflection and thought that a life without reflection or thought is the best way of life, although that is not my position.
James,
I sometimes look at my very normal, mainstream, middle-income, neighbors and feel they need rescuing. Come to think of it, I sometimes feel I need rescuing. I don’t know the workings of the people you describe, but I wouldn’t as a blanket rule decide they need to be saved from themselves. They might just be the ones who know what it’s all about.
I tend to believe that most attempts to alturistically help others for their own good, is actually rooted in concern for self, a way of imposing there will/ideas preserving comfort, ease of mind, these self affirming seemingly good people get joy out of controlling/policing a situation, instilling order to the lowly… geninue concern for well-being is a distant worry. I am not going to pretend to know more than the next man and show them the light so to speak. Telling another person how he oughta live doesn’t appeal to me. As long as my life experience isn’t too negatively affected by the way you choose to live its fine by me. I might not enjoy seeing it but its your decision to live under the bridge. My uncomfortableness is the cost of coexistence and simply put I’d have to exist as you to be convinced that you/I wasn’t happy with your life.
The trouble is that I’m pulled in both directions. I sort of think that people can be wrong about what’s best for them, what’s a good or happy life for them. I nearly think that there is a fact of the matter, a truth about how best to live (even though I think you’re right, Amos, when you say it’s best when people reach thier own conclusions — there must be different paths to happiness for different people).
But I have a lot of trouble working out what follows from that. Should we do something about people who make mistakes about what’s best for them? Saying ‘yes’ to that creeps me out, but saying ‘no’ amounts to leaving someone in an awful life. Peer into that image (the guy is out there right now, I imagine) and see if you have the thought that, well, he’s chosen that life so we ought to leave him to it or that, as you say Ralph, he knows what it’s all about. I know it’s a suspect thought, but we have to know better than him, don’t we?
I think that for a life to be good it has to develop all the potentials of the person and one of those potentials is the ability to reflect about what a good life is. So, if a person is brainwashed into believing that a good life involves developing all the potentials of a person, then he hasn’t developed all of his potentials, since he hasn’t developed the potential of reflecting upon what is a good life. It’s hard for me to imagine that a person who voluntarily (I exclude those who are forced by circumstances) lives in complete isolation, without any social contact, without any work (in the broadest sense of the word, not just paid work), is living a good life. One reason is that the full development of one’s mental and spiritual potential can only be developed through dialogue and intercourse (in the broadest sense of the word) with others.
Good discussion. Perhaps a good question to ask is to what extent happiness is subjective. If someone says “I’m happy, leave me alone.” and leaving him alone means leaving him in squalor, then should we leave him alone. I guess we do leave such people alone as long as they are not a public health hazard, break laws or become dangerous.
When someone says “I am happy living the way that I do.”, we are within our rights to ask whether we would want to live that way, too. Domitian was happy pulling the wings off flies. Was he? I wouldn’t be. Does this make happiness any less subjective? I would like some enlightenment on this point. Thanks.
It seems to me that the common element in the above comments is that of respect for autonomy. In health ethics that principle has come to outweigh beneficence and non-maleficence. Doing nothing in the example given ignores any claims to beneficence, and shuts one’s eyes to the harm done by doing nothing, all on the grounds that Homeless Man has the right to decide for himself. But what if homeless man is actually homeless child? We have no difficulty in agreeing she lacks autonomy to make such decisions, and would (most likely) decide similarly for someone with dementia or intellectual disability. Unfortunately, respect for autonomy, unleavened by beneficence (call it paternalism if you want) results in those with mental illness occasionally suffering needlessly; there is a good chance of relief from intervention, all too often nowadays denied unless the person is dangerous to self or others.
The authorities should pick him up and determine what sort of institution to assign him to, jail or a hospital. The rest of society should pick up the tab for the cost of his care. No human should be left to live in these abhorent conditions. We should consider his safety and the safety of others affected by the way he lives. And the way he lives has a negative impact on society, no doubt. Liberty be damned. He needs help. Give it to him against his will if that’s what it takes.
I live on the edge of Moss Park, which is one of Toronto’s poorest neighbourhoods.
There is a large amount of homelessness here: so, for example, if I leave my apartment, and walk 400 metres down Queen Street, I’ll see probably 30 - 50 homeless people on my journey.
The vast majority have drug, drink and mental health problems (according to self-report studies). During the winter, when the temperature hits minus 30, it is not unusual to see a homeless person lying flat across a grill in the sidewalk, with their clothes half ripped off, unconscious due to cold and/or whatever they’ve ingested.
I think it’s a no-brainer. You get these people off the streets and into programs. To hell with their freedom. I don’t care if they think they know what’s best for themselves. If they’re half-naked in minus 30 degrees, with their own shit frozen to their legs, then I’m comfortable making choices for them.
If philosophical reflection leads to a different conclusion, then so much the worse for philosophical reflection.
I live in Santiago, Chile, a city with a much more benign climate than Toronto, but with lots of homeless. When the temperature goes down to freezing at night, the city opens public buildings so that the homeless can sleep protected from the cold, as well as providing soup, etc. There are also programs to rehabilitate or re-educate them: I don’t know how effective they are. However, it seems that giving them the option of a warm place to sleep and a hot meal, while respecting their autonomy, is a good decision. Programs which fail to respect their autonomy could set an unfortunate precedent, since it would empower authorities to round up and re-educate other types of deviants.
Toronto has the same policy when the temperature goes below I think minus 15. But it doesn’t work properly precisely because the city respects the “autonomy” of those people who don’t want to go into shelters.
But, of course, if you’re suffering from chronic paranoia because of drugs or schizophrenia or whatever then you’re not autonomous anyway - at least not in any worthwhile sense.
That’s a slippery slope argument with all the problems of slippery slope arguments.
I should also say that Toronto is in a sense a good city within which to be homeless. It’s gentle, and people tend to be kind.
And Moss Park can look beautiful:
http://www.jeremystangroom.com/media/sunrise3.htm
(Taken from my apartment balcony.)
In most places, including Chile, there are legal proceedings which allow authorities to save someone’s life against his or her will. A court can rule on various grounds, including mental incapacity, that the state has the right to force a person to enter a shelter or a hospital. I think that the decision of whether a person is autonomous or not is too weighty to be left up to an overworked and often undereducated police officer. Thanks for the picture.
This argument works (or doesn’t work) because of the Sorites paradox. Of course there are problems when it comes to boundaries. But when it’s minus 30, and somebody is lying half-conscious and half-naked on top of a sidewalk grill, there’s no a problem. It’s easy.
Thing is, Amos, when it gets very cold here, most homeless people do get themselves into shelters, which suggests at least a minimal concern with their own welfare. The overwhelming majority of those left are not able to look after themselves, and they should be looked after, whether they like it or not.
If you were here, you’d the make the right call in these cases. And so would an undereducated police officer. Because it’s bleedin’ obvious! :)
Homeless people do literally freeze to death here. Not often, thankfully, but it does happen.
http://redjenny.blogspot.com/2008/03/toronto-homeless-man-frozen-to-death.html
I understand your point. In most places, including Canada I imagine, the police are quite inventive at coming up with reasons for jailing someone for a night: no ID card, spitting on the sidewalk, etc. Perhaps the solution would be to leave such decisions up to the criteria of undereducated police officers on a temporary basis (that is, for one cold night), but leave more long-term decisions in the hands of the courts. I’ll have to look up the Sorites paradox in Google.
It really isn’t like that here. The police seem to be very restrained in how they treat the problems associated with homelessness, etc.
The way the police handled the Tamil protests here in April seems to be indicative of their general approach:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/04/29/verbatim-chief-bill-blair-defends-police-response-to-tamil-protest.aspx
But, I think the solution you propose is the one that I’d favour (long-term decisions in the hands of some kind of public body - and ultimately a court).
It seems to me that most of the homeless are going to be on the fringe of everything, having all kinds of health problems including drug and alcohol and and probably other brain related issues. Actually, I should retract that…I don’t know enough to say most, but I would imagine the percentage is greater in the homeless community. Anyways, due to preexisting conditions, betterment might just not be an option for x amount of the homeless. It might not “take” so to speak, and at that point we’ve broken their autonomy and left them no better off (at least in their opinion, which brings us full circle).
I’m curious if anything that has been put forth already applies easily to people not really on the fringe of anything. Is it only the people who are truly destitute that have waived the right to autonomy and forced us to swoop in and save them from themselves?
Thanks.
The point is not one of destitution; it is about whether or not a person’s autonomy could be regarded as being full and adult. That was the point of my reference to children and intellectually disabled persons. There are few who would regard them as being fully autonomous persons. It is romantic naivety to consider that all persons living on the streets do so as a matter of choice leading to them living the good life by their own lights. Aristotle wrote of the importance of proairesis, or deliberate choice, which he distinguished from voluntary action by the existence of deliberation. Are we not salving our conscience if we consider that the majority of the homeless have deliberated and chosen the streets as their best road to living a happy and successful life, as judged by themselves? My reference to the mentally ill is because the closure of public facilities for their care and treatment (for all the faults of such institutions) has resulted in the homelessness and alienation of many more such persons than was so when I started in this job.
And I liked the photograph of a Toronto sunrise
‘If they’re half-naked in minus 30 degrees, with their own shit frozen to their legs, then I’m comfortable making choices for them.’
I’m certainly with you on that one, Jeremy. It’s not their freedom I’m worried about, exactly, but whether or not we can be wrong when we say we want to live in the way that we do. (I don’t mean wrong about our wants…not sure how to put this.) I wonder if there’s a fact of the matter about how we should live, and, if so, I wonder what that means for what we owe each other, and what we owe people like the guy under the round about. He really has just been left to it for, so far as I can work out, more than 15 years. Maybe that’s us failing him, not just him being free.
I raised this with a chum a few days ago, and she turned into Rousseau, saying: maybe we have to force such people to be free; we have to force them out of whatever it is they’re in to enable them to see how much better things can be — whether they like it or not.
There’s just huge amounts of complexity here. Partly to do with the way in which language maps onto internal subjective states; partly to do with whether or not one’s wants and desires are transparent to oneself; and partly to do with personal identity (so, for example, I don’t find it particularly counterintuitive to suppose that a reformed drug-addict is in an important sense a different person from the earlier drug dependent version of himself, which would probably mean that if he says “I much prefer being sober” he’s not actually talking for earlier version of himself).
I have a certain amount of sympathy for the Rousseau line (notwithstanding the difficulties to do with whether personal identity endures). I’m not sure that it has to do with things being “better” though, so much as the fact that freedom doesn’t amounct to much if your decision making processes are screwed (too complicated to explain here).
Crap. We have to sort out personal identity as well as human happiness? I’m going to go make a coffee then.
My attention was drawn to the following “she turned into Rousseau, saying: maybe we have to force such people to be free; we have to force them out of whatever it is they’re in to enable them to see how much better things can be — whether they like it or not”.
This could be the remedy in some cases but surely not all. I am reminded of instances where people are suffering from severe depression. Friends and relatives often say to them “Pull yourself together that’s what you need to do”. This is useless advice because the problem is the fact that these poor people are unable to do just that, and sometimes with all the skilled help in the world they can only make moderate and inconsistent progress.
At one period it was my responsibility amongst, other things, to counsel certain people working for the same organisation as myself. I was often approached by people of apparent moderate ability who wanted advice as to how they could progress. I do not remember ever being approached by natural progressives, they just got on and did it. Notwithstanding some hours of discussion and the agreement of training plans and consideration of what constituted the right attitude to the job and continual surveillance and on going help from myself, and as appropriate from others, little of no progress was often, but far from always, the outcome. These people were nearly always pleasant and of of an agreeable nature. The problem was, notwithstanding all the help and encouragement in the world, they could just not do it.
These were people who really wanted to get out of the rut. They knew how much better things can be but like it or not they really were going no further for the simple fact that they were unable to do just that i.e. what it takes.
My point here is that one could force people to see what is better and in many cases some will with assistance improve but shortly after support is diminished or withdrawn they will regress. Others will recognise that things can be better but lack the ability to make lifelong efforts. There are some who do not have what it takes to deal with life adequately. Yes of course there will be successes here and there but I suspect these will be very much in the minority.
What to do with people who cannot or will not, with assistance, stand on their own feet I do not know. To generalise does not seem to fit all cases and conditions. Time and finances must also be a problem also priorities. The man covered in his own freezing excrement what choices can we make for him? Would our time and money be better spent elsewhere helping other unfortunates who may respond better? Where to best effect do we direct our resources? These I know are heartless thoughts but I think all possibilities should be considered. Other than some very good philosophical speculation here, I see no good practical advice as to how such problems can be best dealt with, and I can offer none myself.
Agreed, Don Bird, that it’s complicated, and I do take your point that there’s some sort of Right Stuff had by those who climb and climb. Certainly homeless people often have a complicated mix of things going wrong in their lives.
A friend has me wondering why we assume the guy under the round about is crazy. Maybe crazy is how freedom can look under certain conditions. It’s possible he’s having the time of his life out there and would hate it if we tried to stick him in a B & B.
I’m going to go read some more Mill.
James Garvey:
I have just been browsing through George Orwell’s “Down and out in Paris and London” as I seem to recollect, from many years ago, he mentioned his surprise at the erudition of some down and outs he had met. I could not find that passage so perhaps, if I have not missed it, it is elsewhere. Yes the guy under the roundabout and some others like him are most likely what we should call eccentric. Crazy of course is not a scientific term. There is a vast difference between say highly eccentric and certifiable under the Mental Health Act. Thus our man under the roundabout may well have a coherent philosophy concerning his life, which is opposed to our philosophy. Were I to change places with him I doubt I could last a fortnight. Similarly as you say he would begin to flounder in a B&B. Orwell’s book is well worth a reread I am thinking.
Orwell’s book is excellent stuff. Might dig it out again too.
I have met a few homeless people over the years, and all forms of human life can can end up on the street. I met a former lecturer once, and also a patissier. Our man under the round about might well be someone like that.
There’s also a certain sort of human character — the hermit or religious mystic — regarded as mad by everyone else but in touch with something or other. Zarathustra might last longer under a round about than in a B & B.
“You get these people off the streets and into programs. To hell with their freedom”
Who does the getting? On what grounds? What if they resist? Into what programs? Once inside, what then? Re-education? Will they ever be released? On what grounds?
To hell with their freedom, indeed.
“Who does the getting?”
The police.
“On what grounds?”
On the grounds that they’re lying half-naked, on the floor, outside, in minus-30 degrees.
“What if they resist?”
They won’t, but if they do - tough.
In New York and London this would happen anyway (for the kind of people I’m talking about). And a good thing too.
Sorry I should reply a little more temperately.
Basically my position here is that freedom amounts to virtually nothing if either of these things are true:
a) You’re out of your mind on alcohol and drugs;
Or
b) You’re suffering severe mental illness;
According to self-report studies, the majority of homeless people in Toronto have drug addition and/or mental health problems.
Of that group, the majority are more or less able to look after themselves. However, there is a significant minority for whom this just is not true. This becomes dangerous during the winter because it gets so cold here.
I have not even one moment of hesitation in saying that the police should remove the most vulnerable from the streets. It doesn’t tend to happen though.
As far as what happens afterwards then of course I’d be in favour of properly funded programs to help people to address drug dependency and alchohol problems. And yes, I’d be tempted to coerce.
It is for me to apologise. I am no philosopher and now, in later life, am inclined to be overly brusque.
Speaking from personal experience I can say that coercion does not work. Also,in the cases of people given to the overuse of alcohol or drugs, or both, the success rate is very low and the recidivism rate is very high.
Not everyone can swim.
I’m sure you’re right - coercion won’t work in the vast majority of cases. But the people I’m talking about are in such a desperate situation that:
a) there’s something to be said for just getting them somewhere warm for a short while whether they like it or not;
and
b) maybe it’ll work occasionally - which might be enough to justify it;
I’m not arguing that homeless people should automatically be subject to the full force of the law. One can do all sorts of interesting thought experiments here - for example, involving people who are ‘homeless’ in the wilderness (so it’s fairly counterintuitive to suppose it would be justified to swoop down on some hermit living on his own 1000 of miles from anybody else, just because we don’t like his living conditions). The people I’m talking about are not really functioning at all. (Plus there just are other considerations when we’re talking about homelessness in urban centers. For example, a lot of women won’t walk around where I live late at night because it’s too intimidating.
It’s a question of saving lives. I too have serious doubts that those homeless people who refuse to seek shelter in the subzero cold can be rehabilitated or reeducated. In fact, that a homeless person voluntarily seeks shelter in the cold is probably a good indicator that he or she can be rehabilitated. However, there are some who, for one or another reason or lack of reason, refuse to seek shelter. Are we going to let them freeze to death to prove some theory about the autonomy of persons or are we going to load them into a police van, with the inevitable gentle treatment that the police are known for, in order to save their lives? Are those who affirm that the police loading them forcibly into a van is a violation of their autonomy willing to face the dead bodies on the pavement the next morning? I get up early and I’m not big on seeing dead bodies on my way to work.
Well saving lives is a big part of it. But I also think there’s a slightly more subtle point here about human dignity. Crudely I think there’s something to be said for the idea that there are certain levels of human degradation that we shouldn’t tolerate regardless of consequentialist consideration.
I’m not sure that it’d ever be possible to flesh out this idea so that it would convince everybody, but if you’ve watched some guy shambling around with his trousers around his knees, shouting to himself, covered in his own shit, his teeth rotted away, then it doesn’t require a huge leap of faith to suppose that perhaps we ought to intervene even if the fella doesn’t want our help, and there will be no happy outcome resulting from our intervention.
Some things are just too horrible to be tolerated.
This has been a great “conversation”. I see two major threads, and one is rather easier to deal with than the other. That is the autonomy/liberty conception. As Jeremy has written, someone whose reasoning is interfered with by drugs, alcohol, or illness (mental or physical), has impaired autonomy, and his/her liberty is accordingly compromised to the degree that what appears to be free will is less than that. In such cases the argument should be about how severely autonomy is compromised.
The second strand is more abstruse, and is where James initially began this discussion; does anyone have the right to determine someone else’s conception of “the good”? This is particularly problematic to anyone who has a self image as a libertarian, especially if that is combined with a greater or lesser degree of relativistic thinking.
I am with those who are prepared to say that there is no “good” from a life lived in the ways that have been described. It is indefensible to assume that others may choose such a life; if such a person is asked, and is able to mount a convincing argument as to the validity of the choice for enhancing his/her good, then that is one thing. And being told to **** off with threats of physical harm is not convincing.
Finally, comes the question of what role do we have in all of this? Is it part of libertarian conceptions of the good, that those unable to participate as fully rational adults should be uncared for? Or do we have a duty, not to impose our conception of the good, but to prevent harm to those who are unable to decide freely for themselves. James commented on an intention to go an read some more Mill. I did to remind myself of this “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, as long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
That argument mounted for those persons regarded by Mill as full citizens, should not be used to ignore the needs of those who do not for whatever reason (age, intellectual ability, mental illness) satisfy a reasonable judgement of what degree of autonomous reasoning capacity is compatible with full citizenship. Otherwise society as a whole, and we as part of it, suffers as well.
In early 1954 I boarded a train, of sorts, which would take us to the port of Pusan. The train came to a stop after a short while,in a siding alongside of a stack of cast concrete drainage pipes, each about one metre in diameter by two or three metres long. The track was raised and the pipes stood a few metres from the side of the train. When the train had stopped there was movement in the pipes. Children emerged. They stood on the flat, between the pipes and the shoulder of the track, and looked up at the train. They did not call out, just stood and looked at us. And we just looked at them. Then the train started and we rolled past the children, who were still standing, watching us go.
The worst of the winter was over, but it was dark and cold as we pulled away from what was left of Seoul. The war had swept across that blighted country, first one way, then another. Families had been broken, such that, in one way or another, all those children were orphans. And there were many more besides. And in all the years since there have been such children, around the world, as there are today.
In my youth I favoured coercion as the means to a better world, which was one reason I became a soldier. Later, by chance, I became a schoolmaster and moved to the persuasions of education.
So, for their own good, those children, and all such children since, should have been, and should now be, better provided for. In my opinion.
As to the people who have been the subjects of this discussion, I will say this. For some twenty years I drank what has since been described to me as a ‘near-lethal’ quantity of alcohol. My trousers did not droop, I kept my bottom clean, I turned out to work, by the day, and I was lucky. Twenty-some years ago I stopped drinking, abruptly, and have had no interest in alcohol since. I had been ‘in a program’, but had soon gone back to doing what I knew how to do. Came the time, I stopped.
Incidentally, in today’s “Daily Telegraph” there is an interview with John Hurt, who had among his drinking companions, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed. Speaking of his drinking days, Hurt says:
“I think Peter O’Toole put his finger on it, and I haven’t heard it better described: he said, we did drink, but we drank to feed something else, not for alcohol in its own right. It created a fire of all sorts of everything – interest, desire and so on.” Well, that’s one take on it.
But the people under discussion are not of that ilk, and they do present a problem. Let us consider it, on one level, as a problem of public health. To avoid the public hazard, and aesthetic disturbance, of having to step around frozen corpses on our way to work, we could establish a communal collection - something along the lines of the death carts at the time of the Plague. There will be other practical suggestions as to behaviour - enforced sequstration, Devil’s Island, perhaps.
My suggestions spring from my own experience and are prompted by what I feel to be the genuine desire to do something to change the world for the better. I am serious about the children. They’ve done nothing.
Anthony
Nice piece of writing.
But this kind of thing:
is mainly rhetoric. Well actually if I understand you properly it suggests a version of the slippery slope argument that Amos first invoked (see his post, Dec 13 7.36am).
There is a middle ground between letting people freeze to death (see my post Dec 13 at 9.30) and enforced sequestration.
Interesting. I tend to think we ought to seek to improve the lot of people even if they are not as “innocent” as children.
Wasn’t meant as rhetoric, Jeremy.. more sort of ironic. I was not commending either of these procedures.. never very good at irony… must try to avoid it in future.
Indeed there are many options between letting people freeze to death and enforced sequestration, most of which will involve some level of coercion. And as I take the view that we are all ‘walking wounded’ I agree that, however futile it may prove long-term, in the here and now whatever can be done to ameliorate their condition, should be done. If not for their good, then for ours.
As to childhood ‘innocence’… I have been a schoolmaster. I do not have any mawkish view of children. But I hold,simply that there is no justification for allowing these conditions to obtain. And that we could be storing up trouble for them and for us.
Ah - I understood it was irony. But I thought its effect was to suggest that intervention necessarily risks large levels of coercion. I don’t think that’s the case (unless the bar for “risk” is set very low).
I wasn’t questioning the “innocence” of children so much as what is a common assumption that if people have behaved “badly” then there is less an imperative to help them. Of course I agree that we should seek to ameliorate the conditions that you’re talking about.
When people talk about the innocence of children, two very different senses of the word “innocence” often get confused. (if what I am about to say is well-known to everyone, please forgive me, but I’ve never seen it mentioned).
1. “Innocent” in the sense of having “good” intentions. Anyone who has spent 10 minutes observing children in a playground can see that children are as egoistic and cruel, if not more so, as adults. Some of us remember our childhood and have no need to observe a playground.
2. “Innocent” in the sense of “not guilty”. Children are less guilty than adults, because first of all, they’ve had less time and less opportunity to sin. What’s more, they are less conscious of ethical rules, and thus, their sins are less serious, since they know not what they do.
Of course, adults often know not what they do either. I agree with Jeremy, in any case, that the supposed lack of innocence of adults is no reason not to help them. I agree with Anthony that we are all, or almost all, walking wounded.
i think one ought to not impose thier will upon another. insofar, as consciousness is subjective it seems reasonable to suppose that ones consciousness and sensations are not distributed globally. They are domain specific insofar as this is the case it seems that assisting another when their will deviates from your behavior, it the “wrong” thing to do.
Imposition of one individual’s will upon another individual, even for his/her own good is rarely justifiable. Intervention to prevent harm occurring to others is ethical and appropriate, and therefore fully justifiable. Imposition of one’s will on another for one’s own benefit (not that of the other person) is inappropriate, unethical and unjustifiable.
Intervention to prevent harm to the person him or herself is the issue here. Many see problems because of a readiness to ascribe free will to ALL persons who have behaviours which may cause harm to themselves. [It is important to emphasise that this is not a case of A's will (and consequent behaviour) differing from B's behaviour, and therefore B intervening to prevent A's behaviour.]
Each of us is responsible for all and only actions done with knowledge and not under compulsion. A person who has a severe drug habit has a compulsion which overrides rational decision making. Is it appropriate to hold him responsible for his actions when they include living under a bridge in the middle of winter so as to satisfy the compulsion to use drugs? Is it not more ethical to acknowledge instead the responsibility of society (and therefore of individuals in society) to do what can be done, even in the absence of consent, to prevent an action taken under compulsion leading to harm to that individual?
Similarly the person with severe psychosis exists in a state of ignorance of the reality of certain aspects of existence, and may in such ignorance choose an action that causes harm to him or herself. That also requires an ethically mature society to intervene even against the individual’s will to prevent such harm.
The nature of the intervention (perceived by some as harmful in itself, although usually that indicates ignorance of what is the true nature of the intervention), and its duration, are certainly topics for discussion rather than leaving it to the Police or the Mental Health Services, or other such agencies, and only really paying attention to the issue when there is some scandal in the services, or the homeless act in more extremely intrusive ways than usual so that it is the comfort of others that is disturbed, and causing concern, rather than a wish to prevent harm to a vulnerable person. (apologies for that unwieldy and overlong sentence)
Still thinking about the connection between homelessness and mental illness. There’s a paper called ‘Are the homeless mentally ill?’ by Guy Johnson and Chris Chamberlain. The answer is, roughly, no. Sounds interesting, but I can only access this abstract:
In Australia, it is widely believed that most homeless people have mental health issues, and that mental illness is a primary cause of homelessness. This paper uses information from a study of 4,291 homeless people in Melbourne to investigate these propositions. The research found that neither proposition was plausible. Fifteen per cent of the sample had mental health issues prior to becoming homeless, and 16 per cent developed mental health issues after becoming homeless. For those that had mental health issues prior to becoming homeless, it was the break down of family support that usually precipitated homelessness. For those who developed mental health issues after becoming homeless, it was often their experiences in the homeless population that precipitated mental illness. Regardless of whether mental illness preceded or followed homelessness, most people with mental health issues experienced long-term homelessness. The paper concludes with a policy discussion.
Happening today:
http://tinyurl.com/y9ejobo