Like many I have been astonished at the fall of San Francisco and the apparent decisive role homelessness has played.
Lest this fate should befall my own community, I want to offer a few thoughts and a guideline on how everyone should behave in public, including the homeless, vagrants, and even, as we used to say, the insane.
First, yes we are free and this is the land of the free. But we are also tribal, and utterly dependent on various networks of other people and thus by nature have responsibilities to them. I can pretend that I am not or do not, but if I do not at least respect the persons, property, and even feelings of those I live around, I will not live in peace, and possibly find myself being boinked on the nose or clapped in irons.
With this in mind, I posit that my interactions with my fellow man, and his with me, is a primal font of the good life. That to live at peace within my tribe or within the tribe in which I may find myself, is a chief contributor to quality of life.
I posit that to live at peace within my community is a sovereign good that we ought to seek, that does not require justification. Like mother’s love, it’s just a good thing, and we all get it.
So here is one rule that I wish to propose as to how we ought to act in public.
We all should behave in such a way that a young mother with babe in arms feels perfectly at ease walking along any public street in daylight hours.
This rule should apply to all of us. It should first be enforced by custom, but if necessary by the law.
And it must apply to the homeless, vagrants, or insane, no matter how tragic their case may be or blameless they themselves may have been in their sad fate.
M.C. Atkins
Look Away... 