{"id":6547,"date":"2018-12-19T15:44:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T20:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=6547"},"modified":"2019-02-22T04:10:09","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T09:10:09","slug":"shedding-the-bubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=6547","title":{"rendered":"Shedding the Bubble"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0| Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n

Shedding the Bubble<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A slightly shorter version published in The Daily Record December 19, 2018<\/p>\n

For a public act, driving my automobile is a surprisingly private thing for me to do. I control my climate, my music, my refreshments. I can make phone calls, hands-free, and speak at the top of my voice with the expectation that only I will hear what\u2019s being said. And while I\u2019m moving, that bubble of privacy is pretty much inviolable. Other drivers and I can make eye contact if it\u2019s physically possible and we both choose, otherwise not. But, like it or not, I have to stop at intersections. And when I do, all bets are off. The intersection is the realm of the beggar with the cardboard sign and the young man with the squeegee. Their missions fail if they cannot breach my bubble and engage with me. So that\u2019s what they try to do.<\/p>\n

Unsustainable<\/h3>\n

For a long time, their importunities never failed to annoy me. My explanation for this instinctive reaction was that these efforts to seize my attention and invade my space were bad manners. I just wanted to be freaking left ALONE. No supplicant ever got a penny out of me, as a penalty for his or her discourtesy in asking for a penny. And then, one day, my reaction became unsustainable.<\/p>\n

I was filling up at a gas station, regarding myself as still within the bubble. A vagrant came up to me with a handout request, and I\u2019m sorry to say I snapped at him. He snapped back. I cannot remember precisely what either of us said, but I do know that he said he was desperate and what else did I expect him to do? He didn\u2019t get anything from me; I came away with as many pennies as I started with in my purse. But as I reargued it in my head, I could see the man had a point.<\/p>\n

Now, obviously I had previously been over his point before in my head and in discussions with others. My response had always been that I made financial contributions to organizations that supported the welfare of the hungry and the homeless, and that if the man were in need, he should go to them, and leave me out of it. But on reflection this argument no longer measured up to the concrete situation before me.<\/p>\n

No Other Immediate Solutions<\/h3>\n

There are hoops the poor must jump through to access the charities and the government agencies that see to them, and I\u2019m not just speaking of stereotyped heartless bureaucracies, though there are some of those in the mix too. There may be multiple buses a client has to take to get to the shelter; there are usually guaranteed to be long wait periods for inpatient drug treatment and Section 8 vouchers; food pantries are not open round the clock; free clinics may require appointments. One must therefore be organized, foresightful and coherent to access these things. And I\u2019ve been taught since that time that homelessness can make unmanageable the routines upon which a coherent life depends. In short, the odds were pretty good that the man shouting back at me actually did need help that none of the charities I donated to could provide as quickly as he needed it \u2013 if at all. Even if my money would go to buy a narcotic fix that would keep him from being in torment, he was most likely in urgent need. And there I was shouting at him.<\/p>\n

And even if the need isn\u2019t urgent, it\u2019s probably real enough. Again, consider squeegee men; what are the odds that they undertake their risky, low-margin work without need of some kind driving them?<\/p>\n

If I conceded the need was real, then, what of my feeling that there must be more appropriate times and places to ask for help with them?<\/p>\n

No Other Intersection<\/h3>\n

Well, then I had to identify where those more appropriate places would have been. No one would have accosted me in my office or my bedroom or my gym; all of these places had locks on the door or guardians at the gate, and no one seeking a handout would ever reach me there. The only place my life and theirs would likely intersect was at the intersection. For me to say that I could not be solicited there was tantamount to forbidding any solicitation at all, even by those in urgent need.<\/p>\n

I concluded that my former stance was untenable.<\/p>\n

Since then, public discussion has raised at least two safety issues.<\/p>\n

Being Real About Safety<\/h3>\n

First, in Baltimore, where I live, there has been much concern raised by a recent instance in which a curbside beggar was a stalking horse for a mugger who stabbed and killed a would-be donor<\/a>. In the wake of that incident, more than one person I\u2019ve chatted with has cited it as a reason never to make donations out the car window. To which my response is: It\u2019s already established that you\u2019re a risk-taker; you\u2019re behind the wheel. Well, your odds of perishing in a traffic accident in the coming year are 1 in 17,625<\/a>.[1]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Your odds of dying by assault with a sharp object are a paltry 1 in 138,834<\/a>. And so far as I know, no one else in Baltimore has been mugged while donating to a panhandler. There simply isn\u2019t much increased peril involved.<\/p>\n

Second, a former public official pointed out in a letter to the editor that panhandling on the street is made illegal for the safety of the very persons doing the soliciting<\/a>. And there\u2019s no denying it\u2019s not safe for them. But which of us doesn\u2019t take health risks to satisfy immediate needs? (Smokers and jaywalkers, raise your hands!) And from what I can see, we have a lot of people with basic immediate needs out there. Perhaps no one enforces the law out of respect for poor people\u2019s management of their own risks.<\/p>\n

“Undeserving” Poor?<\/h3>\n

Back in the days when I didn\u2019t let people breach my bubble, I also agonized over whether I should be subsidizing those who sought beggary over more productive ways of earning their daily bread. Effectively, I was employing a nineteenth-century distinction (referenced, for instance, in My Fair Lady<\/em>) between the so-called deserving and undeserving poor. Again, I doubt that the distinction has much bearing when we\u2019re talking about curbside solicitation; it\u2019s such a hard way to raise money most lazy people would eschew it. But assume there are lazy beggars. Since there\u2019s no way to administer an immediate field test of deservingness, a donor must trust. But it\u2019s a no-brainer. A dollar or two through the driver\u2019s window isn\u2019t realistically enough to persuade someone to stay out of the workforce; most likely it only helps stave off some hunger pangs or dull a narcotic craving, or maybe helps someone find shelter for the night.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis says we shouldn\u2019t worry about what the money will be spent for, but \u201calways\u201d to give, and when we do, to look the recipient in the eye and touch their hand.<\/a> Since I came out from behind my bubble, I\u2019ve tried to follow that guidance. In those little one-minute encounters, there have been many touching moments and much laughter. I can recommend it to anyone. This holiday, don\u2019t stop donating to charities that help the poor — but also give yourself the gift of shedding that bubble.<\/p>\n

________________<\/p>\n

[1] In the published version of this piece, I placed the odds of traffic death as 1 in 77. But that turned out to be one’s lifetime risk. To make the comparison an apples-to-apples one, I needed to place the odds of traffic death in the same time-frame as the risk of stabbing death. I apologize to my readers for the error.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A Note:<\/em><\/p>\n

I’d previously talked about related subjects in an earlier post<\/a>, but that concerned a small change of mind mostly in the context of\u00a0pedestrian encounters which did not involve the driver’s “bubble” I am concerned with above. After the epiphany described in that earlier post, I did more frequently donate to people who encountered me when we were both on the sidewalk. But the bulk of solicitations that came my way were made when I was behind the wheel, and my change of mind on that is what I’m discussing here.<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

The Big Picture Home Page<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Previous Big Picture Column<\/a>\u00a0| Next Big Picture Column<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been much concern raised by a recent instance in which a curbside beggar was a stalking horse for a mugger who stabbed and killed a would-be donor. In the wake of that incident, more than one person I\u2019ve chatted with has cited it as a reason never to make donations out the car window. To which my response is: It\u2019s already established that you\u2019re a risk-taker; you\u2019re behind the wheel. Well, your odds of perishing in a traffic accident are 1 in 17,625. \u00a0\u00a0Your odds of dying by assault with a sharp object are a paltry 1 in 138,834. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigpicture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6547"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6580,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6547\/revisions\/6580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}