You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course.
Jello Biafra’s statement is a wake-up call that sends a buzz saw message through the minds of avant-garde religious and political leaders as well as the faithful that politely address, but then blatantly sweep the homeless issue under the carpet of economics. Sure, we do need football and golf, but we also need to reinvent the way we perceive our society. Society is a joint stock company and everyone is fully vested in its future. Everyone plays a role by fulfilling desires and creating experiences that raise awareness, and that process expands our consciousness. Homelessness is an experience that raises awareness, but we generally ignore it until it happens to someone we know or to us. Homelessness is a product of choices and those choices become a reality.
Biafra is a punk rocker and a leading figure in the Green Party, and he, in his own way, makes us pop the top on some of our deep rooted social behavior and priorities. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty says that on any given night in the United States, 700,000 to 2 million people experience homelessness. Putting a face on the homeless is easy to do— they look just like any one of us. Some reports say that 7 out of 10 people are one paycheck away from being homeless. Almost everyone knows or has a friend that knows a homeless person.
No culture is immune to homelessness. About 50% of the homeless population is African-American; 35% is Caucasian; 12% is Hispanic; 2% Native American, and 1% is Asian. Single men make up about 44% of homeless population; 13% are single women; 36% are families with children, and 7% are unaccompanied minors. At least 30% of the homeless stay that way for more than 2 years, even though 44% of the homeless population works.
What is the invisible catalyst that catapults some of us into the pot holes of poverty and homelessness? Statistics show that 66% of homeless people are addicted to drugs and alcohol, and 16% are considered mentally ill. But, drugs and alcohol don’t create homelessness on their own, but they can help instigate and prolong it. Mental illness is not a major homeless catalyst either, but typecasting, misunderstanding, and then ignoring or giving up on certain mental menaces certainly can produce the experience of homelessness.
The homeless cut themselves off from mainstream society, and enter a reality filled with fear and despair. No one wants to be homeless, but some people innately expect it using a non-physical sense, and the question that everyone involved with eliminating homelessness asks is—why? One answer may be the non-physical energy that is part of the individual psyche. The non-physical psyche is always in play physically, and some of us allow it to manifest in the form of homelessness in order to experience the separation of the self physically.
No one wants to objectively experience homelessness, but they do in order to physically feel the consequences. They are contributing to the expansion of consciousness by making us aware of the contrast that exists in our fearful state of egotistical splendor. The quest for ego satisfaction in this world of dualism is the catalyst for homelessness.
The pressure to perform and to be a part of a society that considers itself a special form of consciousness, which is detached from other life forms, also contributes to homelessness. Believing we are a separate form of consciousness fuels separatism and promotes judgments. We try to control what we fear through our social structure, and the end result is our own form of homelessness.
There are several physical factors that contribute to the homeless experience. Foreclosures, addictions, eroding work opportunities, globalization, the decline in US manufacturing, erosion in the value of the minimum wage, and low-paying service sector jobs all play a role in changing our economic reality in several ways, but these factors don’t necessarily produce homelessness in everyone.
Some folks argue and say homelessness is a personal experience based on poor choices, and those unfortunate souls must figure it out their life on their own. We tend to fear the homeless; they look too much like the self we see in the mirror each day, and that’s the motivation that keeps the homeless motor percolating. A good example of that fear is on display in churches across the United States. Churches sit empty four or five days a week while the homeless sleep in conditions that are not acceptable for our house pets. Our places of worship and the groups that control them neglect to appreciate the value of homelessness when it is embraced.
There are some caring church people that give a helping hand by serving meals and donating clothes or starting a temporary shelter, but those fixes are not fixes—they are band aids that cover the potential mortal wounds of homelessness. There are government programs that also try to help the homeless by using some of the same tactics, plus educational courses are introduced into the governmental and social mix to help the homeless understand how they got where they are.
Most of the homeless know where they are and how they got there. What they need and want is to start over and experience traveling around the economic board of life in a different mental vehicle. They need the kind of help that comes from our subjective self, not the self that is dressed in egotistical splendor. One of the messages locked in the vice of homelessness is to look fear in the face, and then embrace and accept it.
We bury the subjective aspects of the self in church, and want our objective self to be accepted so we conform to certain beliefs and participate in specific rituals that make us feel a sense of unity. We block out other valid beliefs and maintain a lifestyle that is filled with faith, but this vacillating faith picks what is right and wrong based on control and fear, and we find the self sinking in a world of judgmental senselessness. The result is a mass reality that doesn’t understand the nature of the self and the energy of consciousness.
The solution to homelessness is right under our egotistical noses. We must accept them as counterparts that need a fresh start and a sense of unity. If religion is what it says it is, the faithful must open their minds and accept the homeless as aspects of the universal self. If government agencies what to help they can help establish self-contained homeless communities where the homeless can help themselves, and begin to experience physical life in another way.
Hal Manogue
Born in Philadelphia, Howard (Hal) (Howie) Thomas Manogue spent the first twenty-one years of his life conforming to logical beliefs and rituals. He spent the next twenty-six years of his life rebelling against those beliefs and rituals in one way or another. For the last twelve years he has devoted his life to dissecting beliefs and that journey has taken him through the history of religious thought and the intricacies of philosophy.
Retiring from the shoe industry after 35 years of “sole” searching, Hal discovered his real soul when he started writing poetry in 1996. His first book, Short Sleeves A Book For Friends, was self-published in 2003. His second book, Short Sleeves A Book For Friends 2006 Collection, was released in May 2006. His third book, Short Sleeves A Book For Friends 2007 Collection, was released in January 2007. Short Sleeves Spirit Songs was published in July 2008. Spirit Songs Echoes of Silence will be released in 2011. Essays from the book, Short Sleeves Insights: Live An Ordinary Life In A Non-Ordinary Way (published in May 2008) have been republished in other books and newsletters around the globe. All these books are available on his Web site: http://www.shortsleeves.net/.
Hal’s poems have been published by Mystic Pop Magazine, Children of the New Earth Magazine, New Age Tribune, Seasons of the Soul Newsletters, The Ascension Network, Lightship News, and Writers in the Sky E-zine. On his blog, he has published over a thousand essays on consciousness.
His new novel living Behind the Beauty Shop is available online and in bookstores or visit: www.livingbehindthebeautyshop.com
Hal currently lives in Brentwood, Tennessee with his wife, Joanie.
