The downside was realizing how outright nasty people could be, when the cops showed up at four am and beat everyone awake with nightsticks- just for the hell of it.

Maybe what the author of this blog meant by “good tribal behavior” could be thought of as an inversion of the zones/dynamics and treating everyone as though they are your family.

I mean, take the same scenario, but replace the homeless people with your family. Would you have a problem sharing it then? Or replace them with your friends. You may have a bit more hesitation with friends than with family, but you’d still be more likely to share.

Homeless people are just outside of most of our circles, “Other,” and we’re a lot less likely to do a lot of things with them than we would with those that are inside of our circles.

Tim no one really knows what they will do until in any given situation.

Would I have shared my chocolate bar.? I hope so. I think so.

The part of the story I like is the epiphany that it is the course to follow for the whole bunch of us.

Of course a little monetary generosity is good too, but rather than give the person more than spare change, I prefer to support the people and services that contribute to the needs of the homeless.

For me this all comes out of Jesus’ teaching “Give to all who ask …”, and the “FLOW” of goods and life to all around us; not holding on (attachment) to what we have (ultimately we nothing is really “ours” and ownership is an illusion in the biggest scheme of things).

The FLOW is a current that runs through Jesus’ ministry. His miracles of multiplication result from the physical pouring, e.g. loaves and fishes, water into wine, etc. and is analogous to the activity of giving, allowing our own “living water” to flow to others. Rather than keeping it bottled up in stasis, we then get replenishment via the holy spirit, of those heavenly living waters, i.e. non-material blessing.

I enjoy seeing this as a great ’spiritual’ circle of life. But to “give away what is freely given …” is completely counter to a materialistic mindset , unless one is expecting an owed return favor.

Chocolate bars are not an issue in a system of abundance.

But what about in ordinary human life that doesn’t relate to terms like “abundance” or “price system”

What I am getting at, I guess is: would you have shared your chocolate bar?

In our system chocolate bars might mean the difference between life and death , or at least seem like they do. This reality would nag at any one , that wants to share.

In a system like this a feeling of everything for me and nothing for you will always be popular. This is because of the rules of the games of this type of society in which people are rewarded for bad behaviour.

We can moralize and preach at people to share their chocolate , but if they are not rewarded for doing do it is to no avail.

Reality of survival in a group would tell us that sharing is the way to go. We are very lucky that in this place on earth we have things to share.

This person came to the higher truth of that sentiment in his story. It makes sense to follow a pattern of people sharing and surviving together , rather than fighting each other day in day out for no really good reason other than false society norms which are what our present culture is based on.
Norms that just don`t translate to the modern world we live in now. We are using horse and buggy societal concepts to manage our society.

was how generosity actually backfired on most of them.

Interesting personal observations, definitely. Also interesting about the donut thing as well… Makes me see the sort of dichotomy between profit and generosity a little clearer.

Our society with our price system encourages hoarding , as we know that if the money runs out we are going to starve or have to steal.

Technocracy deals with the problems of a society , such as housing, food , shelter, and so forth as a right of citizenship, and not as a moral calculator.

As our society spins out of control and becomes more dysfunctional and more anti-human a cry goes out for a culture that meets the needs of society now.

The kicker, though, is how even more engrained is my automated response to homeless people seems to be, especially when they catch me off guard. Of course, I’m talking about the head-shaking “No,” followed by some rationalization in my head of why I’m not helping them (while I quickly scurry away).

However, in the past several years, most of the time I’ve helped out homeless people (with change or a buck or two) involves me doing a double-take. That is, they’ll catch me off guard, I’ll say “no,” keep on walking, but then stop and turn around. It has been a great passion of mine to then ask them for wisdom, try to get into a real conversation, etc… aka, be human. It isn’t easy, and I certainly don’t get to it all of the time (or even often), but I try.

Additionally, it is quite remarkable to witness the attitude of various friends I’ve been with while engaging with homeless folk… they’ve often freaked out, tried to “rescue” me, or later convince me “it’s a scam.” Striving for a human moment? Yeah, a big scam.