Interlocutor 1: What's that book you're reading?
Me: Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin. He's some 19th century dude who gives a critique on the organization of labor, how human happiness is curtailed. Blah, blah. I like it 'cause of how it strikes at the ethos of a place like this. He formulates a sort of response to the question I have of: how are people starving and there's these giant storehouses of food?
Interlocutor 1: Well, if they wanted food and to not be begging for money they'd have filled out a job application like the rest of us. Plenty of people are hiring.
Me, internally: Do you think these people are so fucking stupid that begging was the first option they thought of? Do you think that they just decided to not want to work or some shit?
Me: I mean, like, it's a bit harder to apply when you don't have a home address.
A second person chimes in as the first begins to walk away.
Interlocutor 1, over their shoulder:
Interlocutor 2: They're probably not even homeless like you can just make a little bit of coin holding up a sign.
Interlocutor 2: Right.
Me: *shrugs my shoulders 'cause I don't know what to say in the face of such biting cynicism* I mean, I guess.
I never know what quick and concise thing to say that would dispel this attitude towards those with signs. To this day (as I've had similar convos to this) I don't know a soundbite that would chomp away at this mystifying of the reality of these goings ons. 'Cause I hear it so often a part of me believes that surely if so many people believe it then it must be the case. I know it to not be true but I do get a little deflated when I hear this on and on. I imagine that this reaction from them and me is part & parcel of the dehumanization that the current social relation creates. I still think that the majority of people when directly pressed on the issue would say that they care about the wellbeing of others but this shared response seems to me antithetical to that belief.
