Shelter Story Follow-up

Shelter Story Follow-Up

   I know it is much easier to go on uncritically trusting in professionals who appear to have your "best interests" in mind, my fellow homeless people, but you should at least be aware of views outside of this fashionable "cure-all."

   I bid the gullible and unprepared to take a look at views and facts that don't label, categorize and solve society's most superficial problems. Instead, undertaking a self-instruction course in intellectual self-defense, you could organize your own support groups and take back your responsibility to yourself.

   Once you whiff the lies and misinformation conducted upon you, you may be angry. Angry that such state-backed "forcers" can do what they do without telling informing you of alternatives. Angry that these business people can then frame "reality" within the limited bounds that they've fabricated.

   Sure it feels nice to imagine that such professionals have your best interests in mind, just like it' s nice feeling to "know" that Joe Schmo politician "cares" about you, the lone voter, or that corporations have always cared about the environment.

   Those interested, take a read of books by Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, Aldus' Huxley, Felix Guattari, and to a limited extent, Peter R. Breggin. What I like about Szasz is that since the 1950s he's drawn parallels between therapeutic medicine and the dogmatic "helpfulness" of the once state-backed church. In the old days, duped citizens could feel comfortably incapable as "sinners"; today they keep themselves leashed with such labels as "mentally ill." The whole thing conveniently distracts us from real issues, like the probability that in an insane society it will be the sane who will not be able to "adapt," and the truly insane that adapt without problem. Ah, but ours is not an insane society, right? If people won't see, it's not worth listing our society 'sinsanities.

   It's dangerous to understand how businesses and institutions work. Your not supposed to know. You're supposed to obey, conform, and be a good consumer automaton. Take your prozac (et al) and "be happy" that all your rights aren't yet totally taken away.

Chuck Dodson

ANN ARBOR