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Torture Starts at Home.
(Stop Torturing the Homeless!--Defend the Natural Human Right to Sleep!)

By what right, or a rationale should torturing of the homeless be a good thing? That one is not automatically guaranteed any basic natural human rights--such as is the fulfillment of the natural need to sleep, of the natural need to take a basic care of one's bodily functions, nor of the natural need for, if only a very basic and for one's well-functioning necessary habitat--upon one's birth doesn't become apparent to most people, unless they end up in circumstances where the exercise of these natural Human rights becomes impossible--impossible not because of strictures imposed on one by "nature", but because other humans will actively prevent one from trying to take care of those very basic needs.

It does become impossible for quite a few who become homeless to take an adequate care of their basic bodily needs (never mind their non-corporeal needs for now) when they find themselves unable to find a place to perform those, for life very necessary, functions, due to being unable to find a place to live. Suddenly they find themselves being persecuted, punished, tortured for not being able to come up with the unreasonable, out-of-proportion, ever increasing price of a place where they could take care of things that are absolutely necessary for their life support. Suddenly it becomes obvious that the right to just live, no matter how simply, actually does not exist at all in our society! It can only be purchased, with some losers, who don't have enough for even the worst available, left behind.

On the one hand the practice of torture is, at least pro forma, prohibited by law--if someone were to cause a deprivation of sleep to someone else, the victim could, at least in theory, sue the torturer in court of law. If someone would be depriving animals of sleep or rest, he/she could be taken to court and charged with cruelty to animals!

On the other hand there are thousands of individuals who are being actively deprived of sleep every night (by the various law enforcers, who just follow our orders, after all), night after night, yet no one would think to call it torture, even though this practice is nothing else, but torture. It is torture that is being committed right in front of everybody's eyes!

And, apparently, everybody is perfectly comfortable with it, maybe because of having been brought up with this injustice as being a "natural" part of our culture.

Some might argue that people become homeless because they either have mental problems, or that they abuse substances to the point where they no longer are capable to function properly. But the truth is that there is a plenty of people who either are mad, and/or abuse substances who are not homeless, yet the only difference between the homeless and them is that the latter still have a place to live. The determining factor is the ability to pay for lodgings, and not to be able to do so is not the province of the mad, and/or substance abusers solely. One just need to be sufficiently poor to qualify. Homelessness is a social stigma, most people who are homeless try to remain "invisible"; it is only when they are worn out and tired to a point of not caring about appearances that they become "visible" in a non-flattering light.

And because the very steep step between not having anywhere to sleep, and to be able to afford what is being offered at the lowest point of the scale--a step that keeps increasing with time--the number of those able to purchase a place to sleep and just to take care of their very basic and necessary life needs just keeps on increasing.

It is a paradoxical situation, in which the barbaric side of our human nature that rules this situation is clearly in control, this in spite of laws that proscribe torture and moral prescriptions professed by the majority of the population. It shows the true nature of our society that has not much progressed from being a horde of barbarians always waging a war of exploit against others and against their inhospitable environment, in whose camp there is a little use for losers of any kind, except, perhaps, as a training material in times of shortage of real enemies to exercise cruelty on. This behavior also harks back to the frontier days when losers were either left behind in the hinterland, excommunicated into the "wilderness", or outright killed.

Torturing the defenseless ones does not have a place in a civilized society. However, in truth, we, as a society, are still on a war path, this time even against each other globally (albeit now it is an economical warfare that creates victims, but real victims none-the-less--a warfare that keeps on escalating), and because the territory boundaries have been stabilized in ages ago, any "losers" that there might be can no longer be left behind, nor very easily "excommunicated"--they stay right with us. The only option left is to torture them, and to torture them we do, with little thought of consequences of so doing. But those consequences stay right with us, causing the society much harm, with no benefits to the society whatsoever.

Perhaps best to see what those consequences are would be to try to see what benefits there would be if the basic rights to the fulfillment of the basic natural needs would be guaranteed (it would be hard to say "granted", because that would imply a sort of a charity; we could hardly be called "charitable" if we would "grant" someone the right to eliminate body wastes, for an instance).

Imagine what would happen, if suddenly no one could be persecuted for trying to go to sleep, even if such someone would have no place that he/she could call their own, nor could they rent any such place. That either they could do so at any handy place where they would not obstruct any traffic and impose on anyone greatly, and where they could not cause any sanitary hazards, or they could do so at especially for the purpose designated places on municipal, state, federal, or any public land that would be geared, if only modestly, towards providing such needs. That in itself should not cause any huge outlay of public money, and as for labor needed in keeping such places up, the people who would be using such places could be educated over the time to help with the upkeep.

Over the longer run, the consequences of guaranteeing ad facilitating to anyone the exercise of just this one natural Human right--the natural human right to sleep--would be profound. (A rhetorical question--might there be any other natural rights--other than those already mentioned-- that are still being violated habitually in our society?)

Rested people would be better fit to take care of their affairs more independently. Many people who today pay an unreasonably high price for having a place to live would probably choose eventually to become homeless voluntarily once the stigma and onus of being homeless would no longer exist. The out-of-proportion price of real estate would go down to become more realistic and more affordable again. People would no longer have to work at nonsensical jobs just to make ends meet--the quality of the out-put of work would increase considerably, because people could afford more to work at jobs that they would like to do. There would be fewer jobs that exist today just for the sake of having jobs with no thought of actually accomplishing anything at all by having those--a step towards sanity. The abstract, meaning nothing to the average person, really, GNP would go down, while the actual, real quality of life (measured by reduction of busy-ness and stress) would improve. People who would be rested would be less prone to become criminals, and the esteem of, and the trust and confidence of every one in our social system would increase. The possibility of an actual existence of a "social contract" would become real. People whose natural human rights would be defended and guaranteed would start actively caring for their society and have a society that they could be proud of without resorting to hype and empty rhetoric. Humanity would score a point against the "pursuit of happiness" at the expense of others.

We, the members of this society, are suffering from great societal stresses that we ourselves create and perpetuate. If we give ourselves a break--from among other possibilities--in the form of eliminating unnecessary cruelty towards our fellow society members, the whole society would benefit. We just need to start wanting to see that we live in an almost closed system (the Earth globally), and that "what goes around, comes around". If we cause unnecessary suffering, then we, or our children, will reap the fruits. It is hard to predict the future, however it is possible to observe trends. The observable trend in our society is an ever increasing stress and hardship, as evidenced by the rise in numbers of those with mental problems, those who cannot afford adequate housing, and the rise of criminality. The question might present itself: If we torture our homeless today without anyone in the "normal" portion of our society doing anything that would solve the problem of homelessness humanly, what will be permissible to do to them, and other disadvantaged groups in the future? If no one protests the torture of the homeless today, who will protest when cruel and unusual treatment of other disadvantaged groups will become the norm also? Isn't there a possibility that we, and/or our family members (who already get the short shrift in their old age, because we are too busy to take care of them) and friends might be included in one of those groups ourselves? We still can stop this rise in civic apathy--we all will benefit if we become kinder and gentler to ourselves in deed.

To be causing homelessness and to withhold from people the natural human right to sleep (along with other "proscribed" natural humann rights) is a grave and insufferable social injustice that can only be righted by guaranteeing and defending of this natural human right in disfavor of making an unreasonable profit from human misery.