NATION: You Do Realize They Are Human, Don't You?

Working Theory: I've stated many times that in my anecdotal experience, about half of our SLO population hates the homeless, and about half feel that we need to do more to help them. The high "hate" percentage has always confused me, because basic humanity calls for treating all people with a certain level of dignity, even those we don't like. For instance, the Israelis and America both give 100's of millions of dollars to the Palestinians every year, even though the Palestinians primary reason for living appears to be the killing of all Jews. So why so much hate for our homeless brothers and sisters? That is the topic of this article.

The Spanish Ruled our California Missions: I've been putting together a presentation on the California Missions for a local community service group on 2/3/2016. While thumbing through my extensive library on the California Mission System, I made the connection: the Spanish Conquistadores of New Spain in the 1500's, as well as the more recent Friars and Soldiers of our California Mission system in the late 1700's and early 1800's, both somehow saw Native Americans as less than human. In addition, a theory has been posited that in order to treat slaves in our early days of America so poorly, you had to see them as somehow less than human. 

Let's start with this book I just ordered from Amazon, called Less Than Human: The Psychology of Cruelty, which you can read about by clicking here. 

An excerpt from the book: In ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature, the author found repeated references to enemies as subhuman creatures. When people dehumanize others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures. When the Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans, they didn't mean it metaphorically. They didn't mean they were like subhumans. They meant they were literally subhuman."

Above: Our stone age Indians crafted deadly arrowheads from obsidian, as in this beautiful example from California. What are our homeless capable of, if given the chance to be productive? At this rate, we'll never know.