I sometimes have to remind myself that there is a cherry red Tesla convertible hurdling RIGHT NOW into the distant asteroid belt of our solar system. It will likely fly through space for millions of years.
Elon Musk did that with the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket. "With 27 engines, the Falcon Heavy is capable of lifting 140,000 pounds into low Earth orbit. That makes it the most powerful rocket on Earth, viable for launching heavy satellites and future space stations into orbit. It has twice the towing capacity of any other rocket in use today."
I love Elon Musk because he really pushes my imagination of what is possible. The biggest hurdle of being a visionary is often the limits of your imagination.
I try to watch each one of his launches because he doesn't just throw rockets up into space and let them crash back to Earth. He rescues his rockets. They freaking navigate themselves back to Earth and land on autonomous spaceport drone ship. There are 2 of them. My favorite is named: Of Course I Still Love You.
If you haven't seen a rocket land itself back on one of these autonomous spaceport drone ships you are missing out on one of the coolest scientific achievements of humanity.
"Of Course I Still Love You" is named based on the Culture fictional universe created by the late science fiction author Iain M. Banks.
Just the names alone pushed my imagination of what is possible. NASA, while awesome, never had the naming flare that Elon Musk does.
I love thinking about a frightened rocket plummeting back to Earth. Not sure of its fate, out in the ocean, out of nowhere, is a friendly robot barge navigating itself to catch this rocket. "Of Course I Still Love You."
That's God.
I was angry this past Friday when I wrote: A Fiduciary Responsibility.
I think some people got a little defensive.
You should know this: If I was giving up I wouldn't bother writing these posts any more. I really need to start making some income and should be focused on spinning up some cash for my family.
I am now of the mindset that it's not the homeless we need to save. We need to save ourselves.
The homeless are doing exactly what a person hurdling through space alone with no money, no family, no resources should be doing. They are surviving day to day and trying to find peace anyway they can find it. There is nothing out there right now to catch them. It is not the homeless that are making bad choices. They are making the only choice they can make in their circumstances.
The people with money, family and resources that are making the wrong choices.
If you think you would behave any differently than the way homeless people are behaving you have a false sense of your true nature and abilities. If anything, I suspect you would behave much worse than them. Many homeless people are conditioned through generations of extreme poverty. You likely would be outraged that your society had abandoned you on the street. It's much more likely you would be more violent and a much greater thief. Most homeless people quietly live, being shuffled from place to place by the government that should be serving them. The outrage has been beaten out of them many years ago.
We, the people with means and resources, have all the choices. We can decide whether or not we should be helping the person begging on the street corner or the person living in a tent on the other side of town, or the family with no water.
I'm disheartened to say, most of us choose to look the other way. Most of us judge these people for being less than us. Must of us scorn people that have lost everything. It fills me with both outrage and sadness. Who have we become?
I called out the church next to us for being the major contributor to getting our entire homeless center shut down. But what would your church do if I brought 50 homeless people to live next door? Would your church be able to rise to the occasion? Honestly, I suspect not. Otherwise, you likely would have already started your own homeless village.
I asked a lot of our church neighbors. But that's what Jesus does. I often resent Jesus for asking so much of us. I guess he believed we were up to the challenge. Although, 2000 years later I don't see much evidence of it.
Do you know what a pew is? A pew is a bed.
Every church in America could open its doors tonight and solve homelessness.
Literally, there would be no homeless in America, or the world, TONIGHT, if every church let homeless people sleep on their pews.
But they don't. They lock those doors.
Why?
Because the rich parishioners would probably leave. They'd be too grossed out by having to deal with smelly homeless people all the time. So, our churches lose their way because they are caught up in a system that requires them to cater to rich people and ignore poor people.
That's why Akron shut down our tent village. They want rich people to start coming to Middlebury and rich people are creeped out by poor people.
I get it. I totally get it.
In a highly capitalistic society like America the natural order of things is to push out the poor people to make way for the rich people.
I'm not mad at that. I'm not ignorant of that. I get it.
But it does NOT make it right.
For the future of all of humanity we must evolve to be something greater than a self-centered creature of instant gratification that demands not having to look at things that make it uncomfortable.
We can't give up on cleaning our planet. We can't give up pushing more power and rights to women and minorities and poor people. And we can't give up on each other.
Of Course I Still Love You.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop pushing you. We all need to be doing more and doing better by our global community. Me included.
I can't just sit here and feel smug that I took 2 years out of my very long life to shelter 50 homeless people. There are AT LEAST 500,000 homeless people on the streets of America right now.
What would Elon Musk do? He'd be thinking about ending all of homelessness. That's what I'm thinking about.
Where I'm at right now is pushing you to think about ending homelessness in America.
(For the record, please don't house homeless people in your house. Your shed, backyard, garage or under your porch maybe. But don't bring them into your house unless you REALLY know what you are doing.)
I am asking: What can you do to end the greatest human rights disaster of our time and likely one of the top 3 greatest human rights disasters of all American history?
I might bash churches. But it's not because I don't love them. Of course I still love you. I push on churches, and will continue to do so, because I feel like they could be a major solution to ending homelessness in America right now.
Elon Musk asks a lot to push us further and faster into space. I am asking a lot of us to push us further and faster into ending homelessness in America. If ever there was a country that had the creativity, innovation, compassion and wealth to do this it is America. We don't need the government to end homelessness (all they need to do is just get out of the way). We the people of America can end homelessness in America.
American homelessness is a tragedy, a human rights disaster and brutally wrong morally and spiritually. We must end homelessness in America now.
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