Root Causes
We chop down our problems and then wonder why they grow back up and persist. Let's heal them instead.
I’m at the lowest point in my life ever. But I’m a much better person. Maria - Sex worker, Reno, Nevada.
I’ve spent the last few days watching interviews and videos with the homeless and drug addicts. I do this often, it enriches me. There is so much honesty there, so much that interests me about the human soul and experience.
Nature - it is great. Science, other topics. But I’ve always been fascinated with the human journey, culture, the individual experience. Thus, my early interest in Anthropology. Thus, my interest in art. For IMHO, art is but the exploration of that which it is to be human, alive, here, now, living it.
Youtube channels I can highly recommend in this vein are Invisible People and Soft White Underbelly.
One video I kept watching and watching is this one - about Kensington Ave. in Philadelphia. Reminded me of the Tenderloin in San Francisco. It’s haunting, surreal. Just people, completely decimated by drugs. Each person passed, I wonder, who are there? Why am I me, not him? Her?
Most people who watch or experience something like this - express disgust. So too, most think of the people there as “deserving” and just bums, criminals, those that can’t take it, make it, in the real world.
Most people though, do want to help. Our society tries to help but we fail. We throw money and obvious solutions at the problem. Things. We give ‘em housing. We give ‘em free drugs or drug substitutes. We give them support, food. Yet, we never truly fix things. It’s getting worse - this America. And similar many parts of the world. Ghettoized poverty. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s like an onion. You keep peeling this problem back and it just keeps revealing another underlying cause. Broken homes, family. Poverty, little money. Leads to homelessness. Homelessness leads to drug use (you can’t do the streets sober). Drug use leads to ill health. Ill health leads to crime to pay for more drugs to stop that pain. Crime leads to incarceration, prison. Prison leads to poverty, lack of employment. No job = no money and homelessness. Homelessness leads to …
So what is the fix? How to help the people on Kensington? Maybe, there is no fix. Maybe, it is just about helping ease the pain. And putting time, money, effort, focus on the next generation so they won’t fall into this same onion pit, vicious circle.
For at bottom, all that we see on Kensington Ave. 90% or more of it, is because of broken people. Broken souls. A big hurt deep inside, usually experienced as profound trauma when young. After that, there isn’t any solution, only care.
So much pain, I wish each of these people in the video had a light shining from them to show that pain, what’s broken in them. Even they don’t even know anymore. The abuse, the violence, not being loved, not having community, respect, being valued. Abandonment, broken homes - I could go on and on and on … We are too late to solve this problem. But we can care and soften the pain. We owe them that.
It is much the same with so many of society’s problems. We just try to cure the symptoms instead of really getting to the heart of the matter and ultimate cause. Covid - it is as much about obesity, unhealthy lifestyles as anything. Yet, we expect a needle to fix it (just like those on Kensington do, or a crack pipe). Depression is a huge problem, so we throw pills at it (and now find they were a fraud, low levels of serotonin aren’t linked to depression, never were). Crime, we just hire more cops and give them better equipment to inflict pain.
We need to fix what’s broken. And the first step in this process is to realize all problems of human behavior are related to the architecture of being human, not exterior stuff. We need to fix souls and create the conditions of life for children to grow into healthy, fit, unbroken beings. That fixing always has to begin in the early years.
There is a very important, recently updated study related to addiction that I think is worth sharing. It applies here. Rat Park. Researchers took drug-addicted rats and separated them. One half in a barren cage with little food, cramped conditions, noise, dirt - the other half a cage full of color, lots of food, lots of toys, lots of space. And guess what? No matter how powerful and “good” the drugs were in the latter group - they didn’t take them. They stayed unaddicted. Another more recent similar rat study showed that when isolated rats are given a choice between taking a hit of drugs or social interaction with another rat - 90% chose the social interaction. They chose to be rat, as we choose to be human. Be loved. Be recognized. Be among.
Let’s fix that. Even better, lets’ not break that.
A short film that sums up so much about our “rat race”.