Views on Blanket Man
January 17th, 2012 at 2:00 pm by David FarrarPat Brittenden writes:
If society can be judged by how we treat the least, then the death of ‘Blanket Man’ tells us we suck
I disagree.
We spend $13 billion a year on welfare. Hama would have qualified for welfare if had wanted it. He qualified for community or emergency housing. A number of places had standing offers for him to stay there. He declined them.
The Wellington City Mission checked up on him weekly.
Places like Burger King gave him free food.
He got free health care, and died in a public hospital, where people who cared had taken him.
Grant Robertson also blogs:
He was the face of homelessness in Wellington. It is true to say that he shunned the idea of moving off the streets in recent years, and indeed of taking on much in the way of formalised help. He was beyond that, and wanted none of it.
Hana was a very sad case, but i reject that his death is in any way any sort of reflection on the generous society that is New Zealand. The old saying goes that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Unless you wish to champion a law that allows the state to forcibly detain those who lives on the streets and lock them in community housing, there will always be cases like Hana.
We have a real shortage of emergency accomodation, affordable accomodation and accomodation for those with mental illness. The different agencies involved are getting better at working together to find solutions, but still need to be more coordinated and flexible if we are to truly address these issues. Its not just government either, the community has a responsibility too. Many private landlords will not take on those who have a history of mental illness.
But Hana was offered plenty of accommodation. There was no shortage when it came to him.
His real problem was his mental illness fuelled by drug addiction. The problem is there is no sure fire way to cure either mental illness or drug addiction. There are many courses (mostly 100% taxpayer funded) that help cure or heal some of the people some of the time. But with mental illness there is no universal cure.
If there is any lesson to be taken from the death of Hana, it is not to turn the homeless into icons and glorify their existence. Once this started, Hana refused more and more help.
Tags: Ben Hana, blanket man, Grant Robertson, Pat Brittenden
January 17th, 2012 at 2:21 pm
The old saying goes that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
That was either the most unfortunate or apt metaphor to choose, given the circumstances of Hana’s death.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
As I’ve said before- If Wellingtonians want to replace their “Beloved Icon” (as I was staggered to hear him called on the radio the other day) with another old drunk who urinates in shop doorways and exposes himself to young children there are hundreds of them up here in Auckland. Come take your pick.
The media’s salivating beatification of this revolting old dropkick isn’t likely shared by the shopkeepers who had to hose away his excrement on a daily basis, nor is it likely shared by the parents of young children he exposed his genitals to…
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 2:28 pm
It wasn’t so long ago that people with mental health problems were accommodated in well run institutions. Then came the progressive thinking which pushed “community care” which was supposed to enrich the lives of the patients, free them from the dangers of institutionalism & instead mentor them with visits & help from qualified mental health providers.
In fact the only thing the authorities accomplished was the closing of the institutions…..the “community care” that eventuated was fragmented & under resourced. Families looking after these former patients were denied respite care & many former patients slipped through the cracks. Some like Hana ended up on the streets but many offended criminally & are part of the revolving door problem in the nation’s prisons.
Community care is a joke. The ideology was fine…the bungled implementation was organised cruelty against society’s weakest.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Actually community care works just fine for the vast majority of those with mental health issues. Confinement to institutions is generally reserved for those who pose a grave risk to themselves or others.
One of the dangers with the reactions to Hana’s death is that it is tempting to see him as typical. He gained a public profile because of his unusual behaviour. Unfortunately, he also to some extent served as a poster boy for the “they choose to live that way” mindset.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 2:34 pm
What was his mental illness?The presumption was that he was mad because he lived the way he did, I never saw him any other way than pissed
He was a chronic alcoholic thats all, an illness in its self, uncurable, but controllable. If he stopped drinking his ” mental illnesss” will have cured itself.
………….There are many courses (mostly 100% taxpayer funded) that help cure or heal some of the people some of the time………
In every town in New Zealand AA functions, NA functions, Wellington has several meetings a day, all free. You make a concious decision to stop or you don’t, end of story.
Nasska
Community care is a joke. The ideology was fine…the bungled implementation was organised cruelty against society’s weakest.
Absolutely spot on
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
The point is Hana was offered help so Robertson was wrong to politicise the matter.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
Who even says he had any problem at all? I don’t recall him going on about his entitlements as he sat in the Wellington sun.
He lived the life he wanted to live, good on him! As much as I hate the homeless problem up in Auckland, at least Blanket Man had some personality (like Speedy does in Dunedin). Auckland’s homeless just spend their day in public spaces begging for money, sniffing glue, shoplifting and swearing at women on their way to work (very similar to the Occupy group).
The saddest thing about the situation is the likes of Grant Robertson, who are trying to use his life and death for political gain. Absolutely no shame.
I agree that NZ offered him many chances for food, accommodation and healthcare. But he didn’t want it, who are we to force it on him.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
DPF: If there is any lesson to be taken from the death of Hana, it is not to turn the homeless into icons and glorify their existence. Once this started, Hana refused more and more help.
Isn’t that the key? Labour needs poor people, it needs problems, because it is the party of permanently addressing them. Fixing, now, that would be the real problem, because then there wouldn’t be a need for Labour anymore.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:05 pm
I do not subscribe to the Notion that the welfare agencies let Hana down. He lived the life he chose to live despite the many offers to help. He was well known here in Wellington but hardly iconic. Equally I don’t condemn him as I know little of what caused him to end up as he did.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:10 pm
Meh. A piece of trash who was offered far more help than he deserved and chose not to take it. This death has nothing to say about society and everything to say about the stupidity of Hana. Good riddance.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:14 pm
It was quite obvious that he, as did other homeless, suffered from mental illness.
Did you expect him to start up a blog, abuse people left , right and centre so he can tell everyone that it is unfair to attack him at his weakest for having a mental illness ?
I bet not…..
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:15 pm
If you spend time talking to the homless, you find out all sorts of fascinating stuff. There was one guy I knew, an ex Oxford Don, who lived in Ealing Broadway train station. If you listened to him as you walked past, he was constantly reciting Shakespear. Brain the size of a planet, lost the plot one day, got on a train, never went back. Lovely bloke, I used to buy him one of the delicious samosas you could get from the shop just by the stairs in the station.
I digress
There are some homeless people who actually dont want our – society – help. For a variety of reasons, they just want to live rough. Its not a failure of society that they make that choice. Equally, there are some homless who do so becuase they have drink, drug or mental issues. Or some who are runnign away from life. We have the capacity to deal with them.
Elevating him to this status is truly absurd, and for Diane Robertson to say that “she was “sad that a homeless person is an icon of Wellington…” is complete tosh. But then thats what I expect from her. Nuff said.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Good riddance, indeed.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
San Francisco has a lot of people wandering around the streets who used to be in mental institutions. Getting rid of them inevitably results in homeless drifters.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:36 pm
There are some homeless people who actually dont want our – society – help.
When I read he still couldn’t discuss killing his friend in a drink drive accident years ago, it occurred to me perhaps he’s punishing himself to the point of death for that.
If that is the case then its a shame we don’t have provision to take such a person in and keep them against their will in a controlled environment, until they’re good and ready to discuss it.
The question is: is it kinder to do that, or is it kinder to let them just go away and destroy themselves?
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Pat Brittenden can be a complete tool and this tosh is yet another piece of evidence confirming that fact.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:41 pm
I once had a chat to a homeless guy in Nottingham.
Vote:Said he could make 80 quid a day from begging.
January 17th, 2012 at 3:46 pm
All rounded off very nicely apart from the fact one might need some semblance of sanity to ‘accept’ help, not necessarily seen as help to the one with an unsettled mind – seen more as interference, controlling, unnecessary, becoming fearful in some circumstances. From what I saw of the man he was right out there, as tormented as any soul that might have once found home in Lake Alice or another of the former institutions. Discredited as though those places might now be for their threats of compliance or shock treatment and other abuse they kept the psychotic away from the drink and drugs that generally made their hallucinations or anger worse. There’s something to be said about a city that might think this man was iconic, that he ‘refused’ help and but still generally made the streets of Wellington unsafe and not less a touch obscene. The fact that he exposed himself in the way he did was an element that could have seen him restrained for treatment under the mental health act or similar. It’s not a crime to be insane but it seems almost to be a crime not to help those, clearly needing help, because they decline it.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Where were these hand-wringers when he needed them? WTF did Robertson do for him as his MP or while he was a member of the Liebour gummint? Did any of them invite him home for a meal and a bath? Pffft.
He chose what services he required from the community and those he didn’t. Do we now lock people up and force them to accept assistance from the state?
I still don’t understand why he was even permitted to sit there with his meat and two veg flapping about, abusing and spitting at people going about their lawful business. I’m assuming that he wasn’t actually stark raving bonkers and therefore, capable of being lawfully incarcerated for his own good.
One can’t help wonder if there is a perverse element in the reactions of the wise-after-the-event-hand-wringing fraternity who have only now decided to express their faux sorrow and dismay at him not only checking out, but at his life in general, and prompting the faux outrage that society failed him . Perhaps their sense of “loss” relates more to the loss of a public curiosity – “ah yes, the naked homeless man that sat pissed on the corner while I walked around him”. They should actually be looking at themselves rather than others.
Greyfriars Bobby he wasn’t.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Good Post Nasska re so called community care. It was only ever a cost cutting exercise..just another myth. I used to know but can no longer recall what percentage of prisoners in NZ are on anti-psychotic drugs..It is really high..Does anyone else know?
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:54 pm
hmmokrightitis (266) Says:
January 17th, 2012 at 3:15 pm
If you spend time talking to the homless, you find out all sorts of fascinating stuff.
True, we can’t be too quick to judge one’s willingness to be a part of society. I used to volunteer at the Christchurch City Mission – one guy was kicked out of home when he was 12. I can’t imagine where I’d be today if I myself had been kicked out of home at 12 – unlikely someone who fits into society like I do today.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
His lawyer said last night he was punishing himself over his best friend’s death..that he had been driving in the accident which killed him.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Nasska is 100% spot on here.
This was a clear case demonstrating the deficiencies of mental health care in NZ. I understand that community care can be useful for some, even many … but there are people that really do require secure, inpatient care.
The problem is that in the 1980s we disbanded all of these facilities due to enduring images in public consciousness of “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” type of stuff. Sadly, those extreme examples did happen in places like Kingseat and Lake Alice and we must never forget such *awful* abuses of power and of helpless patients.
HOWEVER, for some reason NZ now thinks we cannot have secure mental units at all and that all patients with mental illness should be treated in an outpatient/integrated forum. BOLLOCKS to that. There **IS** a happy medium, NZ just needs the will to find it (note we don’t need to find the $$, those are already there and could easily be found/diverted from the current DHB morass if the political and social will was strong enough).
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 4:18 pm
I agree labour needs problems and then they propose some statist solution to solve it. That is why Robertson tries to find some angle that the government is to blame and they will solve it through some welfare programe.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Its called Freedom people….the right to live apart from anyone else. The day we start forcibly housing the homeless is the day we should all be very worried…
Of course the flip-side is there should be no state welfare.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
I think Mr Robertson is being more than a little hypocritical on this subject. I happened to be following him in Courtenay Place one day last year. We came to where Hana was sprawling and Grant stepped right to the outside of the footpath and speeded up as he walked past. When well clear he stepped back near the buildings. He was, like nearly everyone else in Wellington keeping well clear of Blanket man. He may have talked to him a long time ago but he certainly wasn’t going near him then.
Vote:I did precisely the same. Any reason was enough for him to launch a string of obscenities in your direction.
January 17th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
A more extreme example is Stephon Marbury.
Vote:Making US$20 million/year with the New York Knickerbockers, Marbury stopped playing basketball
to watch, from the stands, in Madison Square Garden(maybe in road games too…I’m not sure)
Boston needed a guard late in the 2008 season, so they gave Marbury another try.
But it didn’t work out.
Last I heard, Marbury was “eating Vaseline, while sobbing” on youtube videos.
Fabulous athletic ability, youth, and tens of millions of dollars couldn’t solve the problems in his head.
January 17th, 2012 at 4:34 pm
@ nasska & joana – ironic innit that the policy of deinstitutionalisation had its greatest momentum at the time one Helen Elizabeth Clark was the Minister of Health in the late 1980′s.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 4:42 pm
There seems to be a bit of a push here for enforced ‘secure inpaitient care’.
Is this the middle-class tidy-them-away brigade? The types who want to see all the homeless and grubby slightly potty elderly put away so people who witter on about hygeine and physical safety can feel better and to hell with the patient’s rights to autonomy?
It’s no light matter to confine people to institutions against their will. Having visited patients inside the old Porirua longstay units many times in the course of my work, my opinion on the desirability of enforced care did an about-face. These are grim places full of people who are physically well cared for but trapped and unhappy.
After the Porirua units were closed about 10 years ago, I met several of the previous inpatients in the course of my work, some of whom were living on the streets. They are much more interactive and content and pretty harmless for the most part, despite the way they look and smell.
Will the people pushing for incarceration be as happy when they are themselves elderly and a bit demented and get locked away in secure units against their will? The demented elderly get locked up pretty quick into units they don’t choose at the discretion of a single psychgeriatrician. No appeal, no legal representation. It’s one of the hidden disgraces of our current society.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 4:46 pm
The Scorned
There is a difference between allowing a sane person the freedom to do what they wish with their life & watching someone die in the street. In some cases we do forcibly accommodate the mentally sick but not certifiable homeless….their accommodation is called a prison & they are there not because they are bad but because they are sick. The same safeguards that prevent someone from being detained indefinitely in prison could be utilised to protect the mentally ill.
The welfare state was created to cater for people unable to work because of sickness or genuine unemployment. The fact that it has morphed into a breeding platform & lifestyle option needs to be addressed & addressed now but not at the expense of those totally incapable of providing for themselves.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
@ annie 4 42, That wasn’t my position at all and I have a clear impression most regarded it his right to refuse help on his terms. As for me it was a pity he couldn’t have worn a pair of Black underpants to mittigate the more offensive of his exposures.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
At least here we are spatred the faux mourning and greiving that is going on. Hell – somethimes one would think it was a competition to mourne the best.
As I was walking home last night there was an older woman at his “shrine” (read people who have now vandalised private property) crying and carrying on.
for my part I detested that I had to cross the street with my young daughters to prevent him leering, grunting, exposing himself and generally being anti-social and scaring my young daughters who have had to put up with this crap their whole llives (we live locally so saw him way to often)
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
I heard that some people bought him alcohol. If this is true then they are the ones you should hold in contempt. Providing an alcoholic with alcohol was not helping him, or even being nice.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Keeping Stock
There is no such thing as a sensible middle ground where politics meets medicine. When Dear Leader was flat out closing everything there had been incredible discoveries made, eg Lithium, where a pill everyday would allow a mental health patient to live quite well in the community.
Trouble was that no one bothered considering those for whose conditions pills didn’t work nor did anybody consider what would happen to those who refused or neglected to take the prescribed medication. Anyone who has had anything to do with the mentally ill should know that many are the greatest self medicators imaginable & dope & alcohol are often their drugs of choice. This is not surprising as these social drugs provide a degree of oblivion instead of the often unpleasant side effects of the drugs they should take.
So although there is not the need for thousands of inpatient beds as there was in the past some are still necessary yet in the great tradition of NZ political decisions the baby has disappeared with the bathwater.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:48 pm
Brittenden says:- “If society can be judged by how we treat the least, then the death of ‘Blanket Man’ tells us we suck”
Rubbish. There are some people you just can’t help. Those who end who end up on the street do so because they can’t get along with other people, and they won’t live alone because they get lonely. At any other time in the history of society, this guy would have ended up sedated in a padded cell or dead in the gutter.
The fact that he was given the freedom to make a nuisance of himself shows just how liberal and humane society really is.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Hi Annie,
I think you missed my point.
I absolutely agree with you that the wholesale confinement of people to inpatient psychiatric care is not warranted. There are many with borderline or even manageable psychiatric illnesses that benefit from a more community oriented and “human-networking” approach.
This being said, the release of severely psychiatrically disturbed persons into the community under the misguided supposition that “someone” or “communities” will take care of them is incorrect, is not good medical or mental health practice and endangers those persons future physical health as well as ignoring their intensive psychiatric needs.
As I said, many are aware of the miserable things that occurred at Lake Alice or Kingseat. But using the worst, most abhorrent situations to define future policy and clinical practice is reactionary, short sighted and, imho; has SEVERELY shortchanged these patients over the last 20-30 years.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 5:57 pm
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1992/0046/19.0/contents.htmlCached
The above Act could have been utilised, some of those posting here that were offended by Hana, could have sought remedy for him under the Act. Or indeed the agencies who claimed he turned down help could have used it to get him assessed and helped, He had a long road to return from but the Law at least provided an opportunity had it been utilised, maybe those that were in a position to do so didn’t see the sick man but were clouded by their own vision of an ‘icon’ or a public ‘pest.’
‘Annie at 4.40′ No effort by me to contain the homeless, I don’t see that as an answer. However, the man I saw was acting insanely and was a threat to himself and probably others. If he had been about to commit suicide there would have been a rush of agencies to assist, but because his was a slow to death suicide, people stood back and watched it seems.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
Also,
sorry to be pedantic but Nasska your statement
“When Dear Leader was flat out closing everything there had been incredible discoveries made, eg Lithium, where a pill everyday would allow a mental health patient to live quite well in the community.”
Is fairly incorrect. Lithium has been in wide clinical use since the 50′s (and to a lesser extent, even earlier) for psychiatric issues. Despite this, psychiatric patients are notoriously resistant to taking their medication (and/or take it until it works, when they feel like they’re “cured” and stop taking it – cue viscious cycle). Turning psychiatric patients out into the community with a script for Lithium and a “group meeting schedule” **IS** Helen Clark’s “community care” in action. And it doesn’t work.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Pharmachick
Correction appreciated…I wasn’t aware that lithium had been available for so long. You are definitely correct about the resistance to medication. As a family we had our lives torn apart when my (then) teenage stepdaughter developed bi polar disorder. I could write books on the utter uselessness of & the lack of support we received from the so called community care. The individual nurses did their level best but they in turn received no support from the medical hierarchy.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 6:49 pm
Nasska,
I am beyond sorry to hear this.
The ‘Pharma’ in Pharmachick does **not** pertain to cows (as many Kiwis automatically assume).
I sincerely hope that your daughter is managing herself well. I have good hopes for this since she obviously (from your post) has strong family support and as much medical help as you [seem to be able/trying to] can muster.
Lithium can be a miracle, but it can also be a curse since individuals react so very differently. Added the terrible and vicious cycling between “feel cured” and “not coping” it takes a long time [if ever] to stablise and for each person to take back their life.
I guess it seems somewhat irrelevant to advocate for NZ-wide changes in the face of your actual struggle, but I hope that you continue to push and advocate for better mental health services, since we all know what NZ has right now is next-to-useless.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 6:54 pm
Wasn’t Blanket Man a Green MP for several years? I remember him championing cannabis legalisation policies on a frequent basis. Surely the Green superannuation scheme should have taken care of his financial needs.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 7:37 pm
So the story goes: He killed his friend while driving drunk, he abused alcohol, he did drugs, he (supposedly) harassed many women and indecently exposed himself numerous times, he was mentally ill. He pretty much sat around doing fuck all.
Given the above, why are the Wellingtonians praising him and his life? They seem to be the real sad cases.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 8:03 pm
I think Mr Robertson is being more than a little hypocritical on this subject.
You must be joking – an MP and in particular a Labour MP being hypocritical – surely not.
Vote:January 17th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
People seem very unwilling to entertain the possibility that Ben Hana may have been happy where he was.
I can’t quite figure out why?
To me he certainly seemed happier than a lot of other denizens of Courtenay Place who, by comparison with Blanket Man, have it all…
I think this excerpt from Robertson that DPF quoted sums up the man amply, and little more need be said:
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 3:38 am
Nasska: The welfare state is not needed nor has ever been needed in NZ. People were always ready and willing to help those truly in need….what the welfare state did and was intended to do was force them to subsidise those who wren’t in real need and thereby empower politicians who said they represented those supposed ‘needy”…and so we are where we are today.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 6:52 am
If the lithium fails to work, a one off application of Potassium Cyanide should work just fine.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 7:20 am
I say bring back some for of mental institution. This is the 21st century. The old models of the past do not need to be used. We can make modern safe, secure places to keep people who are gaga off the streets where they can live with some dignity instead of walking around in filth. Community care doesn’t work because the community doesn’t care – it just wants these people out of the way. Sad but true.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 8:03 am
Yes Brian, lock them all up so we don’t have to look at them.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 8:08 am
Grant Robertsons belated interest in the deceased smacks of self serving puffery.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 8:12 am
Yes, we need something like that with a therapeutic aspect to attempt to help put meaning back in the lives of the unwell, even small achievements gave meaning in otherwise lost lives. Historically, at least for Britian and America, when there have been efforts to range in the disaffected those societies have grown economically, then there have been the ‘reverses’ such as we have here with mental health services where effectively people who do need ongoing help in a controlled way, find a home on the street and perhaps an escape in a glue bottle.
I see above a repeat of the idea that the unwell ‘choose’ to live on the streets, it’s not an unknown human characteristic for people to adapt to harsh living, become satisfied with it and ‘choose’ not to move on. The Act above appears to acknowledge this and seeks assessments which one could assume take into account that people like Hana begin to believe that their life is fine when all the surrounding details of it show that it isn’t, and show a society prepared to look away, offering the ‘bravado’ views of those such as scanner above and assumptions by others about ‘choice.’
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 12:32 pm
Yes, and keep them safe and make sure they have medicines, food and warmth. I am not talking of prison cells and electro-shock treatments. It has to be better than them lying in piss and shit on footpaths and eating out of rubbish tins.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
Sorry, I still need to be convinced that people should be locked up just because they are living rough and unpleasant to look at.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Brian Smaller
Some on this thread envisage a return to asylums when what is needed are places where mental health patients can be looked after & stabilised. Mikenmild & others see a glorious freedom to living rough in the streets. Some, including myself, see people unable to fend for themselves, at the mercy of the elements & picked on by the feral garbage that roams the streets at night.
Some are initially housed in boarding houses of dubious quality but for various reasons end up on the street…..many commit crimes & are sentenced to prison repeatedly. Most are not city icons. They are sad, sick people with a lousy past, a grim present & the future holds promise of more of the same & worse.
I accept that there are some who prefer living rough. What about the others who would settle for security & safety? There’s nowhere for them because some half baked politicians swallowed an ideology & saw a way of diverting funding to a sexier part of the Health bureaucracy.
Vote:January 18th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
Am I the only one who gets hacked off at people’s total disregard for the private property and building that is the ANZ Bank?
Where has society failed where we feel it is OK to just scribble over someone’s private property because it’s “In memory” or “in Honor”?
Upon further thought, I guess this just typifies the types of people who actually cared about this individual and their views on private property.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:17 am
My Father-in-law has Asperger’s Syndrome.
But way back in his heyday there was no such thing as “Aspergers Syndrome” so he was never “John, that poor man who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome.” He was always “John, that funny bloke who talks to himself a lot and is a bit odd, but very good at his job, and he’s super-bright and extraordinarily well-read so he’s worth talking to once you get to know him.”
His son, my Brother-in-law, also has Asperger’s Syndrome. But today that’s a psychological disorder. So although we can’t do much to meaningfully treat it, nevertheless we consider it a disease so we tip-toe around those that have it, and do all sorts of well-meaning but futile things to undermine them – actively turning them into mental health patients where once they were just slightly odd guys who nevertheless managed to make lives for themselves in spite of it all. We’re more informed and more scientific now, but I’m not convinced that what we’re doing with the knowledge is producing a better result.
My point?
Don’t be too quick to pigeonhole someone like that as “there must be something “wrong” with him, and we owe it to him to “fix” him, whether he thinks he wants it or not”.
The life Ben Hana had in his last few years obviously isn’t what you or I would want. However, he had his faculties about him sufficiently that he appeared to be able to score weed whenever he wanted it… so let’s not presume he was an utterly helpless prisoner of circumstances he hated and wanted to escape. I don’t know if he was.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 8:38 am
MarkWylie;
Yes the vandalism is poor form.
But please don’t smear everyone who is saddened by Blanket Man’s death as a vandal…
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 9:05 am
RRM
Vote:Good comments. In some areas we are encouraged to embrace diversity, but I feel in others we are too quick to medicalise differences in personality and behaviour.
January 19th, 2012 at 9:20 am
Accepting that an addict or psychotic can get drink or drugs is far from an indication that they’re really okay and should be left to lie in the street covered in their madness and a blanket. It’s more an indication of how people falsify in their minds reality in order to make themselves feel better that nothing really need be done. So when they come across somebody in distress, ask if that person is okay – then move on when they confirm, despite all the surrounding evidence, that they’re okay. Difficult for me to see the difference between down right hatred for people like Hana, and the ‘opposing’ he’s alright because he said so and it’s his choice.
Vote:January 19th, 2012 at 10:13 am
Notalgia
Vote:We’re in mixed territory here. I’ve commented before on the dangers of the “it’s ok, they choose to live on the street” approach. That’s largely a myth that makes it easier to walk past such unfortunates. Some people do choose to live rough; but it’s not as though one comes across many in that situation that have a realistic choice between that and a ‘normal’ lifestyle. There is help available – not all are able or willing to receive it.