We Invited a Man Into Our Home at Christmas and He Stayed with Us for 45 Years
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A heartwarming BBC story about a family who took in a stranger at Christmas and ended up hosting him for 45 years sparked a lively discussion about kindness, generosity, and the complexities of human relationships. While many commenters praised the family's selflessness, others raised concerns about the potential risks of taking in a stranger, with one commenter jokingly suggesting that a family member might be more likely to "kill you in your sleep" due to more personal grievances. The conversation ultimately converged on the idea that fear and anxiety shouldn't dictate our actions, and that kindness can have a profound impact – as one commenter put it, "kindness can go a long way :)." The thread feels particularly relevant during the holiday season, as people reflect on the values of generosity and compassion.
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> Take a look at yourself and then make a change
<3 MJ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivWY9wn5ps
Merry Christmas!
Only from the sequel on ("Rambo: First Blood Part II") "Rambo" is part of the film title, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rambo_(franchise)...
As for "how": legislature passes a law against it like any other traffic law. Similar to jaywalking
As for "how": legislature passes a law against it like any other traffic law. Similar to jaywalking or prostitution (soliciting sex on the side of the road).
It's certainly a perspective of many, but many others think it's wrong, that children should run freely (there's a whole movement around that), etc.
> please please also don’t forget that people are dangerous
IME from a life spent in cities has taught me that people - strangers, unhoused people, etc. - are great. Most will be happy to to help, have a pleasant conversation, etc. (Read Jane Jacobs who, iirc, examines it in detail.) Humans are social creatures - we don't live alone, we're made to socialize and live in groups.
You need to be a social creature too and read people a little. Obviously some people aren't in a mood to interact; don't be rude or an idiot (they'll probably ignore you). And there's risk to everything - you can die in an accident but still travel by car; you can catch diseases but you still leave your home.
Really, the exception I think I see at a higher rate is apparently wealthy people. Maybe they aren't accustomed to the need to help each other, but there seems to be a culture of anger toward those who might need some help today. Why don't they just support themselves like I do?
My life has experience has taught me by and large people are pretty cool too. It's also taught me that the cool ones and the dangerous ones look exactly the same. Bad guys don't have horns, wear masks carrying large dollar sign bags or look like sihloutted trench coats lurking in a alley. So you gotta ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
I volunteer with emergency services and hope to open a clinic with my wife next year focusing on helping foster children with mental illness who tend to age out the system and fall through the cracks. The subject of mentally ill homeless people hits very close to home and I'm 100% on board with getting the homeless whatever care they need. That does not make the concept of untrained randos inviting mentally ill homeless people into their homes any less of a ridicously bad idea.
> I volunteer with emergency services and hope to open a clinic with my wife next year focusing on helping foster children with mental illness who tend to age out the system and fall through the cracks.
That's fantastic, whatever our debate about the details. Thank you.
> you gotta ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
There's always risk in life, as I said above. The level of risk is the key - the likelihood and the amount of harm - and that's debatable.
For kids, by far the most child abuse (as I'm sure you know) is by family and people the family knows. Staying home may be less safe. I just don't see the risks as worse than car accidents and other dangers.
Also, I don't know that I agree "there are predators everywhere", except as a sort of logical truth - predators aren't limited by geography. There are rabid dogs everywhere too. I doubt predators - which, come to think of it, is undefined and sounds like a bogeyman sort of term - are limited by wealth.
But of course, everyone needs to think and act intelligently. You don't let your kid go down the street where the prostitutes or drug dealers hang out.
> the cool ones and the dangerous ones look exactly the same
That's not my experience, but of course nobody can know for sure - that goes for family and coworkers too. Coincidentally, I ended up in coversations today with three apparently unhoused people today. The idea that these people are dangerous somehow is just not plausible. After the third conversation, I made an inside joke I have with the person next to me 'homeless people are so dangerous!'. We both rolled our eyes.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende...
> https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende...
Lets say M is "being murdered" and A is "stranger in the house", "not A" is "person known to the victim in the house".
The numbers you're quoting say that P(not A | M) is large, implying that P(A | M) is small.
However, to make a decision on whether to let someone in, I care about P(M | A).
You need to exercise that critical thinking more. So just heard someone say "the murders are known to the victim" and you instantly dropped your common sense.
That doesn't sound very sane.
All you're saying is you don't like my model. Ok. You might not like my model, but at least I'm logically correct. The person that I was responding to wasn't even logically correct.
Besides, "Bayes law" is not on your side on this one, it's well-known that "regular people" are over-represented in homicide, and "autistic people" or even "schizophrenic people" are under-represented and are mostly harmless
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384274
You’re still alive, thus you still have the chance to live a more selfless life you feel proud of.
> It's amazing these people did not worry about the extra expense and inconvenience of taking care of another person
Seems to me they did worry, but decided to do it anyway.
> with children of their own to take care of.
The children came later, and Ronnie helped to take care of them.
A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations.
It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be all over the board. Some of them are capable like ronny in this story and they can hold down jobs. But others need 24/7 caregiving in order to survive. Unfortunately I don't think those with severe autism survive for long when they become homeless.
I hope this story at very least gets people to view the homeless a little differently. They aren't all there because of vices or failure. A large percentage are there because society does not care for those with mental disabilities. It was good on this story to highlight that Ron had problems with gambling. Autism does, in fact, make an individual more prone to various addictions.
My point in writing this, please have some humanity about the homeless. I get that they can be inconvenient. They are people and they aren't necessarily bad people due to their circumstances.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29633853/
> please have some humanity about the homeless
In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas.
Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have very specialized and advanced skills, which can sometimes be applicable to making a living (like programming, or visual design).
However, we're "different," which often leads to being shunned/traumatized by neurotypicals. I got used to folks eventually walking away from relationships, for no discernible reason. Used to really bother me, until I figured it out. Now, I just take it in stride, and appreciate whatever time I get to spend with folks. If anyone has seen The Accountant (the first one), there's a scene, near the end, where Ben Affleck's character is considering putting the moves on Anna Kendrick's character, but remembers his father, admonishing him that people will always end up being frightened of "the difference," and he sneaks out, instead. That scene almost brought me to tears, I could relate so well.
For some folks, it's much worse. They can be relentlessly bullied, abused, locked up, or shunned, which leaves psychological scars that manifest as antisocial behavior, so they are never given a chance to show what they can do.
I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge.
I heard women complaining progressively more through time, and now it is not an acceptable gift.
This is also how I grew up (my parents were a little bit more on the conservative side). This together with the fact that I am not deeply knowledgable in the US-American common practices also made it hard for me to understand why the mother was angry about this gift, in particular considering that she did complain about the old one.
But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.
If a white woman had that reaction to a vaccuum cleaner or other similarly expensive purchase I'd just take it back and give them a lump of coal.
There’s whole genres of cleanup games on steam which are extremely popular, profitable, and well reviewed.
One of my favorite vectrex games is a Pac-Man clone where you play as a vacuum.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s not his full time job.
Not everyone will care, but this is a stereotypical type of present likely to trigger anger and resentment in the recipient for a reason.
My wife and I, by the way, are giving each other a joint New Year gift of a fancy new vacuum cleaner: it's the best sort of gift, useful, elegant, and something that one would be reluctant to spend the money on otherwise.
The reaction is a result of the gift implying that the work is the responsibility of the individual recipient.
It's not a universal reaction, but common enough that it is a frequent trope in movies and TV.
You are worthy of being loved even if people close to you aren't able to express it to you.
Especially on topics for which there is little data or few sources.
Ask it a really specialized question - the kind of domain-specialized topic not openly and extensively published.
It will happily invent all the details. Then if you ask to confirm if those things actually exist, it will apologize and say they do not.
IME religion facilities this phenomenon. In-group members (esp men) get forgiveness and freedom from consequences (perhaps conditioned on saying magic words). Whilst out-groups get "forgiveness" with extra consequences.
As far as the framing, it's helped me realize that actually, hey, sometimes it is their fault and they are being unreasonable and I actually didn't do anything wrong, they just don't like me. I mean yeah, that's also a thing.
Plus your questions will contain your mistakes, and what you take from any answers would reinforce your misunderstandings rather than correct them.
It's hard to suggest better learning means via the HN medium.
I learnt a lot when I carefully gave attention to a friend I deeply trusted, training my intuition based on their interactions, plus they trusted me enough to sometimes attempt to explain their intuitive reactions.
Rationally analysing human interactions via writing and psychology will screw up your leaning.
Children just learn by doing and are only guided in a gross sense.
If you want to understand people, one must learn like a child does.
These my personal beliefs that I apply to myself. Trying to find you some scientific papers would be counterproductive and destroy the point I am making.
Politics is about power fights: whose argument will convince the mass that in this case violence (laws -> state authority) is appropriate or not appropriate.
So even if the other person is able to comprehend other worldviews (which I would claim is actually often, though not always, the case), there exist very strong incentives to ignore these other world views in your actions when politics is involved.
Then there are those of us for whom social situations are a 3-billion-line case/esac statement.
case situation in shesmiledandlaughedafterthejoke) shelikedthejoke() ;; shesmiledandlaughedafterthejokebutlookedsideways) shesboredanddidntlikethejoke() ;; thejokewasfunnyoncesoitmustbefunnyeverytimeeven200times) crashandburn() ;; etc) ;; esac
people just see what, to them, is obnoxious or boorish behavior. So, divergent people must first understand that they are divergent and what that means, and then they must try to put themselves in the shoes of the people they interact with. Is it fair? Life isn't fair - but you either want to fit in and interact reasonably, or you don't.
Somehow, I managed to get married. My wife helped me understand what I was missing - it was like gaining eyesight after never having it or even understanding eyesight was a thing people had.
Yes, many people lack empathy. That is no excuse for you (or me!) to learn and use empathy.
I didn’t get that at all from what they said tbh
Then these neurotypicals should stop their hypocrisis of preaching tolerance and considering themselves to be tolerant.
You shouldn't be condemned, but as I wrote, people should stop the hypocrisy and virtue signalling of pretending to be so insanely tolerant if they have such a primal response.
If someone is standing near the train tracks and sees a train approaching a stalled car, they should be praised for choosing to run over and help even if their initial instinct is to get as far away as possible.
It's hard and it's fine to struggle with it.
Lol. How will the LGBTQ+ cultists flex their self-identified moral supremacy over everybody else in that case?
I can relate this very much, and I am "just" 100% blind. I believe what we are talking about is not "neurotypicals" vs "non-neurotypicals", it is really the way society treats anyone with a pertceived disability. We are, even though society tries to keep the mask on, outcasts, and we are regularily enough treated like that we learn on a deep level that we are just not part of the rest of society. Sure, there is a "spectrum" of how good a person with a disability might cope, but at the end of the day, if I throw myself into the masses and have random interactions, I always learn the same lesson: random strangers will keep treating me in a very uncomfortable way. Sure, many people try their best. Some even come across as creepy by trying so hard. But the statistics never changes. I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
Saying "make sure" suggests intent. I would hope the discomfort causing reactions are an unintentional side effect of ignorance. Because if so then there's hope that even the masses can learn to be more considerate and inclusive.
It's harrowing how people prefer donating resources over exerting mental effort to bridge simple psychological boundaries in understanding the different needs of others, especially for disabilities (which nobody chooses to have). I often wonder if the root of this is the individual fear it could happen to us. By exercising empathy, we are reminded that ourselves and our families are vulnerable to disability at any time--from birth to life events this second (injury, illness, luck), existence is vulnerability.
Our intrinsic fears combined with societies lacking safety nets and breathing space has created a positive feedback loop for hyper-individualistic living. Our own bubbles. I try to do the opposite, but it's not easy.
I'm going to tangent a bit here but so far in my life, after observing lots of people discussing things related to this, every single person feels this way.
Every person thinks they're atypical. That they're experiencing things other people don't. That they're different in some way to "everyone else".
Exactly what this means is up to the reader, but it sure implies some interesting ideas here.
* that people whose organs are harvested should receive some compensation in the way that other participants in the transaction do: https://web.archive.org/web/20240417004658/https://news.ycom...
After I complained enough people flagged the replies calling me a Nazi but before that they were the top ranked responses.
* I suggested that the franchise should be restricted and the majority of reactions were not considered and simply emotional outbursts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291336
This is the nature of being different: most people don’t bother with the rider; the elephant suffices.
This assertion seemed to go unrecognized in the other replies; I really think it earns a moment of reflection.
The corollary of not knowing when [non-neurotypicals are] offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance
... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens".
And it's not just mental "health" institutions or prisons... all forms of "care" breed abuse. The Catholic Church for example is still reeling from constant discoveries of abused children in orphanages. Elder care institutions, particularly severely understaffed, routinely have to deal with inmates being injured by anything from a lack of care (e.g. bed sores) over physical abuse to sexual abuse [1].
And to make it worse... private/family care without independent oversight is just as bad. A lot of homeschooled children are heavily abused, caregiver burnout and its fallout is also a nasty issue, and particularly in men with dementia, they can also be the abusers.
In the end, the root problem is that we as a society haven't yet figured out how to properly deal with the balance between care work, employment work and rest, and we also haven't figured out how to properly reward and audit care work.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shock...
Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale.
Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came.
I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees.
But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.
Maybe, but we do also need a way to deal with people whose problems can’t be managed in a family setting.
If a person is prone to violent meltdowns with little provocation, or can’t help but steal from their family to feed an addiction, family caregivers aren’t going to be enough.
no, it wasn't, it was SCOTUS decision O'Connor v. Donaldson
No.
Why on earth did we do this?
I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm.
I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death.
I can't imagine it would cost that much, and it would clean up the streets of drugs and homelessness.
I feel so bad for what we as a society do to these people. When my city closed down the local homeless shelter in midtown, the people on Reddit - supposedly leftists - cheered. I was so sad. These are the same people that call me fascist all the time for being a moderate.
We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as:
1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects
2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention
3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.)
4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public
It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it.
I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated.
Much has been written about this, but from what little I know, they were abusive, and didn't do the job well. And were abused to keep sane people in.
I've heard that the advent of better drugs was also a factor. Prior to those drugs, there was no alternative other than commitment to mental facilities. The drugs gave the promise of a more manageable life - either by the patient or by their family.
What did we replace them with? Prisons.
About 20 years ago I saw a documentary about the use of prisons as a means to get mental health care. It explored the history that led to mental institutions getting shut down, and how prisons are treating the mentally ill. As crazy as it sounds, the prisons are doing a better job - even the inmates agree. Quite a few inmates said that the biggest problem they had was that they would be released from prison and not get access to the care they were receiving (including medications).
It wasn't trying to paint a rosy picture - they actually said this is, in one sense, an abuse of the prison system and that there needs to be a better way to treat them - but the consensus was "Definitely should not revert to the prior mental institutions!"
>Why on earth did we do this?
Supreme Court decision, O'Connor v. Donaldson.
I'm reading this comment as if you had written:
"Hogan's Heroes makes being a prisoner of war sound like a jolly good time."
I've also come to accept this about myself, but I had to stumble through a dark tunnel of feeling inadequate and feeling like an inhuman monster.
The typical list of traits that should not be used as a basis for discrimination is on a spectrum of how instinctual or fear-based it is, which I don't think have seen mentioned in training materials on unconscious bias.
it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.
I'm pretty sure there would be far less homeless if there were a lot more homes around.
Happy Christmas to you and everyone else here as well :)
Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly.
And to think I live in the richest country on Earth.
[0]: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-... [1]: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/five-key-facts-about-people-exp...
Indeed. Those homeless people without mental illness likely have more interest in not being seen, and more ability to avoid it.
> Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly.
Not sure what the typo is in here. Surely homelessness has indeed increased in accordance with homelessness.
I don't think this is a mistake so much as people do not care about the homelessness they don't see.
Ironically when you use the specific words for the homelessness they do care about (unsheltered or unhoused) you're accused of being woke or whatever.
If have lived anywhere with a significant drug-addict (opioid or fentanyl) population through this time period, you’ve seen the increase; if you haven’t, you may be lucky for it.
I agree that we should be kind to individuals and that understanding an individual's problems can help with that. That said, this paper does not appear to provide convincing evidence that autism is a major contributor to homelessness.
The abstract says the same thing.
No.
No, it can't.
This is why it's so frustrating to hear people smugly say we just need to build more houses to solve the homeless crisis.
I expect they need it more (very broadly speaking; people have very different disabilities do different degrees), because it's harder to adapt and survive without it, and therefore more traumatizing and destabilizing.
There is plenty of evidence, and it's common sense, that having a stable shelter and all the things I listed above would greatly help anyone. Humans in every culture have sought shelter for all of history - it's absolutely fundamental to humanity (and other animals!). Depriving people of it results in unending trauma - not a state to begin getting your life together, harm from others and the environment, an inability to accumulate assets, and spending all your time trying to survive.
But it's only one piece of a very complex problem, it's akin to the magical thinking that is incredibly provision everywhere these days. "Just stop using seed oils and America will be healthy again!"
People who have personally dealt with this know the hard truth that simply providing food and shelter isn't enough to stop a significant portion of people ending up in the streets.
Right, who is disagreeing? Name someone. You've created a strawperson.
> People who have personally dealt with this know the hard truth that simply providing food and shelter isn't enough to stop a significant portion of people ending up in the streets.
In fact, the evidence and advocacy comes from people who have personally dealth with it, and providing housing does result in housing for a significant portion of people.
There are digital nomads too - they usually have money and live in rented places, but they have shelter.
99% of DEI programs need to be dismantled and rebooted.
I've worked for homeless shelters. But in my country we do have proper care for homeless and autitisc people automatically. No need for private families to care for them. Some still do though.
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