So I was having dinner with some close friends of mine the other day and a homeless man walked by asking for some money. A friend of mine gave him $2 and then one other friend gave the homeless man $10. The homeless man then thanked the guys and walked away continuing to ask other people in the restaurant for money (we were sitting outside).

Then I told the friend who gave $10: "Wow, that was pretty generous of you there." He nodded: "Yea man, gotta help out people at all time you know. Make a man happy." I nodded but something just didn't feel right: "How do you know that made him happy? like what do you think he's going to do with that money?" He had no answer so I just told him: "No offense but he might spend that money you just gave him unwisely and instead of buying the things that he needs like food and clothes, chances are he will be buying alcohols and other things that got him into this situation in the first place. And he will become dependent on getting money from other people instead of working to get it for himself. " My friend (he's pretty liberal) didn't answer so I realized I might have gone a bit too far and we just went back to dinner like nothing happened. We didn't really talk about it again.

Maybe it was a bit scumbag of me to throw that to my friends like that during our dinner but it really irritates me that the amount of people today thinking that helping out others in trouble by directly giving them what they DON'T need, giving them money, feeding them that greed is actually helpful. Society today is filled with propaganda for giving money out to the poor. If you were to go on YouTube and look up some videos about giving hundreds of dollars for the homeless, it would be some poor man buying bread and sharing it with other homeless guys. Hell what are the chances that it would happen in real life. I even saw someone using food stamps to buy bread at the market and gave the breads to someone to get a refund so that they then could spend that money to buy liquors. They are living off of welfare that our government created, they are living off of your tax money and the money of those people who "charitably" donated to them. Men are not that innocence people, they had to do something that got them to their position in the first place.

Now I'm not saying that we should ignore homeless people or that all of them are bad. What I'm trying to say is that, yes, there are people who are really unlucky and desperate and they need help. And yes! We must help them, and it's an awesome thing to help out a fellow human being. But not by giving them money or changing the diapers for them. We have to help them help themselves. Chances are that you, who are giving them the money, would know how to spend money more wisely than them, who are in a huge mess. I, personally, think that the best way to help a homeless man is to buy him food, because that's what he needs the most. If you really want to help someone, buy him clothes if he doesn't have clothes, or buy him food if he's hungry, or help him get a job to self-sustain himself. Yes, you can do a lot of things to help out a poor man but the worst thing you can do to them is giving them money (it's like poison). You would do more harm than good. Those people are the ones who need help the most and helping the able to help themselves would be the biggest aid you would ever able to give to their lives.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime"

So that's basically the moral of the story. One extra nugget that I found interesting from that and from my observation is that most homeless people (like 99%) are men and maybe some really old lonely women. Have you ever seen a young woman homeless? It's rare to find one and it just further proves how disposable men are and how you can become one if you bring no value to the world as a man. No one cares about you if you are a male unless you do something useful, or you will be thrown out on the street. It's just sad that most people out there on the streets still think that they are the victims and they have no control over their lives. Something happened to them, they got kicked out of the house, they got fired, they started off poorly and it's impossible for them to get back up, etc. You hear all these reasons and excuses about how miserable their lives are and they need help.

Hell, if you were to strip all my degrees, my job, my house, my money, and all of my other valuables and throw me back to the 1930's in the middle of Detroit. Instead of sitting there whining about the government and crying out how sad and miserable my life is, I would be going around looking for jobs that I can find, any job I can get just to get myself out of the mess and have some sustainable way to live. If no one takes me for a paid job, hell I would go to a place and ask them whether if I can work for free, 15 hours a day, 7 days a week; and all I need are just food and water. I would work my ass off and they would hire me from my work ethic and how I compare to the others; and from that job, I would work back towards my education or some career that I know I can do well in and then find my way back onto normal society and up the social ladder.

You have to keep in mind that things would never get too desperate and no matter how bad it gets, you can always change it. Yes, you can fail and fail over again but you don't truly fail unless you give up. And that is the ultimate failure. Never, ever give up on anything and just keep on doing it. Yeah, it will be tiring, it will be tough, it will be painful, but in the end, when you finally accomplish it, when you finally get over that last hill, it would be the ultimate joy and victory that you can achieve as a man.

Pain is temporary but quitting is forever.

TL;DR: Don't give money to the poor (knows how to help them right), don't become dependent, don't become a burden to society, and don't ever give up; things will get better.

Edit: grammar/wording