The last in this short series before I return to more "positive" shots of Paris. View large to see this ladies sad face.
For me this was the most disturbing of the "down and out" shots. This lady must have been in her 70s, and was tunelessly playing this instrument, and just creating noise. It was thought provoking and upsetting at the same time. It brought a lump to my throat to think of my aunties, my own mother in law, friends of this age. Could they cope with life if this is what it served up to them? Well, I know I couldn't.
So, this series has shown, young, old, men of a working age, older men, younger women and finally older women. I guess it shows that destitution, homelessness and misfortune can hit anyone. I am thankful for what I've got.
The last passage from Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London" is the longest. I guess it wouldn't surprise you to learn that it is the book I am currently reading. Despite being written 80 years ago, it still has some resonance. I think attitudes have softened towards begging in the UK, and we are more understanding of people who have to resort to this way of existence, but so much of what Orwell says in this next passage is still valid.
"It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work'; they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable.
Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course--but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.
Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?--for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.”
Thanks for reading.
I think one of the reasons beggars are despised has to do with guilt. In our own daily lives with our own petty little problems, we struggle with with being up close and personal to people with real problems. They doesn't fit into our polished view of the society, hence they shouldn't be there. Most people happily donate money to poor children in other places of the world, but we struggle when the same poor people is there, right on our doorsteps. We feel guilty we have that much and they so little, but we want the problem to go away rather than facing it. It's all sad really.
I shiver when I think but for .....it could be me in your photo!!!
I often give these folk a tenner when I see them in London, but I also make a judgement and will sometimes buy them a sandwich and a coffee instead., knowing that they may do something that I would disapprove off with the cold hard cash in their hands.