Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scandox | Hacker News Reader

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I'm amazed at the way people are looking at this. I think we're very jaded when we lose our capacity to see just how remarkable homelessness is. Being homeless and living homeless is something amazing. Just because it is common, doesn't make it any less so. Just because it is common doesn't mean that we understand it.

The only thing that makes this more or less interesting than some tale of independence and "acceptable" survivalism is the contempt of the beholder.

One of my absolute favourite books as a child was The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by WH Davies. Perhaps it has coloured my vision, but I think we owe at least a grudging respect to people who can survive in the modern world (by any reasonable means) as such outcasts.

I don't understand why this guy is particularly more interesting or amazing than the countless other homeless people who have survived in our inner-cities for decades. The only thing that makes this guy different is the superficial aspects : the setting is more rustic, there's no drugs or begging involved, he lives in a forest instead of in an abandoned subway line, etc.

In some ways, this guy actually had a much easier time surviving than many of the inner-city homeless. He essentially had access to a low-security, well-stocked resort town in rural Maine - entirely to himself with no other criminal competition and a very small police force to worry about. He didn't have to worry about getting killed by other desperate homeless people or by police, or having to constantly search for a different place to sleep every night.

Also, he wasn't even forced into homelessness. He just made a willful decision to live this kind of parasitic lifestyle. Perhaps he was mentally ill in some way, but regardless, I can't be particularly sympathetic without further information about his motivations.

At least from my perspective, this wasn't a matter of remarkable vs unremarkable, it was about the expectation the title set.

Maybe it was the "into the woods", maybe it was the "alone" part, but I just wasn't expecting a story of some person stealing from others and getting caught after 27 years.

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