Homeless issues are just the beginning

Dear Editor,

The plan to house migrants at a former Chicago school brings up an idea mentioned in Utah from time to time. Why don’t we temporarily free up ill-occupied or unoccupied downtown buildings or floors to serve as winter homeless shelters for our wandering mentally ill?

The problem with we Americans today is that we have lost our ambition to do low tech innovation. And we have also lost the thing that comes before ambition, and the thing that comes after ambition. We have lost a lot.

Our ancestors were tremendously ambitious. Think about it . . . they arrived on a continent with nothing but wide-open geography before them, a geography stocked full of nature, but virtually nothing else. No towns, no technology, no trading posts, no friends, no enemies, nothing but themselves.

The thing that always comes before ambition is survival. The need to survive gave our ancestors plenty of ambition. But the thing that comes after ambition is just as important—a social support system . . . people to help them survive.

Today, almost nobody worries about survival except maybe the homeless and new immigrants to this country. For most Americans, things are pretty much handed to them from the moment they are born. Food, toys, friends, homes, clothing. They must work for none of it. Their parents don’t ask them to work either, just to play.

Without ambition to survive, our young people no longer need a support system. A spouse is nice, but not essential. They aren’t going anywhere, so they don’t need anybody.

That pretty much explains boomers down to Zers. Our homeless are just the most visible manifestation of our lack of ambition. Something needs to change.

Kimball Shinkoskey