Need, greed or gratitude?

Is this exploiting peoples ignorance towards the deaf-silent? Is it undermining the intelligence of the people around them? Yes and no.

I'm at my local coffee-bar, when he approaches me. He walks quickly past me, leaving a note on my table, saying:

Dear ladies and gentlemen!


I'm sorry, but I'm deaf-silent, and I've never heard the voices of my relatives or the spellcasting tones of music. My destiny is to live in a world of eternal silence. Please buy this card of Manuell Alfabet for the deaf-silent.


Please give me as much as your heart allows.


Thank you!

Now, the note itself gives you little choice, now do it? Give all your money, or burn in Hell forever. Now, this person is obviously not deaf-silent, and the situation isn't exactly new to me, as this is something I've encountered several times in the past - though not in Norway.

So when the man approaches me again (after finishing passing out notes to everyone) I decide to give my loose change to him. After all - the loose change would only disappear into the great big nothingness of my personal expenses.

Now, the change in my pocket isn't exactly the seventh wonder of the world, rather than the scraps remaining after a dot-com at the end of the bubbleburst. But preferable to nothing, I guess, as I handed the coins over...

Well, at this point the beggar looks at the coins in his hand - frowns - and looks back at me, the way I suspect Anne Frank would look at Hitler, if they were ever to meet... Would you believe the nerve?

This man, a stranger, firstly posing as something he obviously is not, asking for my money. Writing a note, asking for sympathy for a situation he himself isn't even in! And when I give him my hard-earned (well, at least it could've been) money - he dares to show anything but humble thankfulness?!

In stead he gives me puppy-eyes and wants more! Undermining my intellect, thinking I hasn't spotted him as a fake, and trying to fool me? Who the fuck do he think he is?

But then I remembered a beggar I ran into about a fortnight ago, who was asking for less money than the cost of a busride to school. He was sitting by the sidewalk, quietly making his living off the money he made off the begging. The stereotypical beggar.

Now, most people ignored the man - some simply threw out a comment his way - mostly 'no', 'get a job' or even 'get lost'.

Another stereotypical beggar is the one appearing in Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol” who asks Ebenezer Scrooge “Why should I suffer because [you had a bad day at the stock exchange]?”.

Now beggar is not the thing you want on your resumé, nor is prostitute or shoplifter. But we have to remember why people turn to these acts for money. It's not the social respect, the money or the power.

What drives these people are need. Most, if not all, beggars are not beggars because of choice, but because of need. And when people at the far end of the social ladder wind up in a profession so much frowned upon in the western society - shouldn't the rest of us try to make life as easy as possible for this group of people?

Yet, the opposite has seemed to occur. A constant degrading of this group, is probably what has developed these 'deaf-silent' beggars. When the general public started to ignore the ordinary beggars, they needed to find new new, more efficient ways to make enough to provide for life's many necessities.

This led to the beggars starting to sell objects and services (like the card-players on the streets of New York, for instance) - and as this led the same destiny as the begging as such, the 'deaf-silent' started to occur.

First in southern Europe, then, it seems to the rest of the world. Including Norway.

So instead of judging this group of people as greedy, cynical human beings, with only interest to fool us of our money; we should make life for these beggars easy enough, so that instead of posing as something other than what they are, they can retreat to the traditional form of begging.

Surely, there should be official, government means to prevent anyone to have to beg; but to be realistic - this is a goal not immediately achievable. So in the meantime - let's support and respect our beggars!