House of Eratosthenes

Soon it will be time for us to gather, and collectively meditate on the gifts we have, both material and non. And, to set aside some provisions for those less well off, through no doing of their own.

And then there are douchenozzles like this guy…

Patton Chambers may be the only college student who actively blogs about his underwear and ingrown toenails—all the while being homeless.

A senior at Auburn University, Chambers decided to forgo living in his apartment in order to experience the “homeless” lifestyle for the remainder of his college career. According to the 23-year-old, without the stress of working, homelessness has been the best decision he could have made.

“What could I do that would eliminate having to work, would open up big opportunities, and be a really fun, interesting experience for me?” Chambers asked Campus Reform in an interview last week. The physical education major had just finished a run at the campus recreation center and was headed to class.

For Chambers, the decision to become homeless wasn’t necessarily a financial one — although he says he appreciates no longer being burdened by rent — but more of a personal experiment. When Chambers lived in his apartment, he rarely left. He says he is too “awkward” for college parties and didn’t do much dating before he gave up his permanent residency.

So Chambers wanted to “start fresh.” He wanted to leave his comfort zone and do things he’s never done before. And he also wanted to quit his job in the fast food industry.

“One of the reasons [to become homeless] was to get out of working,” Chambers told Campus Reform. “It was just stressful night after stressful night, and anytime I’m getting any kind of unnecessary stress put upon me, it’s total bull crap, and I don’t feel the need to put myself through that because it’s not necessary because if I don’t need stress, why am I having stress?”

“And that’s the big thing,” he said. “All I was really working for was money to pay for rent. Honestly, I would rather be homeless and not have to work. That would be a better life.”

Via Young Conservatives, which happens to mention:

Chambers isn’t truly homeless like the folks who have lost everything. He has health insurance, an iPhone, an inheritance from his now deceased grandfather, and money left over from his previous job.

He isn’t choosing to live this way in order to draw attention to some great and noble cause, but simply because work was too stressful for him. But there’s no need to worry, because the out of touch with reality college student doesn’t believe in welfare and refuses hand outs. At least he has that going for him, right?

To put the icing on the cake, Chambers is not only allergic to work, he’s also terribly misinformed about politics and current events and doesn’t vote. As if this country needed another one of “those” people.

Ah, but you can’t say he’s completely disengaged, can you. He certainly does have something to say. It’s the saddest single statement in this entire little story, isn’t it? “And that’s the big thing”: Avoiding the “stress” of actually doing stuff.

Give him credit. He’s got a lot of company here. And there is some value in one from among them doing the “experiment,” and blogging away, about how it leads to…

It definitely wasn’t the setup I was expecting, it was a little too revealing to the drive thru cars and it was only one tiny dumpster that didn’t have too much trash in it. I dug around and actually found a lot of cups and fry boxes that hadn’t had the pieces peeled off yet, but I didn’t get one free food game piece which sucked. You can see all the pieces that I laid across the dumpster, but if they ain’t free food I don’t want them. I’ll be back tonight probably to search for more, but so far it’s been a huge bust.

Your parents must be so proud.

So I can see some productive conversations coming of this, hopefully around the Thanksgiving table. Like: Why do those of us who took time out of our days, and put the food on the table, do such a thing when it can offer us a little bit of unnecessary stress at times? Why bother? We aren’t going to get credit for it, in the end. We’re certainly not expecting it, we don’t think of ourselves that way. Actually, those of us who do not say grace at meals, will allow ourselves a holiday exception in order to properly observe the spirit of the occasion: Without God’s help, it would not have been possible. Oh, some do not believe? Well then, the thought for the day would be one of, sometimes fortune is good and sometimes it isn’t, let us appreciate it when it is. The point to it all is that our nourishment, materially and spiritually, begins at the confluence of the good fortune and the hard work, but we should appreciate the good fortune, although entirely under our control, is but the first step in the journey toward the prize. It isn’t enough all by itself.

But then there’s this: We do not want our entire lives, and any purpose behind those lives, to boil down to something like “I didn’t get one free food game piece which sucked…if they ain’t free food I don’t want them…so far it’s been a huge bust.” Young Master Chambers has time to reform his thinking, and I have faith it will happen, because sooner or later we start to think about what we want carved on our tombstones. I doubt anyone wants that carved on their tombstone. “Here lies Patton Chambers. He’ll be back tonight probably to search for more, but so far it’s been a huge bust.”

I look at people like him, and I have a tough time seeing someone who’s really that different. I see a sort of kinship with them. Our common ground is our exposure to the tragedy of futility: We all try and try, sometimes we find out our best isn’t good enough. The difference is the response. Aesop is said to have written a fable about a fox and sour grapes. With Patton Chambers, and others like him, I think that’s what’s happening: I tried and tried, I got nothing for it but a bunch of stress, so my new mission in life is to stop doing that because any goal beyond that must not have been worth it. What should have happened, what would have happened with normal people, would have to begin with an acknowledgment that there is something worthwhile outside of the current experience. To attain the goal, it has become necessary for us to embiggen the periphery of what we have experienced to date.

That is the thought that initiates all learning; it is impossible to get the learning done — events of whack-upside-the-head serendipity notwithstanding — without having such a thought. Which raises a question: What is Patton Chambers, who is evidently lacking the ability to form this foundational thought for whatever reason, doing in college?

Did he also give himself uncontrolled schizophrenia and a crippling drug habit? That’s 3/4 of the “homeless” problem right there, according to even the bleedingest-heart studies.

Patton Chambers is in college, I suspect, for the same reason most young people are in college these days — it’s expected of them. And colleges respond rationally to this market force, turning former institutes of scholarship into nurseries, where they pet and coddle the solipsism of the idle and bored.

And oh, how it must drive old hippies crazy! The Man doesn’t have to resort to fascist police state tactics to keep the sheeple docile; Facebook and Angry Birds works just fine. Give ’em enough electronic bleeps and bloops to keep ’em distracted, and they’ll never ask the one question that makes all Revolutions, from Christian to Marxist, go — what is a person for?

Truthfully, I’m thankful to the Left for this. And because of posts like this, and blog-friendship with folks like you and Phil and Cylar and Nightfly and Captain Midnight*, I’m going to actively try being thankful to them this year. They really force us — or me, at least — to deal with that question. What would life in Social Justice Land look like? I suspect it’s what Patton Chambers seems to think his ideal world would look like — a comfy chair, tv on an endless loop, a feeding tube full of delicious nom noms, and someone to change his diapers every now and again.

*no offense if I didn’t mention you, other regular readers of the Blog Nobody Reads. I’m grateful for y’all too. Hell, I’m even going to try to be thankful for the Cuttlefish this year — they raised my awareness of the Autism Spectrum, and even convinced me that Asperger’s Syndrome is a real thing, though I really really don’t want to believe it.
- Severian | 11/22/2014 @ 06:55
I’ll wait until I’m off the phone and can add a link to that wonderful Rotten Chestnuts column to show my appreciation for you.

I was reading somewhere that the difference beteen Orwell and Huxley is that the former thought our liberty would be imperiled by a draught of information whereas the latter feared it would happen by means of deluge. Also that, at end-game, it has turned out that Huxley got it right.
- mkfreeberg | 11/22/2014 @ 07:55
Orwell nailed Newspeak, though, and the abuse of history. But he got it wrong in a Huxleyite way — we don’t need MiniTrue to do all that; our press is quite willing to do it voluntarily, and the distracted masses don’t care.

This Patton Chambers guy would be first in line at the Soma clinic.
- Severian | 11/22/2014 @ 09:32
With any luck, he won’t reproduce, since his offspring has little or no chance of receiving support through him. If he does manage to attract a woman to make offspring with, she’ll doubtless have to depend on daddy Government to pay for them.
- Frank the Wanderer | 11/24/2014 @ 09:22
Thanks, Sev. My wife teases me sometimes about the Imaginary People who live in the glowing box, though I prefer sportswriter Joe Posnanski’s phrase – “e-migos” – as a shorthand. So thanks to Morgan for being the host here, and cylar and the Cap’n and Phil and the many others here and elsewhere who make up this excellent company of my betters.

Of course I don’t consider the cyber-connection to be a second-class cause of friendship. It’s an accident of geography, certainly, that we find ourselves dispersed, and that technology has helped us to overcome, to connect with others of good will and wit. I rather like to think that we’d all have a blast around a single table with good grilled foods, spirits, and brews; cigars optional and welcome to those who favor them.

There is at least one such occasion to which we are all invited. I shall think of that when enjoying the family gathering this Thanksgiving, and toasting all of you as well in hope of that happy day.
- nightfly | 11/24/2014 @ 10:03
“E-migos!” I’m totally stealing that.

The internet is something I always try to be grateful for, even when I’m failing miserably at it. I can contrast it to college, where I met a wonderful group of lifelong friends…. thanks to the happy accident of some random bureaucrat sticking me on one wing of my dorm floor and not another. But these days, technology is so powerful we can do that from a wristwatch, for pete’s sake.

And yet… how easily we forget, and how often we abuse it. The best that has been thought and said is right there at our fingertips — it’s how I learned, just now, that phrase came from Matthew Arnold — and we use it to send pictures of cats. My Spotify and Pandora accounts have some classical music, but much more One-Hit Wonders of the 1980s. Anyone who wishes to may become expert-level informed on any subject he’s capable of understanding, without even Good Will Hunting’s buck-fifty in late charges at the library… but we’d rather quote talking points and cut-and-paste pre-scripted stuff from ten years ago.

This Patton Chambers guy could, in fact, use all his college tuition money to become un-homeless, and get all the education he wants or can handle with a free public library card. But he won’t, because he’d rather blog about it instead.

Needless to say you’re all welcome in my (currently frozen) little slice of the American dream if you’re ever out this way, and if we’re not already Facebook friends, please shoot me an email — if you’re a cigar man, Nightfly, I’ve got a Macanudo with your name on it…
- Severian | 11/24/2014 @ 10:43
[…] How true is that? I’ve been at least a dilettante Left-watcher for decades now, and I still haven’t managed to figure out what they actually want out of life. Consider this knucklehead: […]
- “The Final and Utter Semisexual Craving of the Left” | Rotten Chestnuts | 12/17/2014 @ 08:06

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Choosing HomelessnessSaturday, November 22nd, 2014

Choosing Homelessness
Saturday, November 22nd, 2014