To All Heroes, We Need More Of You

I live in a nice apartment complex in Venice, California. It’s quite expensive, as is pretty much everything in Los Angeles. My apartment is the cheapest model, and it’s still $3,500+ a month. Feel free to clutch your pearls. I know I do when I cut that check on the 1st.

The apartments used to be Section 8 housing (welfare/government assistance), and about 10 years ago, a big company bought the property, kicked everyone out and spent $58 million renovating it, then raised the rent a trillion percent so that nobody who was living there before could afford — emphasized by the private saltwater pool with underwater speakers.

The company who bought the property saw data points, the prime location, did some calculations and made the decision to “relocate” everyone — which they can legally do.

But these aren’t data points we are talking about. They’re people. And now they are homeless, sleeping outside. And, unsurprisingly, Los Angeles is “mad” at them for being homeless. The LAPD rounds them up, corrals them, shuffles them about, yells at them with bullhorns.

“Hey, you lazy bum! Get a f***in’ job!”

The news talks about the “homeless problem” in LA.

Meanwhile, the apartment complex has vacancies. Empty apartments. Hundreds of them. There are hundreds of empty rooms inside, and hundreds of people without a room outside.

Ask yourself, honestly: do we need any more of this attitude in the world? To me, this inefficiency does not make sense. There are so many things we just don’t need any more of.

We don’t need any more people that we’d be ashamed or embarrassed to vote for. And we don’t need to pick the “lesser of two evils.” If you pick the lesser of two cancers, guess what: you still have cancer. Nobody wants cancer.

We don’t need any more cringe-worthy sociopath corporate executives making decisions for us based on a bottom line. Take me out of your standard deviation, bro. I’m not a dot on your scatterplot.

We don’t need any more celebrities or entertainers who are strictly here to titillate us. Honestly, we’ve got enough of them. We’ve got too many of them. Do we really need more Selena Gomez’s or Justin Bieber’s? I’m not even knocking them in particular. I’m just saying…how many more billions of dollars do we need to pour into more of that type of work? We get it, you’re cute. You can sing. And?

We don’t need any more people who are going to actively manipulate us as soon as we let our guards down. Why do we have to keep our guards up all the time anyway? It’s exhausting.

We. Don’t. Need. Any. More.

But there are a lot of people the world does need more of.

We need more teachers, philosophers, and students. There used to be great honor in creating an entire life around thinking big thoughts. Now it seems like the greater honor is in getting big checks.

We need more mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. And remember, you can take people in and make them your family. Why don’t we do that more often?

We need more authors, entrepreneurs and thinkers. We need visionaries who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.

We need more doctors and caregivers. And while we’re at it, we need more women. They’re just smarter and kinder because they don’t have the constant need to posture and beat their chests. If the world was 70% women, I might not even have to write this post. Not knocking men. Just sayin’.

We need more scientists and mathematicians. It doesn’t matter what color they are or country they are from. We just need a lot more of them to work on the problems that are important to all of us.

We need more firefighters and EMTs. And we need more honest, caring police officers.

The world needs more heroes that we can root for, not villains we can tolerate.

We need more of…you.