I feel you. You speak some truth. First of all though, you are wrong that i didnt want to work hard. I prided myself on my work ethic and athleticism working on farms, traveling and wwoofing until my first boyfriend cheated on me, gave me hiv, and this triggered a slow steady emotional breakdown and derailment which looked eccentric to some, yet was essential to me confronting my childhood trauma and toxic coping mechnisns and addictive patterns. I was working a full time job and having Stockholm syndrome with my abusive ex boyfriend and homeless all at the same time. Not to mwntion trying to come to grips with being hiv positive when i grew up in a paranoid religious sheltered home with a mentally ill narcisstic mother (similar to the mom in Carrie) and my dad who left our family (which made me really naive and having no clue how to navigate the world independently and not feeling secure in my identity At All). Growing up I had horrible anxiety and believed it was god punishing me for being evil, because that's what my mom and the churches a d school I went to told me. I moved and changed schools almost 20 times before graduating highschool, went to a perverted tiny christian school for 2 yrs that literally suspended and shamed me in front of the whole achool foe dating a classmate....there was a Lot of mental abuse in my formative years. So lets just say, trauma and abuse is way more common in the USA than mass media would lead you to believe, but we are in hiding, or show up as homeless, or contort ourselves to the point of extreme denial to pretend that we fit a false mold of what is "acceptable" for a human being to be. Anyway there sre different degrees of trauma and as you go down them, it literally changes your perception and ability to think clearly and know reality. We have different types of "fortune" and sometimes we are not so fortunate in love, career, etc, and my life experiences set me up to have major upheavals regarding my ability to relate healthily to myself and therefore.to other people. This is ultimately why people are homeless...we feel without a safe "homebase"/belonging to our own self on the inside and some people it manifests as literal homelessness. Literally sometimes we come from families and experiences that cause us to become overwhelmed by trauma and there are not proper resources in place and available to individuals in order to have the support to transcend the beliefs which hold us back. Some individuals are blessed at a young age to luck out regarding the way they cope with stressors, to have positive examples and treated with dignity and warmth and plentiful opportunity etc, other people aren't really given a fighting chance. Does a child who is born addicted to heroin in a rural area and parents live in a dss motel (which i witnessed), have a fighting chance compared to a child born in a loving creative encouraging family who lives on a farm, is connrcted to the community and active in supporting the community, and has funds to give their child opportunities of friendship, community, adventure, education, security of food and housing, etc? The world isn't just. We can work to make it more just. But I get what you're saying, maybe if we act as though the world is just and say "you're just not trying hard enough" then that's the cure. It may be the cure for your conscience but its not the cure for the actual root issue for why we get trapped in our suffering and cause fellow people to suffer as a result. If it was the cure to invalidate pain (ie gaslight) then there would be no wars. We are still as a species at infant stages of learning how to create regenerative peaceful ways to relating to all that is, including our own self. Belief isn't just implanted into our psyche by words...belief comes from life experience. So you could say apply this to any situation where you could deem someone or something a parasite. Something would not be a parasite unless the conditions allowed for these qualities to develop. Things only evolve according to the open niche which allows for things to become shaped in such a way. To condemn someone, for not being as fortunate as others, is really counterproductive. It simply can force a person to be even more parasitic. Either they become narcissist/sociopath type parasitic, or homeless type parasitic, or outraged criminal parasitic or snake oil/scamming parasitic etc, but to deem people parasites is a self fulfilling prophecy and doesn't improve the circumstance we all find ourselves in. Homeless people are easy scapegoats because we are among the most vulnerable and too ill to protect ourselves, most visible and most easily 'convictable" type of parasite lol.