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We speak of 'entitlement' often, in today's world.
What does it mean? Why does it happen? What are its effects? |
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Dear Reader,
You may say ho-hum here we go again, and you'd be right, because once again, it's a friend's Facebook status that triggered this newsletter!
Here it is, copy-pasted as she wrote it:
What an eventful flight! Takeoff delayed because some kids from a famous city school decided not to sit on their allocated seats, sit on random seats and then fight and block the aisle. The air-hostess maintained her calm and tried making sense. Some good Samaritan tried to intervene but to no avail. Finally, a pilot who was travelling came and sternly spoke to the boys. She actually had to say, "I will deplane you". She got a dirty look from the kids and they went to their correct seats. The kids were travelling with no supervisor or teacher. The person was in the other flight. When entitlement creates mess in the true sense of the word! We thank the pilot from the bottom of our heart! Finally, heading home.
.. entitlement creates a mess ...
Yes, it does.
But what is entitlement? It is defined as 'the fact of having a right to something'.
That would imply two things:
1. You have a right to something because you're a person -- like the right to the air that you breathe; or
2. You have a right to something because you've given something in exchange. Like if you've paid for a cup of coffee, you have a right to the coffee at a drinkable, enjoyable temperature, a clean glass to drink it in, and the space to sit and sip it for a reasonable amount of time.
But I think the way we use the term 'entitlement' today, it can be interpreted as 'the fact of expecting to have a right to something beyond the rights of other people'. So, these kids think they have the right to enjoy the plane journey more than the other passengers have the right to their comfort or convenience.
What's scarier is ... the kids haven't even thought of it that way. 'Entitlement' these days goes beyond that. It's not that the other passengers have lesser rights - it is that for these kids, the other passengers don't even exist. Why did they give the woman a dirty look? Because they had noticed her existence for the first time, and she was making things uncomfortable for them.
So ent-I-tlement. It's all about ME.
Be it sitting with friends on a flight ... or anything else, like reciting poetry at an event. We have a monthly poetry gathering here, and we have to keep reminding the youngsters who attend that they're not the only ones reciting, others are, too. Very often, a participant comes in, won't recite in turn because her/his friends have been delayed getting there, will recite once the friends get there -- and then all of them leave together without listening to anyone else.
And they don't even know they're being rude!
The traffic in the city where I live is chaotic, and I was trying to cross the road once after having dropped off some clothes at the nearby dry-cleaners. I had positioned myself so that when the light turned and the flow of traffic stopped, I could cross quickly before the traffic from the other side caught up. There was a guy on a motorbike who wanted to skirt the kerb and go on the wrong side of the road to get to the end, the point at which he could catch up with the traffic going in the direction he wanted to go in. He didn't want to take the extra three minutes it would take to go around, he wanted to cut across.
I refused to move, I was standing in a perfectly legal spot, and what he was doing was against the rules. I'd been waiting ten minutes to get a way through, and didn't intend to move to let him pass and lose my advantage. He beeped his horn at me, and when I shook my head, muttered exasperatedly and in disbelief. "You're trying to go the wrong side," I clarified. He stared, took a moment to understand, and then with a long-suffering air, turned the bike round and went through the gap in the median like he should have in the first place.
So -- entitlement, in my definition, is the inability to see beyond one's own rights, and the pushing of these rights to their furthest limits.
This extends not only to us as human beings, but to the way we view other species. Look at what we're doing to the earth, in the name of the progress of humankind, ignoring the flora and fauna around us. (And, in the end, leading to our own destruction.) Some scientists say that elephants and dolphins are actually more intelligent than human beings, and I believe that. They must be looking at our entire species and labelling us 'entitled', mustn't they?
Why does entitlement happen?
The way we're brought up? The way we're educated? The role-models we have in society today? The survival instinct -- the earth has limited resources, too much population, and if we take everyone else into account we'll lose, individually  ?
It's difficult to say. With smaller families, there is less emphasis on sharing, more on the individual. With greater awareness of psychology, schools are becoming increasingly driven to allow for personal variations and whims. With mass-media and social media being omnipresent, our heroes and the way we interact with them is rapidly evolving, changing. All of which could be good -- up to a point. The thing is, we're losing the balance.
When was the last time you, or your child, wore hand-me-down clothes? Perfectly good clothes are taking up space in landfills because no one wants hand-me-downs any more. With the new rules in place in our centres of learning, the teachers are finding it impossible to enforce discipline of any kind. And where once, our interacting with the people we admired was face-to-face, and two-way, it is now increasingly mass produced and one way-- which means everyone is playing to the gallery, and that behaviour is acceptable because it has been modelled.
Is it any wonder, then, that the youth of today feel entitled? That the youngsters aboard that flight had to be threatened with being off-loaded before they would behave themselves? That we're cutting trees at such a pace, that we're doing ourselves out of the air to breathe that we're naturally entitled to? Who is at fault?
And what do we do about it? We as human beings, as citizens, as writers?
I guess it would be -- be aware. Start with the little things. With wearing or writing about hand-me-downs in a good way. With not letting ourselves and others get away with things. Other pedestrians, in my place, would probably have moved for that bike guy, just to buy peace. By creating and enforcing limits for babies/toddlers/kids/teenagers.
And by understanding what our rights are, and how far they go, and living by those -- demanding our just rights when they have been violated, and giving others their just rights when we're in a position to do so.
Thanks for listening!
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Thank you for the responses to "Plot Support"
Emily  Thank you for hosting the Plot Support contest! The premise of the contest really set my mind turning, and I am very pleased I entered. Thanks for the opportunity! 
hbk16 Any writing work evaluation is a relative thing. That is because any writing peace can be seen differently from one person to another. It is the same case than any drawing piece. But there are some standard criteria to respect too.Great issue which needs further debates.
Dartagnan  I do agree with you on the plot. I have seen a lot of movies where I thought that a scene should have been removed or something needed to be added.
I do believe that if you are highlighting the dances then you have to make the scenes work to make up for the different dances. If I am on the wrong path here please forgive me.
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Ed's note: Thanks for the response, you hit the nail right on the head!
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