Entry #1: Entitlement
People can be so despicable, and it’s worse than all the other unsalvageable parts of humankind, that obstinate, blind monster, entitlement. It applies to neither gender nor class, senses no reason nor can appeal to any moral clarity. It is so charged because it is a spell cast on the individual by the collective (or at least the individual interprets it as such).
Some people try to fake entitlement; you can see the inner monologue working so clearly that they are almost mouthing the words. They puff themselves up and comb themselves over, but the world loves to destroy a fake when it stands alone. Meanwhile a fake with a community, a clan, a culture behind it too often outshines the genuine article. And so it is that when a human being, through whatever mechanism - the deadweight imprints of parents, the enthusiastic offerings of peers, even the encounter of a message meant certainly for another - finds within itself the congealed absolutism that certain things belong to it, are owed to it, then that being has discovered the key to a violence more pressing than that of desperation, of passion, of loyalty, or fear. From this state nothing is to be earned or achieved, and no residue of value can be found in humility; one is entitled because of the way existence itself has seen fit to be organized, and confrontation with that whole-hearted belief is a confrontation with the believer’s cosmos.
Some people try to fake entitlement; you can see the inner monologue working so clearly that they are almost mouthing the words. They puff themselves up and comb themselves over, but the world loves to destroy a fake when it stands alone. Meanwhile a fake with a community, a clan, a culture behind it too often outshines the genuine article. And so it is that when a human being, through whatever mechanism - the deadweight imprints of parents, the enthusiastic offerings of peers, even the encounter of a message meant certainly for another - finds within itself the congealed absolutism that certain things belong to it, are owed to it, then that being has discovered the key to a violence more pressing than that of desperation, of passion, of loyalty, or fear. From this state nothing is to be earned or achieved, and no residue of value can be found in humility; one is entitled because of the way existence itself has seen fit to be organized, and confrontation with that whole-hearted belief is a confrontation with the believer’s cosmos.
As far as I can tell, we have what we’ve been given and we are owed what we have earned. The world at its heart moves for the courageous and the humble, and the fear and anger set into motion by denying the entitled access to their stubborn misperception is ultimately the fear and anger triggered in the organism which senses it has strayed from that heart.
There are charming people in the world, loving people, respectful people, curious people, humble people; each of these is capable of a kind of alchemy which they perform in encountering the word ’no’. What is best in them seems to arise here. Sometimes, through a revealing of character, that ‘no’ becomes a ‘yes’. Sometimes it is just clear that the thing they sought in this place is to be found somewhere else. In any case, these people lose neither dignity nor purpose, but find a new opportunity to participate with some hierarchy of value that makes every person, friend or foe to their conscious goals, a conspirator on behalf of their true wanting.
What I’m meaning to say is… we could do so much better.
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