Tick, tock. The celestial clock keeps on ticking and our world has made another trip around the sun. This time, though, the Mayans claim this latest planetary revolution means the end of the world as we know it. I hope they are right.
Because maybe, just maybe, this will mean the end of entitlement, a phenomenon that has become embedded in our way of life. Like an evil weed, entitlement has been spreading its roots far and wide.
Why is entitlement so insidious? Because it presumes that some people are better than others — more entitled to a better life in all ways, from food and shelter to clothes and education, and often without consideration for the less fortunate. It’s right out of George Orwell’s classic book Animal Farm where “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.” In Orwell’s book, an animal’s best shot at a privileged life on the farm comes only if you are lucky enough to be born a pig.
How appropriate that the intelligent but greedy pig be the species chosen by Orwell to have more privileges and rights than the rest. It isn’t that the pigs have more privileges than the other animals, it is that they lie and scheme to get more privileges.
But, isn’t it a form of theft to take something deserved by all, like a fair day’s wages, to better your own position? I think it is. And I think quite a few of us in our 99 per cent boat think so, too.
But, I doubt the remaining one per cent would even get what we are talking about. Why? Because they are the “entitled ones.” But, hey, it’s not their fault if they are embarrassingly rich, is it? Didn’t they have to work hard to get to where they are, too? No, we can’t blame anyone for being in the one per cent group. But, we all need to be aware that entitlement can wreak havoc with the world. The trouble starts when our human nature kicks in because we begin to believe we deserve the life of the powerful and the privileged once we taste it.
A research study conducted by Dr. Paul Piff, social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley supports this decision. His research points to some shocking findings when it comes to ultra privilege. His Monopoly game experiment showed that those who are randomly given an unfair advantage in the game begin to feel entitled and will do whatever it takes to protect what they have.
Orwell’s Animal Farm pigs are eventually congratulated for having the hardest-working but least-fed animals in the country. Sadly, those with power and privilege would have us follow this model today. The entitled one per cent would have us believe that we, the ordinary 99 per cent, with our desires for fair wages and secure pensions are what’s dragging down our economy.
No, what will bring us to the most tragic chapter of all, my friends, is entitlement — something that will lead us to planetary ruin. And for what? The pervasive sense of entitlement of our old era does none of us any favours.
Lucky for us in Canada there is hope, thanks in large part to a long-suffering population of some of our poorest of the poor. Yes, our nation’s Aboriginals have banded together in a peaceful protest they call Idle No More to speak out against our entitled ways and to stand up for people without clean water, decent housing, and good schools as well as for those who have no voice, like plants, trees, rivers, oceans, air and fish.
I believe that we need to support this cause. Because it might well be the First Nations people who turn out to be the true warriors for our rights and freedoms in Canada.
Speaking up for what we know in our hearts is right, and to Idle No More — now that’s in our best interest.
