Entitlement

An entitlement is a just claim or right, usually granted by some authority to an individual. Entitlement may also refer to a personal attitude. This usage is common in therapeutic circles.

The attitude of entitlement is seen as an unconscious, narcissistic sense of being owed a certain deference without any rational basis for that belief. It is often a defense against self-loathing, but it can be the result of poor socialization or poor parenting. Part of healthy human development is the achievement of an understanding of the basic worth and commonality of all human beings. Added to that understanding, a rational, socialized human being realizes that respect and consideration are earned by respectful behavior and responsible action. The entitled person, in the psychotherapeutic sense, enters human interactions and social situations with a demanding or emotionally needy attitude which has no real or socially accepted basis in objective reality.

In the current American political landscape, legal entitlements, such as social security and unemployment benefits, are decried by The Right as frivolous waste of public funds. Their adamant railing against these social benefits imply that the recipients are milking the public treasury unnecessarily and unjustly. Ironically, this reflects an attitudinal entitlement in the holders of these views, who are often fortunate to be wealthy enough, while holding these opinions, to not need the benefits themselves. They feel entitled to live in a safe and comfortable society without paying for the social infrastructure that creates the conditions they obviously take for granted.

The iPhone and Blackberry seem to enforce this sense of general impatience and entitlement. Mesmerized by the power of a portable, compliant slave, which offers up demanded information with the flick of a thumb or finger, people could tend to be less patient with human servers and coworkers, whose clocking times tend to be less immediate and require a certain amount of social prompting to get the best result. Having slaves of any kind, historically, has bred the worst form of entitlement in their masters.

The culture of "we are all special" has contributed to entitlement in many who are not special and who are perhaps are not even average. This is the entitlement of the bling-encrusted felon, now a rapper, whose knowledge or understanding of the human condition is minimal. However, this individual strides from talk show to talk show and dispenses the wisdom of the ignorant with great hubris. The echo effect of this media barrage breeds entitlement in similar listeners, who feel themselves ordained by their rough-shod role model.

The pathological attitude of entitlement, in my opinion, is a reflection of the inequality and lack of education in society. I believe the most basic human entitlement, in a legal or ethical sense, is the birthright to a safe, well-nourished, properly housed, maximally educated and justly employed life span from cradle to grave. Who would be responsible for granting this birthright or entitlement? The state? No. I believe it is the responsibility of every person who brings a child into this world to provide this basic birthright to each and every child.

"It takes a village to raise a child!" I hear the frequent refrain. Yes, I agree. Just as no one of us has the ability to build a television set, a car or an iPhone, no one person has all the tools to provide that basic birthright to a child from cradle to grave. However, this does not excuse propagating the mindless reproduction by those who have absolutely none of the tools to provide that basic human birthright. Nor does it justify Tea Party or Libertarian rantings about denying any social benefits paid for by tax money.

The best treatment for pathological entitlement is the provision of the basic legal entitlement of universal rights to a quality lifespan to each and every human being who is born. This cannot be attended to exclusively with legislation or religious doctrine. Experiments in enforcing these ideals from the top down have failed miserably. This must come from educated and properly socialized individuals who decide to procreate and participate in a just society. The way to that ideal is not every-man-for-himself, the populist battle cry in America, covertly funded by corporate dollars.

The current humanist movement for universal human rights worldwide is an important first step to providing the most basic human justice for all human beings on the planet. Until all human beings are entitled to a quality life from cradle to grave, the plagues of war, greed and injustice will flourish.

Corporations

I communicate on this blog via a broadband cable connection, purchased from a national cable provider, which also provides me with telephone and television services. I recently discovered that my "on demand" television feature was inoperative. I got an error message, similar to the error messages we all dread on computer monitors.

I had gotten the same error message when the cable system was activated by two separate technicians about a month ago. The second technician, who came to replace faulty equipment left by the first, had assured me it was all fine. When I pointed out that the external cables on the outside of the building were hanging out of a broken plastic box like black spaghetti, he shrugged and said, "I don't have a ladder."

This time, I called the 800 number. A rather brusque woman, identifying herself as Dawn in a New Jersey accent, humored me, told me to recycle the box by unplugging the cable from it and then wait 25 minutes. I found, of course, I would have done just as well to spread a circle of garlic on the living room floor and do a rain dance in it. Next, a thickly Spanish-accented man, who insisted on calling me "Mr. Paul" over and over again, said he was going to electronically send me a very special (magic?) signal which only he possessed. He guaranteed his signal would get through. Perhaps this line works for him in his local singles bar. It did nothing for my cable box.

The third call put me in touch with Joe, an average-sounding young man with a warm personality. He took me through yet another rebooting experience which did not leave my cable box glowing any more effectively. But, he did set me up with a real service technician, who is due later today. Hopefully, this technician will remember to bring a ladder to look at the knotted spaghetti cables on the side of the building.

Welcome to the Corporate Soviet of America. If you have seen and understood the film "Brazil", you will understand my point. As bureaucracy grows, it begins to exist for its own benefit. Its original function or purpose becomes secondary to its own survival and prosperity. This is disastrous for the consumers of service industries. Ask anyone who goes to a huge medical center with a serious illness. The insertion of layer after layer of barriers between the consumer and someone who provides an actual, on-site service is an attempt to decrease the payrolls of higher-paid technicians in favor of lower-paid hand-holders, whose job it is to keep the consumer at arm's length.

Meanwhile, at the top, the executives and shareholders are pulling out the resulting profits at the expense of poor customer service, lower wages for customer-service tele-workers and higher workloads for fewer on-ground technical personnel. Deregulation under Reaganite politicians has made this situation worse.

It is common knowledge that increasing the access of a population to internet bandwidth increases education, productivity and participation in the workings of a society. But, is this what corporations by their very nature want? Why would corporations, which sell mediocre services at a premium, unhealthy food cheaper than healthy food and cheaply made consumer goods based on an oil economy, want to provide the consuming public with the tools of their enlightenment and liberation from the very junk they are peddling?

When you next hear Libertarians and Tea-Party devotees screaming against Government, you will be hearing the shrill voice of corporate-funded or corporate-inspired stupidity. Think about whether you really want to spend your future calling 800 numbers while the quality of your life slowly slips away.

Insurance

Insurance, as a product, has no ethical basis. It is a scheme, not a service. Its premise is simple. Money is collected from a broad range of individuals, persons or business entities, who statistically have a calculatable risk of adversity, accident, mortality or other misadventure. Based on the mathematically calculated risk, based on historic data, a premium/cost is set for the policy or share, which has a predetrmined monetary value, collectable by the holder when adversity strikes.

When most people were illiterate and innumerate, the era when insurance was really a great racket, the issuers of insurance, the insurance companies, were like great casinos, which knew the odds and profited accordingly from customers who were generally clueless about the math, loopholes and cleverly worded exemptions, which allowed the insurance companies to avoid paying out and thereby get richer.

As I often say to anyone who lauds insurance companies to me, "They didn't build all those high rise monuments to themselves by paying out claims liberally and evenly."

The insurance industry in industrialized nations is under duress. Public education, computers, savvy judges and savvier lawyers all pose great challenges to the bottom line. Premiums are rising to breathtaking heights. In the U.S., libertarian-minded, healthy people feel persecuted by a government demand that they insure themselves for health care. Unfortunately, they don't understand that government is not the problem. It is the potential solution.

Religiuous adherence to capitalism ideology when it comes to insurance companies is not in the public interest. For one thing, health is not a commodity. It is a predictably degradable process with age in every human being. We all get sick. We all die.

As insurance companies are required more and more to live up to their contracts and pay out, premiums for insurance will continue to rise and rise. Sadly, the public will end up paying much more in insurance premiums for less compensation and security. If comparatively less money could be paid in taxes to a well run nationalized health care system which would eliminate the need for private health insurance companies altogether, we would all be much better off.

Responsibility

The crux of any personal practice for good is taking responsibility for oneself and one's actions in the context of society and community.

The current libertarian movements in the U.S., which tend toward survivalist individualism, miss the reality that human beings are social animals by nature and evolution. Their motivation, as I see it, is based in gun possession and personal wealth, unimpeded by taxes and regulation. This seems more than a little regressive.

Responsibility to the community and society is the basis of civilization. Taxes are a crucial part of maintaining that civilization and its life-improving benefits. No matter how inefficient or corrupt government may be, the maintenance of infrastructure, public health and education must still be supported by the public for civilization to progress.

If those who despise corruption and 'big government' focused their rage on improving the quality of social programs by improving the tax and regulatory codes instead of ranting against the very programs which will improve their quality of life, then we can move as united citizens to improve our country for everyone.

Haiti

This portion of the island of Hispaniola, occupied by 9 million people, is the size of Massachusetts, home to 6.5 million people. The economic, environmental and demographic differences between Haiti and Massachusetts are gigantic.

Tragedy breeds sentimentality. Sentimentality clouds level-headed judgment, the quality which is absolutely necessary to respond effectively to crisis. Haiti is a perpetual tragedy in perpetual crisis. It is plagued by bourgeois greed, hereditary poverty, aggressive ignorance, avid superstition and an entrenched caste system. The depth of the current tragedy of its earthquake damage is magnified by these factors.

Bill Clinton, who is special Presidential envoy to Haiti, has made the observation on the PBS Newshour that Haitians in the U.S. are 1% of the black community and 11% of the country's physicians' community.

This points to the lack of balance in Haitian society. A strong bourgeoisie with its diaspora in the U.S. fuels an engine of emigration from the island nation, while those with no resources fend for themselves in Haiti with no government, no infrastructure, no education and no escape. This is another example of the failure of the ripple effects of immigration here in the U.S.. It works for the U.S.. It does not work for the source of immigrants, as evidenced by Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia and other nations.

From a planetary perspective, wealthy nations have no real commitment to places like Haiti. There is no oil there. There is no gold there. There is no copper there. There is no well-educated, cheap labor pool there. There are many problems (costs) and no profits. Free-market capitalists shun such situations.

My heart goes out to the many people from the U.N. and N.G.O.s who have been working against the tide of ignorance, violence and poverty in Haiti. But, I have many questions about the sensibility of their efforts. Haitians have cleared almost all their trees, thereby degrading their cultivatable land and water supply. The trees have been used to make cooking charcoal. Yes, cooking charcoal for the overpopulated environment. So, I would ask, "Why haven't the U.S., U.N., N.G.O.s, or its educated-diaspora organizations financed windmills, solar generators or a trash-powered generating plants to supply electricity for cooking with some of the trillions of dollars in aid which have been poured into this island for decades?" This is just one question I could ask, but now is obviously not a time for getting answers.

Perhaps Haiti is a symbol of the long term effects of religiosity and truly libertarian politics. The history of the island is bloody with colonial genocide, slavery and dictatorship. Yet, the persistent features of Haiti's history since its 1804 independence from France are its religiosity, lack of public education and its every-man-for-himself (libertarian) sociology.

I would suggest that libertarians and the theocratically inclined look at Haiti and learn. Large human populations need governance, infrastructure and social supports. Large modern societies must ride the waves of modern science to maintain themselves on a planet with fixed and diminishing resources. Praying does not generate electricity, get rid of garbage or purify water. God isn't there when the roof caves in. You need a crane to lift the rubble. To pay for cranes to lift the rubble, you need to levy taxes and maintain a government treasury.

Lunatics, like Pat Robertson, to whom many Americans have turned for leadership, will predictably turn their backs in crisis. They are capitalists to the core. The God excuse is a handy tool to lay responsibility on everyone but themselves for anything. The dominating Haitian Catholic church and the Haitian government are also noticeably lacking in their capacity to help their own people.

I would hope that the devastation of this earthquake in Haiti's capital city will awaken the non-Haitian and Haitian-American organizations which are invested in helping that nation. It seems that some 'tough love' may be called for in the reconstruction. An emphasis on practical science, based in ecological sustainability, would be a good start.