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Thoughts on entitlement…

Sorry about the lack of update folks, I came down with some piggy-related flu which put me out of commission for a little too long.

There’s something that happened in the 90s. I’m not sure if it was all those Saturday Morning cartoons telling us we were special, but our current generation seems to have this idea that it is we, not the meek, who will inherit the Earth.

You see them in class all the time — those people who complain incessantly about how they should get five more percent on their essay because they “worked really really hard.” Or the folks in tutorial who get miffed when people don’t hang onto their every word as they explain how their current relationship totally relates to Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.

Whatever happened to a sense of humility? Everyone seems to think they’re in Generation Awesome. And it’s all over the place. The internet has given birth to the embarrassing phenomenon of fan fiction which has grown, like some demonic hellspawn, into an industry with a rabid, adoring audience. You end up with situations where steamy tales of Captain Kirk and Spock’s forbidden interspecies romance are treated like the second coming of Shakespeare, even if the language is the literary equivalent of a cow turd.

So why is this a bad thing? It lowers our standards. A sense of entitlement, if fostered by society, creates a situation where everyone gets praise for nothing. It infantalizes our society — like a toddler may be praised for making a doodie, we now have high school students told their laughable one page summary of the Cold War is worthy of a passing grade.

Perhaps tough love would be the best solution. Maybe if we didn’t make having a university degree a requirement to flip burgers at McDonald’s, a high school education would actually mean something. As it stands, a lobotomized child with narcolepsy could sleep their way through high school and still get into university. If our school system actually educated students then we’d have a situation where university could be a place of intellectual development instead of a farm for resume building. But apparently we can’t do that, because such a system would inevitably involve holding someone back a grade – a cruel inconvenience sure to scar a child for life.

Next on the list is getting rid of reality television. I don’t care if the networks love how cheap it is. It’s harmful for society to have so many idiotic people rewarded for acting like idiots on camera. Now everyone seems to think they’re entitled to their 15 minutes of fame, which results in stunts like the Heenes’ balloon boy. It’s never about actual accomplishment, people just think they’re worthy of being rich and famous without putting the effort into it.

But the best solution of all goes back to parents. While it may be a comfort mechanism to treat your offspring like they’re some unique snowflake, the harsh reality is your child is merely a cog in the greater machine of society. If everyone knows from the start that their lives and opinions are unimportant to the greater scheme of things then maybe some actual accomplishments could be achieved instead of everyone waiting for success to fall into their laps.

Thanks again. Until next time…

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