Published on 12, July, 2020
Why do so many people have a sense of entitlement?
I was discussing this with a friend at the weekend and we couldn't really get to the bottom of it, other than perhaps it's just been a slow erosion of society and work ethic.
They don't work, but are entitled to (net) taxpayers money, so they can have things that taxpayers can't afford, to live in areas that those taxpayers can't afford, to have holidays, to not work a job they don't want to, to be entitled to an easy and well paid job. That they have "rights" that must be treated as gospel, but not any responsibilities that are tied to those rights. That rules are just for "someone else", a whole attitude that everyone else owes them a living etc.
What is the flawed mental process where people decide that they are entitled to things just because they want them? How can anyone even attempt to justify that "want" means "entitled"?
The pampered society maybe that we now live in, perhaps? With free nhs health care, dentists, sickness benefits, social security benefits etc. I would say the attitudes that you are referring to started when the government started to spoon feed people.
Gosh, somehow I'm a bit shocked. Are you being cynical or do you really mean that? I'm just asking because I believe to remember that you were also telling people how much entitled they are to receive help, so somehow that doesn't add up because most could probably not afford to pay for it privately, but maybe I confuse it with someone else. Living in Norway now I have certainly not got the impression so far that people here are lazier or something compared to UK or the US.
Hi oktanol. Do I mean what? That in comparison to pre nhs and pre the national social security system, we now live a pampered life and that maybe this is where the entitlement attitude has grown out from? Prior to the nhs, you only saw doctors etc if you could afford one and if you couldn’t work, you were thrown in the work house. I don’t think people had an ‘entitlement attitude’ then, so I was just wondering if it could be traced back to the introduction of the nhs and SS system. People on here know far more about this stuff than me, so I was just wondering, if that could be a cause.
I thought that somebody involved in this discussion, who knows more than me, might be able to say whether this could be where the attitude started to grow.
I don’t know anything about people being lazy, I must have missed that part of the conversation. I was referring to what Matt said at the beginning of the post, where he was wondering where the entitlement attitude might have came from. Sorry, I’m a bit lost with that last bit and I’m about to do some drilling now so don’t have time to catch up on any comments I missed.
I’ve just realised, maybe my choice of words or word, when I said ‘pampered’ gave off some kind of impression. I apologise for using that word, my sociology teacher used to use it, I didn’t know it meant other things. Sorry. I’ve stopped using the dictionary so much to check and double check that the words I’m choosing are the most appropriate and clearly I’m making mistakes. But thank you, I’ll remember not to use that word any more in this way.