I Empathize with Your Sense of Entitlement

Postaday for May 29th: Childhood Revisited. Sure, you turned out pretty good, but is there anything you wish had been different about your childhood? If you have kids, is there anything you wish were different for them?

I just read an article about how people who are affluent are selfish. No, really! People who are successful have a greater sense of entitlement, and are therefore less charitable. Buncha rich misers!

Obviously this is on average, and not true for any one individual. There are people who are wealthy and give, as are there are people who are poor and stingier than necessary. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that maybe if I wasn’t raised in a middle-class home, maybe I’d be more empathetic.

Which sounds ridiculous. Am I really trying to say I wish my parents had struggled pay check to pay check and that I’d be better off if eating meat once a week was a luxury? We ate meat 7 days a week! Sometimes that’s all we ate! Those carnivorous Edwardses, people would say. They’ve sharpened their teeth to tear through steaks and chops. They chase gazelles through the bush and leap at them with their mighty claws. Oh how they rend the flesh! A bunch of middle-class entitled felines, those Edwardses!

Someday I hope to have a child. Shall I raise him poor, just so he’s more giving, later in life? But what would that entail? My dad tells me his own childhood was laced with poverty (and he’s very generous!) Shall I do unto my son what my grandfather did unto my dad? Hand him a pair of bluejeans and tell him not to sweat in them too much when he worked the fields because they were his school pants, too?

Actually I don’t think my dad ever worked any fields. Also, I think he had more than one pair of pants. One thing my dad did hate about being poor was when people tried to give his family charity. Now ain’t that a hoot. People are more likely to give if they’re poor, but the people they give to (the other poor) don’t like it!

Maybe were all entitled, rich and poor alike. The rich are entitled, and don’t give because they “worked damned hard for this money, why give it away to lazy schmucks!” And the poor are entitled, and give to the poor so they “know who’s really poor, and it ain’t me.”

So, no, after all this very sober reflection, I can’t say as to how I would change my childhood’s economic state. I was kidding about being lions in the Serengeti, by the way. We also ate a lot of potatoes. Lions don’t eat potatoes.