Wednesday, May 05, 2010

This is the entitlement, provacative you have created!!


This was part of a protest by Hispanics in Los Angeles, California last week.The sign speaks volumes about the outcome of well-intentioned individuals.

"Give us free:health care,jobs with no taxes, house, food-you owe us America!

We will shoot more police in Arizona until we get free!"

This is entitlement, these people are the provacative ones, But... history has proven over and over, giving people things never creates the behavior, long term, that a society requires to sustain itself. Human behavior has proven time and again that a behavior properly rewarded does indeed repeat itself and if the appropriate reinforcers and reward schedules are applied, the behavior has the possibility of enduring. The difficulty of these behavior applications is that human beings are employing them and they become part of a political process that ends as a game.

Having engaged in years of work regarding the evolving sense of self, I realize that giving individuals something for nothing, produces an entitled population over time and the demands increase in volume from one generation to the next. The initiative to work, to produce and to accept the full spectrum of the human experience ceases to exist at a level that forwards the cause of any society.

From theory to practice the sound rhetoric of individuals claiming to be "enlightened" tends to produce a group of elitists who once having obtained their "piece of the pie" cloak themselves in their own words and move to create policies designed to control the masses. They begin to believe their own PR and move rapidly to design the strategies and tactics to keep their reasoning atop all the others. They actually believe they know best and what is good for society-they become the very example they long ago criticized. They use tactics to de-legitimize those who dare challenge their point of view and authority-they model that which they purport to despise. They claim to be open minded and yet upon rationale inspection they are open to only those words and beliefs that support their plan for life in their world-all others are hounded beyond what is usually called proper treatment of another human being. To have a simple discussion with them is near impossible as topics are switched, ears are closed and verbal attacks begin-they are the most close-minded people I have ever tried to engage.

Without knowing it, the culture of entitlement develops and expands exponentially with each passing generation. Those in opposition feel they cannot express what they value or what they believe it takes for a society to cooperate and live together honoring one another. Rather than bringing groups of different ethnicities together, they actually create tension among and across said groups ultimately pitting many against a few. Mind you, this is the result of their programs and they have the audacity to claim they are the sensitive,caring ones. The photograph above represents the end results of their programs-such is the world in which we live today.

GS Don Morris, Ph.D.

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