Americans are a very entitled bunch. Food (
as much as our hearts desire), comfort (
$2-million-dollar homes overlooking the sunset over SF bay), entertainment (
oh, but we need that 47-inch flatscreen!), and even health care (
we deserve whatever we can afford). Across the globe, Americans are being universally criticized as greedy, wasteful, self-righteous. Indeed, today I learned that the the developed world, including the U.S. and Western Europe, has 12% of the world's population but accounts for 60% of its consumer spending. The developing world, on the other hand, accounts for a mere 3.5% of such spending. The difference is enough to make anyone wince.
But I'd argue that there is an interesting psychological consequence to this chronic condition of "I deserve." For those with a more global and humanitarian inclination, it's a kind of unquestioning confidence that people have a right to certain things - clean water, adequate nutrition, safe environments. For the average American, they've grown up with these as givens. They have never worried about the tap water they drank, when they were getting their next meal, or if they were going to get raped on the way home from school. It shocks them, turns their world upside down, when they hear that such things exist elsewhere in the world. When they act, there's a conviction that propel them confidently forward to make change.
However, consider a child who grew up in the slums of Bangalore, or rural China, or the Bronx. Day after day, she's surrounded by poverty, hunger, violence, sickness, and worst of all, the resignation and fear of her elders. It's not their fault; their lives, and those of their parents, were etched out, fought for tooth and nail, against even more desperate circumstances. They've grown afraid, like anxious little mice, of losing the little they've worked so hard to gain. All they want, and all they can imagine, is for their child to be free from the desperation that plagued them. And most inherit not only poverty from their parents, but the disabling fear that snufs out any youthful hope they might have had, keeping them poor.
But as the developed world is beginning to see, people at the bottom of the pyramid have potential beyond what is often ascribed to them. With the right resources and inspiration, humans are capable of fantastic dreams. Let's say that this particular child dared to dream of a world, for herself and others, not just a life without debilitating suffering, but one with fulfillment, joy, meaning, and freedom. She longs to make this vision a reality.
What stands in her way are a number of possible obstacles - access to education, getting fed and clothed, gender discrimination, disease, economic expectations from her family. But let's just say this girl has overcome these challenges by a combination of her efforts and a good bit of luck. She now has the resources at her disposal to carry out her dreams. But there is one last barricade that stands in her way, however, and it's quite possibly the darkest of them all because it's in her head. It's the lack of a sense of entitlement.
In order to survive, she's had to adapt like her parents and grandparents. Evolution is still alive and well in the psychological ability of survivors to accept realities they cannot change, which is the first step to adaptation. To some degree, she has had to accept the dire circumstances and pain she witnessed that she couldn't change. Children's natural joy and maleable minds prevent them from experiencing true desperation. To her, dying infants and battered women were part of her childhood reality. She feels a sense of injustice, but no outrage like the entitled Americans around her. She cannot be outraged at a world that was once her own, one that offered joy along with suffering. On top of this, having feared all their lives, her elders at first frowned upon, then outright forbode her to continue pursuing her vision. To them, this was frivolousness. How dare she risk her and their lives for a mirage? How could she stick her head in the clouds while her family was hungry?
So she's caught in this impossible tug-of-war - does she answer to the dream she holds in her heart, or does she play it safe and provide for the family that gave their own lives for her? She still sees a better world in her mind's eye, but she also lives with the world's flaws that she accepted early on. Without an unshakeable sense of entitlement, she wavers. She begins to believe that maybe it's ok to take progress one step at a time -- feed the children first, dreams later. So she backs away from her vision, generations of fear and heavy sighs blinding her once bright eyes like an illness, and the world is never changed.
What kills the potential of children in poverty, children of immigrants, and children from rough-and-tumble neighborhoods who didn't grow up with the same entitlements as the middle class American? What could have altered this picture?
Mentorship and resources. A child with larger-than-life aspirations needs a light beyond the desperate world she's always known. Knowing others who have succeeded in similar struggles gives her more confidence to defy her reality. It's also a resource that she can utilize, along with economic support, education, health care, and help with other problems in her daily life. If we begin to tell disadvantage children around the world that they are entitled to life and hope, and we help them and their families achieve at least these basic rights, we would see a lot more fantastical dreams becoming reality.