Ramblings on American entitlement.

I've written about this before, but it doesn't cease to amaze me how the sense of entitlement is engrained in the American psyche. "I've gone through such hardships that I deserve to be happy / to get this job / to get somewhere in life". Even it's a country with it's famous dream being that anyone can make it to the top with hard work, the newer generation seems to think that they're entitled to everything, from behaving badly to amazing things just coming their way. 

It has been in the news that Chinese tourists have extremely bad behavior (including writing on hieroglyphs in Egypt), and the American discussion boards have exploded by the happiness of hey, we're not the worst. True that, Americans are awful tourists, with their entitlement to doing things American way wherever they go and with their freedom of loud speech. Where I come from, pride is a sin, not a virtue, and instead of confidently parading around declaring who we are, we shyly want to know what others might think about us. 

I was helping to run an outreach event at a local high school a couple of weeks ago, and two things struck me hard. Firstly, why would you put a bumper sticker on your car declaring how awesome your kid is at school? Proud much? How would this achieve anything else except your kid being totally humiliated? Secondly, do you not trust your young citizens enough not to lock them behind gates and barbed wire for the day of school? I understand if the 5-year olds are in gated areas for their safety, but high schoolers? Well, I guess that they are not expected to be responsible for their own actions (they're entitled to do whatever they want, so let's not expect responsible choices from them?), but moreover people from outside are also a risk in this country (another scary thing that I keep forgetting about).

A Mexican friend of mine said that you you will find the truth about the nation from what sort of drugs are advertised on tv. Apparently in Mexico, the big money lies in cures for stomach problems (so the nation is all about spicy food?), but in the US, the ads are all about anti-depressants. And I've noticed that the entitlement reaches the mental health too; people feel that they deserve happiness and that it should just come to them without having to work towards it. 

I can see how the American society leaves very little space for a community feel, and how this leads to selfish behavior. Furthermore, the customer service culture where the customer is always right no matter what leads to weird expectations like "someone will tidy up after me if I leave a mess in the campsite/park/communal area". For me, putting my trash into the waste bin is a no-brainer, but just this weekend I saw a middle aged woman making a deal about how she's being a "good citizen" by putting her empty coffee cup into the trash. Honestly? 

I think this country needs a little bit more of personal responsibility. Most of the time what you get in life is what you put in yourself. You cannot always blame or sue someone when you make a mistake. You are not always right. When you promise something, stand up to it. Approach things with gratefulness, not entitlement. Care about people around you. Even though you're special and amazing, you're not the only one!

Having said this, Davis as a town has a community feel to it, and people seem to be very caring about their environment. I guess I shouldn't really jump into conclusions quite yet or draw generalizations about American psyche! Also, I might want to practice a bit more humility and stop being so judgmental against all thing American and stop being so proud of not being one of them… after all, the US is a wonderful and extremely successful country inhabited by some of the friendliest and greatest people I know!