Leonard Chan, Quora bans you if your answers are too earnest
Answered Jun 15, 2016
All sorts of environments can breed entitlement.
Being over-sheltered and over-priviledged can breed entitlement.
But being poverty stricken and growing up in an environment of scarcity can also (counterintuitively) breed entitlement.
But the two types look very different.
One is entitled because they’ve never not gotten their way, and they cannot imagine not getting their way.
The other is entitled because they feel the whole world owes them something on account of all the hardship they’ve suffered.
So we’ve largely eliminated the effect of environment in raising entitled people.
Some other people from those same two environments manage to grow up humble and not entitled, so you can’t always blame the environment.
Let’s get down to it.
What makes a person become entitled?
Answer :
They only care about their own needs. They do not/cannot care about anyone else’s needs. Other people’s needs are irrelevant to them. Only their own needs mattered.
Let’s imagine you are stuck in a bus and your bladder is at capacity. You really really REALLY need to go to toilet. But you can’t, because this bus has no toilet. But you seriously, really, need to pee.
Hold that thought for a second. Now answer this question :
How do you feel?
I’m sure you feel a very definite need to pee. You might even feel the need to curse a bit to express your urgency.
But if someone were standing there, blocking your entry to the toilet, would you shove them aside?
Yes, more likely now than ever.
And there you have it. You are now entitled. You feel entitled to do anything to anyone to give yourself the relief of emptying your bladder.
But you are not normally an entitled person. What has changed now?
What has changed is that your extreme need to urinate has made you concerned with only ONE thing - your NEED to pee. And that sole concern has wiped out any consideration for anyone else’s needs. Everyone else is now irrelevant compared to your overwhelming need to relieve yourself.
(You know it’s no accident that they call it “relieve” yourself, because it is torture that needs relief.)
Let’s bring it back to the question.
Entitled people only care about their own needs and no one else’s.
How did they become like that?
They chose to become like that - unknowingly. Some people are just born bastards, you can see it from even a very young age. And a bastard will reaffirm their bastardry daily by mostly picking bastard options in response to situations. And as they age, the multitude of choices aggregate and become habit and made them become a bastard adult from a bastard child.
(note : bastard in this answer does not refer to a child born out of wedlock, but instead is meant to allude to a “bad” person)
Entitled people equivalently have such a constant overwhelming need to pee that they readily shove everyone out of the way. But then the feeling of the need to pee never leaves them, so they carve a path of shoving everyone out of their way throughout their lives.
On the other hand, some people are born non-bastards. You see them living an over-priviledged life, but they are still humble and respectful, and they automatically consider others.
Or they are born under dire poverty, yet they still share and have compassion and empathy.
It’s not the environment, it’s the inner-bastard.