{"id":1371,"date":"2015-05-29T13:00:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T20:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=1371"},"modified":"2015-05-29T12:54:22","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T19:54:22","slug":"i-empathize-with-your-sense-of-entitlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/29\/i-empathize-with-your-sense-of-entitlement\/","title":{"rendered":"I Empathize with Your Sense of Entitlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postaday for May 29th: Childhood Revisited<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong>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?<\/em><\/p>\n

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

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\u2019t raised in a middle-class home, maybe I\u2019d be more empathetic.<\/p>\n

Which sounds ridiculous. Am I really trying to say I wish my parents had struggled pay check to pay check and that I\u2019d be better off if eating meat once a week was a luxury? We ate meat 7 days a week! Sometimes that\u2019s all we ate! Those carnivorous Edwardses, people would say. They\u2019ve 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!<\/p>\n

Someday I hope to have a child. Shall I raise him poor, just so he\u2019s more giving, later in life? But what would that entail? My dad tells me his own childhood was laced with poverty (and he\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

Actually I don\u2019t think my dad ever worked any fields. Also, I think he had more than one pair of pants. One thing my dad did\u00a0<\/em>hate about being poor was when people tried to give his family charity. Now ain\u2019t that a hoot. People are more likely to give if they\u2019re poor, but the people they give to (the other poor) don\u2019t like it!<\/p>\n

Maybe were all entitled, rich and poor alike. The rich are entitled, and don\u2019t give because they \u201cworked damned hard for this money, why give it away to lazy schmucks!\u201d And the poor are entitled, and give to the poor so they \u201cknow who\u2019s really\u00a0<\/em>poor, and it ain\u2019t me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, no, after all this very sober reflection, I can\u2019t say as to how I would change my childhood\u2019s economic state. I was kidding about being lions in the Serengeti, by the way. We also ate a lot of potatoes. Lions don\u2019t eat potatoes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Postaday for May 29th: Childhood Revisited.\u00a0Sure, 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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I Empathize with Your Sense of Entitlement”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[222,221,223],"class_list":["post-1371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-postaday","tag-affluence","tag-empathy","tag-potatoes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-m7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1371\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}