entitlement – Traou an Dour

Power Imbalance and Entitlement

It seems to me that again in the news we have an example of self-diagnosed patrician/plebian power imbalance and misuse of power. Reading between the lines Raab thinks that the plebs should suck up his “direct criticism” yet he himself cannot accept that he was perhaps overly assertive and throwing his weight about. If he is a karate black belt, he has not understood bushidō. He may dish out the “feedback” but he can’t hack it in return.

These entitled buffoons seem to think that the lowly plebs should not only lap up their omniscient “guidance” but also thank them and doff their caps for it.

“Thanks guvnor, I will hop to it as quick as… That is kind of you milord.”

This over assertion and “ordering” others about may be a legacy of serfdom or it could be a snowflake whingeing reaction, you take your pick. In my eyes Raab, is smug, pompous, and arrogant.

I have yet to meet a smug, pompous, and arrogant person who is sufficiently self-aware to know and accept that they are smug, pompous, and arrogant.

Such people feel entitled to inflict themselves on others.

I have joked elsewhere about what would happen if rich powerful professors were to interact with me a financially poor retired bumpkin. They might forget that I have not been a member of that elite club for nearly two decades….

They may lack the same self-awareness outlined above. The power imbalance may not even cross their enlightened minds.

Those that imagine themselves entitled to wield power and throw their weight about may be completely blind to the “power” imbalance and unable to see that they are not having like for like interactions. In their arrogance and ignorance, they might imagine that they have done nothing wrong, that it was thoroughly justified…

“It only it were not for those pesky plebs getting all uppity…grassing on me…

They won’t do what I say mummy…it is not fair…

I will have to resign because I pinkie promised.”

Musings, Personal Development, Postulates

Entitlement Homogeneity and Poor Governance

When I saw Rishi Sunak sat around the grand table with a bunch of managers and senior people in a show of trying to solve the problems in the NHS my heart sank. The people he had sat around the table were the very ones who were perhaps causal of said problems.

“I know let us put some more metrics and targets in, that will stop the rot.”

“What the NHS needs is yet another layer of overly paid “management” and “statisticians” so that we can present sound bites {misspelling deliberate} to the media.!”

In MBTI terms the NHS if an “F” type caring service it cannot effectively be perceived as being a car production line for the model T ford. A “T” type target based approach is not at all motivating for an “F” type carer. In fact, it is in all likelihood demotivating, measuring quantity as opposed to quality of care is illogical and inappropriate.

“Oh shit, not another piece of questionnaire / statistic / waste of time and money to which we have to comply. Please let us care, we did not sign up for this Himalayan level of administration.”

Sack the layer of middle and upper management MBA clones and pay the people at the coal face.

A while back I was interviewed for a position on the board for a London based private university. The applicants were very homogenous and all about a decade older than me. They had all been schooled in Belbin etc. The CEO of the school was in my opinion pompous. When I was asked what I would bring to the board, I said difference, relative youth and a less rusty more innovative way of looking at things.

Clearly, I was not Kool and the Gang.

In terms of team dynamics, I know I would have unsettled the board because I would have challenged the gelatinous “group-think”.

Homogeneity lacks any originality, tends towards stagnation and group confirmation bias. Complacency and back patting are the order of the day.

“This is the way we have always done things; don’t you know old boy…”

A sense of entitlement gives rise to poor governance. We have seen in the news Tories giving contracts to their pals. It never occurs that expediency is not fair in the case of award of public contracts. There are shortcuts taken boarding on the fraudulent. The entitled know best and it is only right that a chum, in whom we trust, one of us, should get the contract.

Entitlement suggests that rules and little details are beneath us. They are for the little people. We can cut accounting corners and round the figures up or down depending upon which look best for us.

Entitlement and homogeneity struggle to fully accept any incoming problems and rarely if ever accept that they are partially causal of these incoming problems.

I will postulate that a sense of entitlement and homogeneity of personnel are causal of poor governance at senior management and board levels.

ॐ, Cause & Effect, Karma, Mental Health, Musings, paradigm, personal, Personal Development

Resentment and a Moment of Clarity

“Why was he born so beautiful
Why was he born at all
He’s no bloody use to anyone
He’s no bloody use at all”

I think it reasonable to say that there is a great deal of resentment in the world today and much of that can be found amongst those who have little, in reality, to resent. Resentment can come from thwarted ambition and when life does not fulfil the conditions which we impose upon it. It can walk hand in hand with a “It is not fair mummy” mentality. It can stem from unmet expectations when a sense of entitlement is not sufficiently fulfilled. It can arise in envy and jealousy. People can resent having to put some effort in, some work and this can cause resentment.

For example, I published six academic articles during my Ph.D. That was from only around nine months actual experimental time. I used to party a lot {vast amount} and it appeared to others that it was all too easy for me. I know that some resented me for this. “He smokes weed and gets pissed it is not fair that he is publishing and I am not.”

Resentment is an astral-emotional thing, it emits negative thoughts and energies at the object of resentment and that is in many cases a fellow human being. Some people are born with a metaphorical chip on their shoulder and resent the entire world, others are spoiled rotten and when they do not get their way they fall into resentful sulking.

For most of my young life, I was pretty good at most things, though never top of the class. I put in enough effort and willingly so but never really excelled. In school I captained the rugby second fifteen and played either hooker or open side flanker. My friend captained the first fifteen as hooker. He played for South-east England at that position and even had an England trial. He was head boy. I used to help him with his homework {he was not a scholar} and many lunch times we would squat 100kg together inter alia. {Maybe this is why I now have osteo-arthritis.} When there was a crunch match, I would be drafted in to the first team as flanker. I was fast and could give the wings a good run for their money, but not beat them.

I never really resented much in life. Do your best and see what happens without obsessing was pretty much my way of looking at things. I have never really been jealous beyond a hint. That is perhaps because most things came relatively easy to me, all I had to do was concentrate and put the effort in. At university I put in a good shift in my final year so as to remain a student. If Sue Tollerfield had not gotten one more mark out of a thousand than me, the trajectory of my life would have been entirely different. On such little things a fate hangs.

If one accepts life as it is rather than how we imagine it should be or ought to be, there is no resentment. The universe does not give one hoot about the conditions we impose upon it in our “minds” and “emotions”. Our made up imaginary conditions are the cause of our own resentment; the universe is not to blame and it is not my fault if you resent me.

One fine day I was contemplating the above rugby song. I had a moment of clarity. The one thing that I resented the most was being born. “Oh shit, not into that meat again. Do I have to?” It was a very real sensation I resented my own in-carn-ation. In that moment much fell off my shoulders and I was as crystal clear as can be, reincarnation happens.

I’ll posit something, on one level we each have a resentment about having to take on a meaty vehicle again and again and face all the challenges inherent with being corporeal. We may not be sufficiently aware to feel this.

It not my fault that you incarnated in this lifetime, you are the one responsible for that!!

It is not my fault if you reincarnate again with accumulated and accrued karma in a few hundred years or so.

If you have failed to acquire some karmic merit as opposed acquiring to material things, I have not advised you that this is a good thing to do.

If you want to blame someone for your next meaty sojourn, look in a mirror.

Blame and resentment are cut from the same cloth and are in many ways cousins…they are both toxic emotions which “poison” those who hold them close and imagine themselves justified in the expression of these unpleasant forms.

Resentment can be full of bile, blame full of ire. Neither makes the world a better more harmonious place.

“Do your best and see what happens without obsessing…”

Mental Health, Personal Development

Are You Entitled?

There are many in this world who deem themselves entitled to all sorts of things. The universe owes them because they have a chair on Mt. Olympus, metaphorically speaking. They deem themselves great, special and important. People like me are the plebs…