On Entitlement

I have the feeling that, most days, I meet some really lovely people.  Nice, kind people.  And not just any people: complete strangers.  Complete strangers who greet me with a cheery ‘Hello’; people who realise that the pavement or the road is too narrow and make way; people who hold open a door, laugh when we both go for the same supermarket trolley and move carefully around the stack of books in the middle so that we maintain social distance and don’t collide.

Even when they’re not being conspicuously nice, people are generally well-behaved.  Don’t you think?  Most of the time?  Polite.  Respectful.  Civil.  Civilised.

Or, at least, it used to be like that.  These days, something seems to have changed.  These days, there is an air of… presumption.  Aggression.  A bristling belligerence.  Entitlement.

Is it just that lockdown is over and people are over-compensating now that they’re allowed out again?  Or perhaps people are actually feeling a little anxious in public space - they know, despite the Government’s position and their own bravado, that the bug is still out there, killing hundreds of people every day and causing long-term suffering for thousands of others.  Or perhaps it’s just spring and the sap is rising.  Or perhaps I just haven’t been out much lately and I’ve forgotten how awful people are.

But then I think of Boris Johnson and the word ‘entitlement’.  I type ‘boris johnson entitlement’ into a popular search engine and just the first page provides headlines such as:

• “The stench of entitlement is now oozing…” The Guardian
• “Boris Johnson’s sense of entitlement is galling…” Yorkshire Post
• “Why rules don’t apply to Boris Johnson…” Financial Times
• “It reflects a monstrous entitlement…” iNews

And so on.

This ‘entitlement’ is, in the zeitgeist, a term referring to a particular group of people, with a particular set of beliefs or attitudes which are supposed to be drivers of, or a backdrop to, some very particular behaviours.  Roughly speaking, these are wealthy and/or highly educated people, with lives and histories far removed from ‘ordinary’ life, who, because of their social estrangement, feel fewer obligations to behave like ‘the rest of us’.  In their worlds, cushioned by money and privilege, the usual rules do not apply.  They feel themselves able to behave as they wish, without regard either to the perspective or feelings of others.  They act with a sense of ‘entitlement’.

In the current climate, this sense of ‘entitlement’ – and it is, obviously, being used most directly and frequently with respect to ‘Partygate’ - is being used to explain this awful behaviour.  Ordinary people did not have parties because they knew the rules applied to them, and there was a pandemic going on, so they followed the rules; these other people behaved as if the rules didn’t apply to them, which is to say they behaved with an air of entitlement.  We are the rich, the posh, the powerful, we can do what we like; you are the poor, the small, the lowly, you must do what you’re told.

Which is all well and good - but I fear it may be wrong.  Because this entitlement thing is much broader than that, and is in fact way out of hand, and is now – I believe – an established part of modern (individualistic, perhaps even solipsistic) culture.  If I’m right then this is bad not only in and of itself (we are living in a time of relentlessly bristling hostility and belligerence that is almost Hobbesian in its implications) but also because it may be the means by which Johnson survives.  The latest survey data may show that the overwhelming majority of the great British public think he has lied about the parties: and a similar majority is probably aware that he’s an over-privileged Etonian with a life history far-removed from ‘normal’; but Johnson’s conduct, insofar as it embodies ‘entitlement’, is weirdly similar to the behaviour of millions of ordinary citizens.

For example:

I walked past a children’s sandpit the other day.  It was one of those lovely warm early spring days we’ve been having.  A dog was running around like crazy in the sand, and several (young) children nearby were conspicuously not playing in the sand.  A big sign by the sandpit explained the rules, which included – of course – the injunction ‘No Dogs’.

Imagine, if you will, the expression on the faces of the couple as I asked them “Is that your dog?”  Do you think they were meekly sorry?  Or did they bristle fiercely with their rights, their entitlement?

Or how about these:

When I was a young father, we used to call them ‘the special people’.  They believe themselves to be special: they can park where they like, without regard to others, certainly without regard to people trying to use the pavement, or people trying to turn left or right.  They are immune to double yellow lines. They drive how they like, park how they like, and react with venom if challenged in any way.  They are ‘entitled’. (And these days, as well as there being more of them, they have much bigger cars.)

Or: in the pub, the other week, a beer garden, another lovely day, perhaps a Sunday, a smattering of walkers and cyclists and couples and one or two dogs and one or two children.  And a group of men, eight of them, loud and spitting, swearing and necking Stella as if the bar would soon close, abrasive and intimidating, spoiling everyone’s peaceful Sunday lunchtime.  How else to explain their behaviour?  They had worked hard during the week, earning the cash.  (Their over-endowed Germans cars were splayed in the car-park.) They were wearing the uniform: awkwardly tight trousers, top-brand deck shoes, expensive shirts.  They had worked for their money, and now they were spending it, and they were fucking entitled to behave however the fuck they wanted.  You got a problem with that mate?

I could go on, but you get the picture.  Decades of consumerist individualism have bred and reinforced a belief that you can behave however you want, because you matter, because you’ve worked hard, and you deserve it, and you – yes you – are entitled.  You don’t need to have gone to Eton, you don’t even need to be that rich.  You’re just as entitled as them.  Fuck everyone else.  All that ‘community’ bollocks.  I can park where I like.  I can drink as much as I want and I can shout and swear as loudly as I want.

And I can party when and where I want.  That’s all that Johnson was doing.  Entitled?  Yeah.  Just like the rest of us.