The Entitled Poor: They burn because they cannot build

They’re better than poor people. [Rich people] They just are. I’ve hung around with plenty of poor people, now I’ve hung out with rich people. They work harder, generally. More focused. The folks I grew up with, the poor people I grew up with, fairly lethargic, did a lot of complaining, smoked a little too much, drank a little too much, blamed everyone but themselves a little too much.

-- Adam Carolla in 2014 at his most controversial

There are a few ways to judge societies. Some like to judge societies by how they treat prisoners or children or jokes. I personally think what stereotypes are encouraged or disdained is about as good as any. One stereotype that shows up continuously in both Japanese and American media is the entitled rich. I’ve known a few rich people, and there is some validity to that. Most rich people I met are fairly nice people who work very hard to create wealth, but they expect things a certain way. Often a little too type.

But the most entitled people I’ve ever known were the poor kids from my junior high days. The Mormons, Evangelical Christians and Koreans I went to school with came from two-parent families, and they studied. They felt obligated—whether to Jesus Christ or their parents—to do well in school. The religious types I found oddly insular, the Korean kids a little cold, but they didn’t beg for money during lunch, they didn’t curse and they didn’t bother me when I was reading.

The poor kids were much worse behaved and were far more entitled. They were usually lazy, and at worst, they behaved like meth-addled chimpanzees with antisocial tendencies. Little did I know that they had adopted the manners identical to the British underclass an ocean away. Theodore Dalrymple somehow managed to describe their behavior. Regrettably, underclass culture had already begun to affect Indians in Britain. 



When a member of the developing Indian underclass consults me, he slouches in the chair at so acute an angle to the floor that I would not have thought it possible, let alone comfortable, for a man to retain the position. But it isn't comfort he is after: he is making a statement of disrespect in the face of what he supposes to be authority. His fragile ego demands that he dominate all social interactions and submit to no convention.
He also adopts a facial expression unique to the British underclass. Asked a question, he replies with an arching and curling of half his upper lip, part snarl, part sneer. Expressive both of disdain and of menace, it is by no means easy to achieve, as I proved to myself by trying it without success in the mirror. It simultaneously demands, "Why are you asking me that?" and warns: "Don't push me too far." It is the response to all questions, no matter how innocuous: for in a world in which every contact is a jostling for power, it is best to establish straightaway that you are not to be trifled with.

The poor kids weren’t allowed to sit that way, but they wanted to. They hadn’t perfected the facial expression, but the attitude was the same.

They hated being forced to learn anything.

Dalrymple relates a story of one British-Indian from a respectable middle-class family whose son was headed down the criminal path. Dalrymple is a doctor by trade, and since doctors are respected in Indian communities, he was brought in to talk to a few of them. A typical conversation goes like this. First, he would ask them why they stopped going to school.


“I wanted to earn some money."
"What for?"
"To have a good time. And clothes."
"Did you not think you had something still to learn?"
"No."

Few lines of dialogue have ever communicated so much rot with so few words. This was the predominant mentality of the junior high kids I went to school with. "I want to have a good time right now, and I don’t care about the future. I want to look cool in front of my peers, no matter how superficial their tastes are. I don’t actually care about the beauty of clothes, only that they grant status to people right next to me who I really care about for some reason."

The notion that history, literature or science had any important lesson to convey was alien to many of them. They were consciously aggravated by being forced to learn anything. Though they lacked the words to communicate clearly (disdaining reading will do that), they would likely impress upon the delusion that they were complete just the way they are. Pride entrapped them in the prison of the self at 14.

There was no need to progress at anything save for three things: skill at violence, sex or sports. Now those can all be fun things, and I like reading about them in literature, but I think you should be interested in more than just that. In fact, I would say an interest in something outside of yourself and your immediate surroundings is necessary for well-being beyond youth.


The Entitled Poor in France: Why they destroy what benefits them

I must have received a profoundly different education than the pundits commenting on the French riots. When I first observed the rioters in France, I immediately thought of the entitled, dumb people I’ve known. They do not possess the depth of soul to appreciate the beauty of French architecture, so they burn and celebrate the fire that consumes what they cannot or will not comprehend. Learning is hard but burning things is easy.

One of the few things I shared with my classmates was a dislike of the powerful. In a school, adults have power over you, and that can be grating. I didn’t mind it so much when the teachers were competent and ruled lightly (when they could). It was still somewhat demeaning to have to raise your hand if you needed to go to the bathroom or have to be told where to go and what to do every day. But I drew no small distinction between teachers who taught well and those who seemed arbitrary or uncaring in their use of power.

Such differences appeared lost on the entitled poor. The science teacher who really cared about teaching and the surly gym coach who took the class that no other teacher wanted were the same to them. A teacher was someone with power over them and used that power to make them sit in a class they didn’t want to be in. A teacher’s talents and the conduct of their leadership were meaningless to them. Power was power. And all that mattered was who had power. Not what they did with it.


By burning down buildings, the protesters are saying, “You don’t have power over us. We have power over you.” Aristotle recognized that man is a political animal. He noted how people trade, protect each other and work toward the common interest. But even at humanity’s most primitive, tribes have power over other tribes. Most often, people celebrate a member of their own tribe no matter how inept or corrupt that leader is.

Africans and Middle Easterners in France are there primarily because the leaders back in the old country were corrupt and incompetent. But many of them still want their tribe to have power. The French state and the French people, for all their faults, handle power better than any Muslim or African country. The non-white communities will suffer more if they achieve power in this brutal way. But to the rioters, the superiority of French law and culture means nothing. It is a foreign power, and the holder of power is all that matters.