Entitlement

We all live with the presumption we are entitled to certain basics in life, be it shelter, food, education, employment, care, security, privacy or dignity. Should you live in a deprived part of our globe none of these can be taken for granted. That you are alive at this moment and might reasonably assume you will be alive for the next hour or perhaps the rest of the day is as far as you can presume anything. We however take our entitlements to the life we have for granted and are so casual to the point of indifference in seeking out and protecting what we have. After all it is our birthright.

We are entitled to nothing. Everything we do get comes only from the goodwill of society and that it is prepared to fund. It may well be in societies long term best interests to arrange everyone to have dry warm shelter, to have access to good nutritious food, to ensure children are educated. Without these basic steps the scale of consequential problems soar and scupper any societies attempts to hold the line. Does not turn it into a right, just a self-interest to do what is seen to be possible.

What is possible is all in the eye of the beholder, not the supplicants, not the egalitarian evangelist, not the pressure groups, just the one beholder who has the gift of deciding for that moment. Okay not entirely free choice as they too have to bow to media reactions, funding limitations,  public opinion, world expectations and their own sense of destiny. How our basic needs are catered for come down to whim and fancy. A far cry from any right and not even an entitlement.

Of course our one core entitlement is our privacy, that is sacrosanct. To have your privacy invaded is equal to being raped. Yet the State takes on itself to enter you anally, take you without notice and lock you up without any contact with the outside world, read all electronic communications, now and in the past, irrespective of subject or address, store your gene record to be read for whatever purpose its see fit and all in the name of some ill-defined Security of the State. Not just the State of course but any number of other bodies, even private commercial firms, are too granted the right to enter your property, with or without your consent, to take information or property it deems necessary. Your right to privacy is pretty shallow based. Just dont show your head above the parapet! Remember these things do happen to just ordinary people, just like you and me, not those evil twisted people, just ordinary guys caught up in some maelstrom they little know about or understand.

Never mind an englishmans home is his castle, so pull up the drawbridge. Not quite.  For example, the software you buy does not give you ownership, in many cases it just a licence to use with even restrictions on how you sell it on. Of course your music, video, DVD have restrictions on where or how you use it or make copies of it. Without touching on leases and ground rent, your house, the house that you own, may well have a charge on it. That charge might permit some other body to seize it and evict you from your own home. Extreme maybe but do not blithely assume just because you have bought something it is yours for ever and a day. It all depends on the sinuous threads of attachment other bodies have wrapped around your purchases.

We have no rights, we have no entitlements just many expectations, reasonable and wide spread expectations. The fundamental expectation that the you will be treated fairly and not significantly disadvantageously from any other person in your social milieu. Time for you to look around. In this rapidly increasing unequal society where those with take even more whilst those without, the least able to give anything, have to give up so they can have their more. Fairness and equity have gone out of the window. Your protectors of your rights, the MP's, have abandoned principle and sold out to personal betterment, financial clout or the mindless middle ground of dont rock the boat as we too might still climb aboard. Greed and self-interest abound. You are a drift at the mercy of whim and fancy without an entitlement to your name. Be afraid, be very afraid.