Desire and the Child

We're all just different levels of Child.

My daughter, Shion, throws a much greater fit when something she has is taken away than when she can't have something she think she wants.  People get used to things being theirs, and regardless of whether they are entitled to them or not, and regardless of whether they can even really be owned or not, they experience acute separation when they're removed.  You see it all over.  I have a first-come, first served policy for seating in my computer lab at school, and students get in the habit of sitting in a certain place.  If they arrive to see someone in the computer station they normally use, they pretend that it's theirs, even though I've told them not to get attached to a particular station because of the policy.

You might think that as we grow and mature, we'd leave those pain inducing prejudices aside.  But we don't and the stakes are even higher.  Government and its purpose and its limitations and laws and their interpretation establish what someone is legally entitled to are a huge threat to the fiscal stability of this country.  The idea that we should be receiving something from government for unemployment, personal compensation for disaster relief, welfare, and more are things that we may be legally entitled to but taking a look at the whole scheme of life from a simple "living being making their way in the world" sense, the expectation that we should receive ANYTHING from anyone that we haven't specifically worked for under some sort of mutual contract or agreement, the actual entitlement goes away.  There was a time before social security and welfare, but once they were established, we got used to them and now we believe they are some sort of absolute right.  And it's bankrupting our country.