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Comment by n8tron | Hacker News Reader

My generation has been described as entitled. Quite frankly, I do feel as if I am owed something, and that society at large has failed to keep its end of the bargain.

This quote also hits the nail on the head for many of the older generations posting here. The fact you feel entitled to anything is the source of much grief. I'm part of your generation, but through the professional experience I've gained in the past 8 years, and having been put in the position of hiring people from both Gen X and Y, I've realized that this entitlement hurts you much more than it helps.

Success is newly defined for each generation. Our job, in wake of this economic disaster, is to find out just how that definition has changed and move forward.

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>> I've realized that entitlement hurts you much more than it helps.

I think this is the biggest problem with entitlement. Not that it's annoying and presumptuous, not that it's A Sympton Of Everything That's Wrong In Our Society (TM), but simply that it hurts the entitled.

A lot of what we interpret as entitlement is just a focal inaccuracy. In school, we're judged, more or less, on the quality of our own work. A teacher or other official who makes a decision based on his personal preference is viewed to be unfair. With the job market, however, as with dating, it's never about the applicant, only about the decision-maker.

We come out of school thinking we'll be judged on our merits, but we won't. Interestingly, that realization not only helps people ignore rejection, but also prompts them to take initiative to stand apart from the crowd, thereby making rejection less frequent.

"The fact you feel entitled to anything is the source of much grief."

IMHO the younger generation isn't nearly entitled enough, and it's going to result in a lot of violence within our lifetime.

what do you mean by violence? care to elaborate (and explain the correlation)?

The history taught in our schools is mostly a mix of propaganda and mythology, so there is nothing in our national identity that allows us to make sense of the 50 year decline that America is heading into. Consider that we now live in a society where:

- It's basically impossible for most intelligent, hard working people to make a decent living.

- Everyone is a criminal and is subject to arrest at any time.

- The world has changed enormously but there have been basically zero major legislative changes in the 25+ years I've been alive.

I think we're going to see a lot of frustration vented via everything from street violence to assassinations.

> Everyone is a criminal and is subject to arrest at any time.

That's hardly new. Remember when everyone from union organizers to groups of civil rights protesters could be arrested and charged with vagrancy? Probably not, because that was before you were born; the US courts cracked down on that sort of thing in the 60s and 70s. It may seem like America is getting crazy dystopian, but people in your parents' and grandparents' generations saw things that would make your hair curl.

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