What I was planning to write while reading the article, you actually addressed at the end: Some people don’t like talking about “entitlement” because that word is frequently abused to refer to any feelings (of outgroup). It it a way to make the target’s emotions illegitimate, and generally dehumanize them.
Getting this out of the way, what you wrote generally feels correct. For example, I expect people not to stab be with a knife, even if I never explicitly communicated this desire to them; and I wouldn’t accept “but you never told me not to stab you with a knife” as an excuse. I guess we could all agree about the example of (unexpectedly, without any provocation) stabbing one’s parner with a knife. So there are at least some things where we have a consensus that they should be respected even without communication. (And if someone likes being stabbed with a knife, I guess it is their burden to communicate this desire explicitly, because the default assumption is that they do not.)
Now it would be interesting to move to the object level, and make an actual list of things people believe to be reasonable expectations. Not just the things that obviously belong there and the things that obviously don’t, but also what is in the middle. Just to see which parts are controversial, and if we would get a ton of data, perhaps to do a factor analysis.
Because it seems to me possible that there will be things that 50% of population will call “reasonable expectactions” and 50% of population will merely call “preferences”. I am curious where the line actually is. Of course it is not where the actual assholes say it is… but it still is somewhere. The exact line will probably change by country and by generation.
What I was planning to write while reading the article, you actually addressed at the end: Some people don’t like talking about “entitlement” because that word is frequently abused to refer to any feelings (of outgroup). It it a way to make the target’s emotions illegitimate, and generally dehumanize them.
Getting this out of the way, what you wrote generally feels correct. For example, I expect people not to stab be with a knife, even if I never explicitly communicated this desire to them; and I wouldn’t accept “but you never told me not to stab you with a knife” as an excuse. I guess we could all agree about the example of (unexpectedly, without any provocation) stabbing one’s parner with a knife. So there are at least some things where we have a consensus that they should be respected even without communication. (And if someone likes being stabbed with a knife, I guess it is their burden to communicate this desire explicitly, because the default assumption is that they do not.)
Now it would be interesting to move to the object level, and make an actual list of things people believe to be reasonable expectations. Not just the things that obviously belong there and the things that obviously don’t, but also what is in the middle. Just to see which parts are controversial, and if we would get a ton of data, perhaps to do a factor analysis.
Because it seems to me possible that there will be things that 50% of population will call “reasonable expectactions” and 50% of population will merely call “preferences”. I am curious where the line actually is. Of course it is not where the actual assholes say it is… but it still is somewhere. The exact line will probably change by country and by generation.