On Pre-State Hunters and State Entitlement
Misery is the cure to the modern disease of entitlement
“To be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.”—Rousseau
The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote of the “mass man.”
In a word, the mass are entitled, and entitlement is alive and well.
Gasset describes the mass this way: They expect water to come out of pipes and shelves to burst with delicacies. They believe their life has “no likelihood of anything violent or dangerous breaking in on it.” They view their “moral and intellectual endowment as excellent, complete.” They do not listen, submit their opinions to judgment, or even “consider others existence.” They are satisfied with themselves exactly as they are. They have a “radical ingratitude” to everyone and everything that enables their existence. They have “An inborn, root-impression that life is easy, plentiful, without any grave limitations.”1
Entitlement is wretched, but it is interesting to ask why it matters from an existential perspective, where it came from, and the chaos it will lead to if taken too far. In the end, I propose a cure to this illness: hardship.
Let us understand entitlement by looking at how the unentitled live.
The Kalahari desert is made of rolling plains and sand dunes studded with baobab trees baking beneath the sun. Gikwe Bushmen would hunt with bows and arrows and arrowheads of bone. Their bodies were sinew and steel and stripped of fat and water weight. A hunter would silently stalk an antelope and aim for a vital organ, occasionally missing the organ as the antelope twitches beneath a barrage of flies. An arrow in its leg, the antelope begins the run of its life. The hunter springs forward as the synapses of his brain run the program he has spent his life perfecting. Finding the rhythm between his foot falls and nasal inhales, his bow held lightly in his grip, he is ready to move for four days and nights and over a hundred miles if need be to bring meat back to kith and kin. When blood no longer left a trail, he used spoor; when spoor was no more, he followed footprints from slight bends in blades of grass.2
What, then, do the entitled miss out on?
The entitled do not see how gold and white the stars can be when splashed across a black arc of sky hundreds of miles from artificial lights. They do not feel how wading a whitewater river and walking a narrow mountain path makes each inhale feel as though we are born again. Nor do they behold the scorpion in a tuft of flaxen grass, the bees hovering above a nook of golden honey, the scent of spoor on the wind, or the cycle of sand, sun, moon, and stars because their life does not depend on it. Beauty remains unseen.
The entitled do not savor the savage thrill of foot, lung, and sand in rhythm while rucking for meat. They do not feel the clarity of mind fueled by an empty stomach. They are unaware of each of their ten toes consciously placed on the softest slabs of sand to stalk a wary stag. They do not squirm beneath the brain-bending and soul-rousing pains of giving birth to the ideas that weave the culture around them and write the script of their lives. And so aliveness remains unfelt.
Nor do they contemplate how death collapses time and makes this moment mighty. They do not understand how a bout of isolation in craggy mountains makes the mere presence of another human—even in silence—reframe every craving in life. They do not sense how the heat of day, cold of night, adrenaline of ambush, and lactic acid of pursuit converts a bit of sand by a fire beneath the stars into a surge of gratitude. And they do not know how an enemy in the form of mudslide, lion, or warrior can make the taste of cacao, fig, or grape feel like a communion with the Great Spirit. Thus their existence remains unfaced.
And so in safety, the entitled are untested. In stability, unawed. In pleasure, unprepared. It is significant the apex vice of the Gikwe—refusing to temper themselves for severe hardship—is now the apex virtue of the entitled.
So what gave rise to entitlement, this sin against nature? The entitled are the novel, mass-produced, assembly-line product of safety, a stable economy, endless pleasure, material ease, and public order. They think this world is the real one and will forever exist precisely as it is because it was inherited and not earned. It was not built, sweat for, bled for, and died for. The crucial point is the entitled were born of ease.
Let us tie it all together.
When ease first bore its bitter fruit, the mass probably shed tears of awe for hot water pouring from pipes, cold air emanating from vents, and how false opinions or a moment of inattention did not lead to death-by-scorpion. But soon these luxuries became bland. Boring. The mass assumed such gifts would last forever. They became entitled, and were “…not interested in the principles of civilization.” A structure was built around them and they did not understand or care how it came to be. Gasset warns us what happens next: “When the mass suffers any ill-fortune or simply feels some strong appetite, its great temptation is that permanent, sure possibility of obtaining everything—without effort, struggle, doubt, or risk—merely by touching a button and setting the might machine in motion.”
That machine is the state.
And thus the Gikwe becomes the mass, the mass becomes entitled, the entitled become the state, and the state becomes all.
It seems the entitled know neither the primal beauty of pre-civilization nor the wondrous luxuries of civilization. They know neither the savage pleasure of what it is to fight for life nor the follow on pleasure of what it is not to have to fight for life. They know nothing, but unlike Socrates they do not know they know nothing.
The irony is striking: those who bled and sweat to free their descendants from hardship brought on a far greater threat—freedom from hardship.
What then?
The entitled are victims of their environment, and yet they cling to this victimhood like a drowning man clutching his smart phone and not the rope that can save him. The entitled do not want nature to wake them up so much as they want the state to remove the burden of ever having to wake up again.
And so we are left with some epic questions: How do we bring back a Gikwe mode of mind—savage, grateful, alive—and merge it with modern comfort? How, at last, do we convince the entitled to take command of themselves without the “must” of nature?
Hardship. Voluntary hardship.
For what are eyes that let us savor not only the black and gold wings of a butterfly but also the brutal deserts of our species youth? A gift. What is a nose to not only savor the smell of a fifty-year old book but algae slick stone near a raging river crossing? A gift. Ears to not only hear podcasts bolstering our beliefs but the slither of a poisonous serpent, a tongue to not only taste the crystallized sugar of a fig but the cottony dryness of fear, and hands to not only feel the cold smoothness of a laptop but the bone grip of a blade which is all that stands between family and enemy? Gifts.
For what does pleasure become without uncertainty and discomfort? A routine.
And what does life become without danger and risk? A fiction.
A bit of strategic misery can wake them up, for it is an ancient truth that “One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable.”3
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Ortega y Gasset, José. The Revolt of the Masses. Translated by Anonymous, W. W. Norton & Company, 1957. For this citation and all references to his work.
Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall. The Harmless People. Vintage Books, 1989.
Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
You’re circling around something important, Sam — love watching it evolve.
Lacing them up now, and taking my 30 lb vest for a walk to watch the sun rise at the ocean. Thanks , Sam. And yes, it’s voluntary. Intentional as well.