Wish Fulfilment.
#entitlement #privilege #generational difference #disdain #conflict
If only ‘entitlement’ was a Gen Z issue. If only it was that easy.
Values conflict involving ‘entitlement’ and ‘privilege’ is a prevailing human issue. It’s a mechanism of expressing confusion and conflict. Perceived differences in class, age, maturity, culture and gender are often the cause. It’s a problem because the conflict is usually covert. Soon you have a hidden barrier to alignment and cohesion.
It’s always worth exploring. Organisations that can harness difference for better decision making and innovation will always win. Those that can’t experience the cost of difference.
This is not exclusively a Gen Z issue.
Entitlement and wish fulfilment play out in most differences between generations. Sometimes in very obvious ways. Sometimes in subtle ways and in a stealth manner.
The thing is, all generational difference is loaded. Loaded with contempt, longing, faded memories, misunderstanding and judgment. To be young. To be old. To be in between.
Wish fulfilment means the satisfying of unconscious desires or fantasies. Freud was all over it. He saw it as a form of repression and it arose from taboos and guilt set by societies’ expectations. A person’s ego was in conflict. Simply, it represents the struggle humans experience when a desire is unmet because a group sees the choice as unpalatable.
’Id’ is desire. ‘Superego’ is morality. Both operate in the subconscious leaving our ‘ego’ to do its best to reconcile the tension. As an aside, check out Richard Linklater’s film “Hit Man” on Netflix for a modern take on this dilemma.
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Wish fulfilment is a big deal. Wishes and desires never realised cause a person pain. A pain and longing that’s not obvious to the person. Instead, this pain is taken out on any person or group who is seen to be living a life of wishes fulfilled. Arguably it’s a form of jealousy. But, it’s not that simple. Jealousy is more transparent and more transient. The struggle of the ego to meet desire and avoid moral rejection is a life long struggle. A struggle that most of us are unaware of.
Every generation has experienced disdain for the generation that came before it. Every generation has experienced disdain for the emerging generation.
Let’s understand the struggle. Expectations of others means you cannot fulfil a true desire. A true desire is not embraced by the morality of the time. And it reaches peak pain when the thing you always desired is ‘standard’ for the emerging or current generation. Resentment can take hold quickly. It takes in the more complicated components of our times.
Three examples of workplace changes that can cause a struggle between generations.
1. Parental leave.
2. Jobs for life vs side hustles. ‘Do your time’ vs ‘What’s next’.
3. Diversity efforts and requirements.
It played out recently in ‘work from home.’ A generation of people experiencing frustration that they didn’t get to work from home early in their careers. What did they do to resolve the internal conflict? Many chose to control the situation in a way that was ‘over the top’. Counting every moment a person was physically located at an office. Many chose to make ‘work from home’ a new taboo. Arguing, without data, that productivity was being lost, careers were being destroyed, culture eroded and people who did not come back to the office, were lazy .
It plays out in many ways. It can get very ugly. Attitudes and judgment are expressed with contempt. There is a lack of empathy.
Attitudes towards:
Sexuality
Parenting
Ways of working
Free speech
Language
Some time in the last 12 months you have assessed another person’s choice through a lens of entitlement, through privilege and when you did, it’s likely you experienced a level of disdain and contempt.
These moments are loaded with intense feelings. Feelings that don’t always match the moment. You can find yourself feeling angry towards a group of people who you have never met. This group could care less about you and your thoughts. Yet you find yourself wanting to put that group in their place. In other words, to feel the way you felt when your needs were not being met.
It’s not your fault. Your subconscious, the home of dreams, is a powerful force that is not easy to control. It’s easy to see it in others. Not so easy to see it in yourself.
You can do your own experiment to see how much ‘wish fulfilment’ impacts on people.
The Grandparent Test.
Ask a grandparent what they think of parenting today.
Ask that same person whether kids of today are experiencing more anxiety than their generation.
Maybe even ask that person what they would do to solve the anxiety crisis.
Ask them their views on pronouns.
Do they think parenting today is easier or harder than when they were a parent?
Values are really tricky. A values conflict is driven by a deeper subconscious. Which means it’s less logical. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It means that the likelihood of resolving it with logic is highly unlikely.
What might generations have different values about. Here’s some that have caused debate and heated discussion in our home.
Are your on line friends the same as in real life friends?
What are the limitations of free speech? When is it no longer free?
Can you force people to take vaccines?
When can an employer impart its political views on to an employee?
When can an employee impart political views on to an employer?
When does the art get separated from the artist? What if the art is beautiful and the artist is ugly?
Can society cancel someone without a trial by their peers?
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Most strong feelings towards a person as privileged or entitled is coming from your own wish fulfilment.
Let’s be clear what this means. A person may genuinely have ‘unrealistic expectations’. A person may expect a promotion every year. A person may expect opportunities that someone far more senior does not expect. A person may be acting or behaving in a manner that many people would say is ‘privileged or ‘entitled.’ Entitled behaviour is a thing. It is legitimate. Some individuals are behaving in line with a life of unrealistic and high expectations.
But.
The reason you care so much is because of your own unfulfilled wishes and desires.
The good news. In most cases, if you feel another person is entitled you can flip it on to yourself. Take something that causes you grief and use it to resolve something important in your life.
What am I not getting now that I really need?
How can I meet my own needs now?
What does this strong reaction mean for me? What am I missing?
Is my reaction really about this person’s entitlement or is it something I need to do?
Anything that causes you to be fired up and frustrated creates energy. You have choice over where you direct that energy. Energy directed randomly at a group of people who you don’t know is wasted. You are unlikely to change their behaviour. But you can change your own.
Redirecting energy to discovery and resolving unfulfilled wishes and desires is smart.