Entitlement

Imagine that success in human life is defined by, is a function of, survival and happiness.  The relationship between the two is complex.  Shelter is necessary for survival.  A nice house is a combination of shelter with a contribution to happiness.  From the moment of birth and with each subsequent moment until death we each have some quantity of success.  This is always a positive value until you die, but at times that value can seem to be very low.  Fortunately, in most people's lives, but not all, there are also times when that value seems less low. [This suggests an interesting possibility of a regression to a mean, but that would be fodder for a different post.]

Imagine that human society is a field or fabric of potential and kinetic forces on the success of the participants of that society.  Humans are actors within that field that respond to the kinetic forces generally by activating the potential forces in service of their success.  A person's context is the collection of forces within their "vicinity". Note that communication and transportation technologies can make their "vicinity" very broad.  Also note that many, but not all, of the forces that a person responds to are the result of other humans activating potential forces.  The rest are the result of physics and its assorted laws.

The notion of influence, in particular social influence, is the act of one human activating a force with the intent of getting another human or humans to activate forces available to them. [The notion of "control" is somewhat absurd, but that too is fodder for a different post.]  Social interaction is largely concerned with acts of influence but is also concerned with other exchanges of potential forces.  For example, if I teach you a skill that you didn't have before then you are now able to manipulate of set of forces that were previously unavailable to you.

Assets are these potential forces. Assets can be activated in a variety of ways.  Some of these ways consume the asset, others do not.  If I'm a nation with a large military then the act of making other nations aware of that large military will influence how other nations manipulate the forces in their context.  This does not consume the military asset.  If, on the other hand, I attack another nation with that large military then that military will be consumed, i.e. will diminish, by some amount and the other nation will manipulate its forces in a much different way.

The awareness of a large military creates an expectation, a theory about the future, in other countries.  This theory may span a wide collection of possibilities depending on which additional factors, forces, are considered.  The use of a large military collapses that theory into a reality.  The breadth of the expectation may cause action in areas that aren't relevant to the reality.  Uncertainty about which actions to take prior to the reality may cause stress, which can cause a complex set of often unhelpful actions.  The reality causes focus; an anchor for a particular set of actions.  This in turn can relieve stress but can cause disappointment if an alternative reality was desired.

At birth we are injected into a very complex and dynamic field, a context, of these forces.  Why any particular person is injected into a particular circumstance appears to be effectively random.  Cases have been made for a divine influence or a higher purpose for the circumstances in which we are born, but there is little evidence for this when human society is considered in aggregate.  The circumstance in which we are born is truly the luck of the draw.

When we are born we are a bag of assets.  Those assets are not the same for every individual. I was born red/green color blind.  This makes a set of potential forces unavailable to me without the aid of significant technology or my ability to influence someone who isn't color blind.  On the other hand, many of us are born cute.  This significantly influences how others contribute to our quantity of success early in life, often extending to later years.

Life is the period of time over which we are able to influence forces in ways that contribute to our success.  [Delegation, automation, and birth are ways of extending our lives beyond our biological existence.  Another post.]  Over the course of a lifetime we generally attempt to increase our instantaneous success through the manipulation and accumulation of assets.  This is all too frequently unsuccessful, but for many as we age we have more assets available to us and more success.  

The progression to this state has directionality. There's an initial state and there's an outcome.  That journey is further subdivided into a sequence of initial states and outcomes until a single event can be identified.  An event is the activation of a force, either by you or on you.  An event is not reversible, but a subsequent event can restore things to a state that's similar to an earlier state.   A state, of course, is a context; a pattern of potential and kinetic forces.

Customs are algorithms for societies.  An algorithm is a flow of events over time.  The building blocks of an algorithm are sequence, conditional flow, and iteration.  Customs are generally created in order to maintain or perpetuate a particular state.  At a particular point in time a custom will benefit some members of a society.  They often don't benefit all members of a society and that beneficial influence often doesn't last for indefinite periods of time.  Customs can evolve, be transformed, or be abandoned.

Customs are always conditionally applied. Satisfying those conditions in a way that invokes the custom may be very frequent or very rare.  I was raised in a religious environment that had the custom of changing their behaviors once a week for a day.  The general condition for invoking this custom was the agreement that the time of the week was between sunset Friday and sunset Saturday.  The conditionality was more complex because there were exceptions such as medical emergencies. This custom also didn't apply to those who didn't practice it, and of course didn't benefit from it.  This custom benefited a few people and didn't benefit many others.

Entitlement is the expectation, a theory of the future, of a benefit, an increase in instantaneous success, from a custom.  When the custom is invoked or fails to be invoked because conditions aren't met, the expectation collapses into a reality.  Many aspects of the theory cease to be relevant.  We may either be satisfied or disappointed with the outcome.  Disappointment usually occurs when we don't understand the custom.  This can lead to either changing circumstances in order to increase the likelihood of benefit from the custom or with dissatisfaction with the custom and actions which may result in changing the custom.

Customs can be very difficult to change, but I'll also leave that for another post.