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The Drawbacks of Entitlement in What is Poverty? by Theodore Dalrymple

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The universal truth that feelings of entitlement restrict enlightenment is evident in the essay “What is Poverty?” by Theodore Dalrymple through effective presentation of the Marxist Theory and Psychoanalytical Theory. Firstly, the universal truth that feelings of entitlement restrict enlightenment is displayed by the idea that enlightenment is not given, but it is achieved and discovered. Being given something is not the same as working for it and earning it. When an individual may be given something that the feel is an entitlement, they do not feel or understand the effort that went into gifting or giving them the object. The idea is showcased through a quote from the essay “What is Poverty?”:
They come to realize that a system of welfare that makes no moral judgments in allocating economic rewards promotes antisocial egotism. The spiritual impoverishment of the population seems to them worse than anything they have ever known in their own countries. And what they see is all the worse, of course, because it should be so much better. The wealth that enables everyone effortlessly to have enough food should be liberating, not imprisoning. Instead, it has created a large caste of people for whom life is, in effect, a limbo in which they have nothing to hope for and nothing to fear, nothing to gain and nothing to lose. It is a life emptied of meaning (Dalrymple, 6).
In reference to the quote, the people that Dalrymple is divulging his opinions about are, in broad terms,

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