Existential Entitlement
Divine Right – An Ideological Construct
Psychosis n. The loss of contact with reality: a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia or mania which is marked by delusions, hallucinations, incoherence and distorted perceptions of reality.
– Miriam Webster
Modern advanced techno-industrial super-humans suffer from the rarest of psychoses, an affliction where we appear to have been mass-indoctrinated into the pervasive and collective mindset of ‘entitlement’… existential entitlement. This psychosis further posits that somehow, we humans were invested with some kind of special right – perhaps divine right – to exist. The concept of existential entitlement was manufactured by the new ‘elites’ (especially Roman Catholicism) over the course of western civilization as an instrument of control over the masses. The self-serving concept has been, and still is, so deeply embedded within the collective human psyche that it is now generally accepted as an unquestionable truth.
As the current global meltdown continues to spin out of control (exponentially) and we continue to careen head-long into the gaping maw of yet another extinction event, the absurdity of the notion (entitlement) becomes more and more obvious. The 21st century’s projected human population (10-11 billion) is 2000 times what it was just prior to the invention of agriculture (5-6 million). Think about it. A population explosion of this magnitude (which occurred in a mere 8-9 thousand years) should set alarm bells ringing all over the place…but it (the population explosion) doesn’t even show up on the radar. Anyone sincerely interested in making sense of the currently-unfolding meltdown should consider the human population crisis as a glaring indication that something went terribly, terribly wrong on Planet Earth.
Ironically, the more the fabric of the super-human system continues to unravel, the deeper we become mired in the mindset of entitlement. It would be laughable…if it weren’t so tragic. The general tone and tenor of local, national and global conversations these days seems to include the obstinate insistence (fueled mainly by religious ideology) that we are superior beings, that we are the crown of creation, created in the image and likeness of God and therefore we are entitled to exist…to conquer, to rule, to dominate and to subjugate. The mere suggestion that we super humans might be flirting with self-extinction ourselves is (to some, perhaps many) blasphemous, preposterous, heresy, unthinkable. We are God’s children, his chosen people…how could we go extinct.
Pernicious. The notion of existential entitlement is arguably the most dangerous and most deadly construct ever synthesized within the cerebral vacuum of the human super-mind. The concept is so pervasive and so infectious that most human beings on the planet have probably thought, at one time or another, that they actually had the God-given right to ‘be here’. The God-given right to occupy and own (and flip) land and property…to own the forests, lakes, wetlands, oceans and the natural resources under the ground…to own the Earth itself.
(Note: The document above is an excerpt from a larger essay titled, ‘Unpopular and Unpalatable’)
Dennis Lakusta
July, 2024