PART 1 Q & As

1. What does “entitlement” mean? Can you give an example to explain it?

"Entitlement" means a person feels so good or so worse about himself/herself that he or she is unconscious of the reality about their life. For example, a person spends much money from his parents on getting many degrees. He can't find a job to raise himself but he thinks that he is one of the smartest person in this world and look down upon others, thinking that they are all not well-educated.

2. What’s the point of telling Jimmy’s story?

The author tell Jimmy's story to give a detailed example to show how entitled people look like and how terrible their life actually are. Jimmy's story shows that a person feels deserve good things without actually earning them is troublesome asshole.

3. Do you think you are special? What’s wrong with feeling you are special?

I think I'm special in some ways but in other ways I'm not. If we feel we are special,  we may think we need to be more extreme, more radical, and more self-assured to get noticed or even matter, so more and more we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction and that make us do nothing substantial to achieve our goals.

4. If you are not special, how can we achieve greatness?

If we know that we are not special and we are average people, then we know that we need to actually working for becoming better and accomplish what we truly wish to accomplish. We need to do substantial things to improve ourselves then maybe we can achieve greatness.

PART 2 Expressions

1. On any given day,if you asked him what he was doing, he'drattle off the name of somefirm he was consulting with, or he'd describe a promising medical app he waslooking for angel investors to fund...

rattle off: rattle something off: to say several pieces of information or a list quickly and easily fro m memory.

e.g. Chris rattled off some statistics about the teams.

Students areexpecting to have history classes because their history teacher can rattle

off relevant stories of some history events to amuse them.

2. Jimmy did make some money, although it was usually through the sketchiest of means, like selling another person’s business idea as his own, or finagling a loan from someone, or worse, talking someone into giving him equity in their start-up.

finagle: to behave dishonestly or to obtain sth dishonestly

e.g. He finagled some tickets for tonight's big game.

It’s a grey area, that many try to finagle through, avoiding more responsibilities, yet still taking a claim to those ravishing days of dark nights, city streetlights, pumping fists, and club noise.

3. Participation awards and bogus trophies were invented for any number of mundane and expected activities.

The ticket to emotional health, like that to physical health, comes from eating your veggies -- that is, accepting the bland and mundane truths of life: truths such as "Your actions actually don't matter that much in the grand scheme of things" and "The vast majority of your life will be boring and not noteworthy, and that's okay.

mundane:Something that is mundane is very ordinary and not at all interesting or unusual. 

e.g. It's an attitude that turns the mundane into something rather more interesting and exciting.

The mundane task of setting the table can be fun on holidays.

近义词：worldly, bland

4. Pastors and ministers told their congregations that they were each uniquely special in God’s eyes, and were destined to excel and not be average.

destined: If something is destined to happen or, if someone is destined tobehave in a particular way, that thing seems certain to happen or be done.

e.g. He feels that he was destined to become a musician.

We were destined never to meet again.

5. People like Jimmy become so fixated on feeling good about themselves that they manage to delude themselves into believing that they are accomplishing great things even when they’re not.

delude: If you delude yourself, you let yourself believe that something is true, even though it is not true.

e.g. We delude ourselves that we are in control.

To delude someone into thinking something means to make them believe what is not true.

Television deludes you into thinking you have experienced reality, when you haven't.

delusion: a false belief about yourself or the situation you are in

e.g. He is under the delusion that I am going to cheat him.

If someone has delusions of grandeur, they think and behave as if they are much more important or powerful than they really are. 

e.g. He suggested that we suffer delusions of grandeur as a football nation.

delusional: suffering from or characterized by delusions.

e.g. Entitled people exude a delusional degree of self-confidence. 

If that sounds delusional, so does the U.S. failure to address this crisis honestly.

6. My temples pulsate as blood floods my brain and face.

pulsate: If something pulsates, it beats, moves in and out, or shakes with strong, regular movements.

e.g. pulsating rhythms, a pulsating headache

 Lights were pulsating in the sky.

I could see the veins in his neck pulsating.

~ (with sth) to befullof excitement or energy

a pulsating game

The whole city seemed to pulsate with excitement.

pulsation |pʌlˈseɪʃ(ə)n| noun, a beat of the heart or any regular movement that can be measured.

pulsator |pʌlˈseɪtə| noun, a device that stimulates rhythmic motion of a body; a vibrator.

pulsatory |pʌlˈseɪt(ə)ri, ˈpʌlsət(ə)ri| adjective

7. Having found nothing, he seems flustered.

fluster: If you fluster someone, you make them feel nervous and confused by rushing them and preventing them from concentrating on what they are doing.

e.g. She was a very calm person. Nothing could fluster her.

She was so flustered that she forgot her reply.

8. And, as promised, Mr. Price didn’t go easy on me.

go easy on: 温和对待，从宽处理，手下留情

e.g. Go easy on him, Rory, he's only little.

It was always assumed that the government would go easy on them in that regard.

9. The deeper the pain, the more helpless we feel against our problems, and the more entitlement we adopt to compensate for those problems.

So more and more we feel the need to compensate through entitlement and addiction.

compensate：to replace or balance the effect of something bad

e.g. She would then feel guilt for her anger and compensate by doing even more for the children.

People who sense that they are inferior have to compensate, and often over-compensate by way of outward achievement.

My trauma had revolved around intimacy and acceptance, so I felt a constant need to overcompensate, to prove to myself that I was loved and accepted at all times. 

overcompensate: to try to correct a weakness or mistake by doing too much of the opposite thing.

e.g. Zoe overcompensates for her shyness by talking a lot.

10. All talk and no walk. 语言的巨人，行动的矮子。

类似的表达：All bark, no bite. All tales, no sales.

从正面来说：Actions/ Facts speak louder than words.

PART 3 Thoughts

It’s strange that in an age when we are more connected than ever, entitlement seems to be at an all-time high. Something about recent technology seems to allow our insecurities to run amok like never before. The more freedom we’re given to express ourselves, the more we want to be free of having to deal with anyone who may disagree with us or upset us. The more exposed we are to opposing viewpoints, the more we seem to get upset that those other viewpoints exist. The easier and more problem-free our lives become, the more we seem to feel entitled for them to get even better.

The benefits of the Internet and social media are unquestionably fantastic. In many ways, this is the best time in history to be alive. But perhaps these technologies are having some unintended social side effects. Perhaps these same technologies that have liberated and educated so many are simultaneously enabling people’s sense of entitlement more than ever before.

This constant stream of unrealistic media dogpiles onto our existing feelings of insecurity, by overexposing us to the unrealistic standards we fail to live up to. Not only do we feel subjected to unsolvable problems, but we feel like losers because a simple Google search shows us thousands of people without those same problems.

Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. The Internet has not just open-sourced information; it has also open-sourced insecurity, self-doubt, and shame.

作者很敏锐很直接地写出了当下身在信息爆炸的互联网生活中的人们由此而产生的许多“病症”。人们看起来聊天越来越多了，但深度的沟通和联结其实越来越少了，见面时都在低头玩手机，很多时候并不能产生有效有意义的沟通。人们在网上看到越来越多的知识和观点，却变得越来越固执己见，我们可以轻易屏蔽掉自己不喜欢的内容和声音，只去关注自己感兴趣的、想关注的，符合自己观点的，由此产生所谓的“回音室效应”，一旦看到有不符合我们观点的内容，我们只会去争吵、撕X，而不是试图倾听、理解和求共识、解决问题，所有人都在说，却没有人在听。我们不停地在各种社交媒体上展示我们想展示给别人的经过美化的我们的生活，同时也为自己看到的别人展示出来的似乎完美的生活而为自己的生活感到无趣乏味，我们不停地追求更符合主流审美、更潮更酷的穿着打扮、生活方式，其实并不满意于自己的生活。精心修饰过的同样画风构图、加着同样滤镜的仿佛千篇一律的照片，让人审美疲劳却又乐此不疲。仿佛我们希望自己特殊，却又不停地担心自己其实并不特殊，我们渴望关注，又为自己获得的或者没有获得的关注而感到焦虑。Such shameful life.

The fact that this statement is inherently contradictory—after all, if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be extraordinary—is missed by most people. And instead of questioning what we actually deserve or don’t deserve, we eat the message up and ask for more.

Being “average” has become the new standard of failure. The worst thing you can be is in the middle of the pack, the middle of the bell curve. When a culture’s standard of success is to “be extraordinary,” it then becomes better to be at the extreme low end of the bell curve than to be in the middle, because at least there you’re still special and deserve attention. Many people choose this strategy: to prove to everyone that they are the most miserable, or the most oppressed, or the most victimized.

"Being “average” has become the new standard of failure. " 所以才会有那么多人只求博人眼球、靠出格的举动博出位，不能做最顶尖的，那就做最下三滥的，哪怕遭人讽刺谩骂也比默默无闻要好。越来越少的人愿意去踏踏实实地努力，通过积累成为真正有实力有才华的人。面对各种各样眼花缭乱的社会新闻，需要不断调整好心态，听从自己内心的声音，尽量不去理会那些喧哗浮躁。给自己一片沉静的空间，一个自己的小星球，在上面种花读诗，聪明机警地让自己落后于世界那么一小点，让自己属于这个时代，但也能克服这个时代。