{"id":568,"date":"2017-02-13T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T07:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/?p=568"},"modified":"2020-02-15T20:36:55","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:36:55","slug":"loser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/2017\/02\/13\/loser\/","title":{"rendered":"Loser!"},"content":{"rendered":"

There will be no winners in World War III. We\u2019ll all get participation medals, and whatever it was (hairstyles? Is it the Hokey Cokey or the Hokey Pokey<\/a>? Which end of an egg is the top?) that started the war will remain unresolved so that we can fight World War IV (a name that has a nice rhythm to it) and get another participation medal each.<\/p>\n

Last week, I wrote<\/a> about banned pillow fights in a military academy, and in it I had one of my characters, Aaron Frogchoker, provide his theory about World War III being fought with pillows rather than nukes. In order that we all survive to receive our WWIII Participation Medals and go on to participate in WWIV, we should probably work towards Frogchoker\u2019s theory becoming fact.<\/p>\n

I hate the concept of war, fighting, conquest, and imposition of ideals and philosophies on others. Unfortunately, our species is flawed, and so all these things happen. And when they happen, an opposing force has to\u2026 well, oppose<\/em>. If it didn\u2019t, then everything within the antagonists\u2019 growing sphere of power and influence would be changed by the unopposed force.<\/p>\n

In war, there are winners and losers (although you often have to define the criteria quite carefully; try telling a mother who lost three or four children on the battlefield that although they are dead, they are winners.)<\/p>\n

In business and on the stock markets, there are winners and losers (and this is one environment in which size does matter.)<\/p>\n

In professional sports, there are winners and losers.<\/p>\n

In competitions, competitors compete. In competing, they \u201cstrive for superiority or supremacy\u201d or \u201ctake part in a contest\u201d. There are therefore winners and losers.<\/p>\n

When a job is advertised, the advertisers often refer to the position by a \u201ccontest number\u201d. If there is only one position open, there will be only one person hired. He or she is the \u201ccontest winner\u201d. By definition, the unsuccessful applicants are the losers.<\/p>\n

Then why, in the name of all that is sensible, logical and real<\/em>, do so many people believe in participation medals and eradication of the concept of winning and losing at school, in extra-curricular activities, youth sports\u2026 the list goes on.<\/p>\n

Winning and losing is not an attitude that education and enlightenment can remove over a period of time like misogyny, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism or many of the other anti-social \u201c-isms\u201d can. It\u2019s a reality of life. Unless there is a tie, there\u2019s precisely one winner.<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

So why the stigma about being \u201cnot the winner\u201d (he says, trying to avoid the word \u201closer\u201d)?<\/p>\n

It seems that the word \u201closer\u201d has become more strongly associated with a perceived chronic condition than with an acute bout. The word has acquired a social \u201csting\u201d in a similar way that \u201cnegro\u201d or \u201cyankee\u201d or even \u201cimmigrant\u201d have. In my 1944 dictionary, \u201closer\u201d is loosely defined as \u201cone who loses\u201d; it\u2019s left to the individual to decide how to interpret it. In my 1985 dictionary, \u201closer\u201d had gained the sense of being a person who seems destined to be taken advantage of; the phrase \u201cborn loser\u201d is cited, and I remember it being used in a sympathetic manner rather than a pejorative one.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t help that the race car driver Dale Earnhardt made famous the saying, \u201cSecond place is just first loser\u201d.<\/p>\n

The \u201cchronic\u201d connotation of the word is now ingrained in the everyday vocabulary of bears of little brain to the point that one only has to say, \u201cLoser!<\/strong>\u201d to convey one\u2019s carefully-considered opinion that one\u2019s target is a misfit; socially worthless; intellectually or physically or emotionally inferior.<\/p>\n

No wonder that in such an environment, people don\u2019t want themselves or their offspring to be labelled \u201closers\u201d. And since we use the same word for both the acute and chronic situations, we have stigmatized not being the winner.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, there is an archaic word that could, and likely should, be resurrected to replace the chronic sense of \u201closer\u201d. That word is \u201closel\u201d (pronounced \u201clowzel\u201d), and its original meaning was \u201ca worthless person\u201d, which, let\u2019s face it, \u201cLoser!\u201d users mean.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m not advocating or condoning the arbitrary labelling of downtrodden individuals as losels (or anything else other than \u201cunfortunate\u201d for that matter), it would at least allow \u201closer\u201d to refer unambiguously to the point-in-time loss.<\/p>\n

If you drive a car, you are a driver.<\/p>\n

If you pitch baseballs you are a pitcher.<\/p>\n

If you win a prize or a race or a game or an award, you are the winner. There is only one winner, so we use the definite article.<\/p>\n

If you lose your keys, you are the loser (of your keys). You are the only one who lost your keys, hence the definite article.<\/p>\n

If you lose a chess game, you are the loser. (Two people\u2014one winner, one loser.)<\/p>\n

If your team loses a football game, your team is the loser. (Two teams\u2014one winner, one loser)<\/p>\n

If you or your team fail to win a competition in which there were more than two competitors, you are a loser. You are one of many, hence the indefinite article.<\/p>\n

But how did you feel when you read the words, \u201cyou are a loser\u201d?<\/p>\n

And therein lies the problem.<\/p>\n

So people\u2026 please take the time to separate the act of losing from the stigmatized label \u201cLoser!\u201d Everyone loses. Dale Earnhardt, the originator of that true but toxic quote, lost many times. He ultimately lost his life. None of that makes him a \u201cLoser!<\/strong>\u201d Pick your hero\/heroine. Muhammad Ali, David Beckham, Stephen (spit) Harper, Albert Einstein, Paul Kossoff (who!?)\u2014whoever your hero is\u2014they\u2019ve all \u201cnot won\u201d in their lives; that doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re \u201cLosers!<\/strong>\u201d\u2014each of them was a loser at a point in time.<\/p>\n

Allow yourself to compete. Allow your kids to compete. Accept the result. If it doesn\u2019t reflect your opinion of your ability, prove it by competing another time. If 57th place in a marathon is a reasonable result for you, then why worry that people could label you a \u201closer\u201d?<\/p>\n

If and when World War III does happen, and it doesn\u2019t result in our planet and everything on it being blown to oblivion, there will be winners and losers. I cannot fully imagine the horror of war itself, but I can imagine that beating yourself and your kids up for being on the losing side will be both soul-destroying and pointless.<\/p>\n

Even if it was a global pillow fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There will be no winners in World War III. We\u2019ll all get participation medals, and whatever it was (hairstyles? Is it the Hokey Cokey or the Hokey Pokey? Which end of an egg is the top?) that started the war will remain unresolved so that we can fight World War IV (a name that has a nice rhythm to it)… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[297,294,296,295,667],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant","tag-competition","tag-loser","tag-participation","tag-winner","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}