OUR OBSESSION WITH WINNING

[rhett o rick]

Have you noticed how so many people are obsessed with “winning”? It is all you hear from the right, how we must win in Iraq.

I believe it comes from our sports mentality in this country. From a young age we are taught that winning is everything. Instead of saying “let’s have a good game”, we say “may the best team win”. It is important that the best team win. We some times go to extraordinary means to insure that the best team wins, e.g. instant replays, lots of officials, seven game series, etc. It is inconceivable that a team that is not the best should win. Maybe the officials made a mistake. It goes along with this attitude that if you win, then you are the best and if you loose you ain’t the best.

There are still idiots speaking out how we could have won in Vietnam. Apparently because we withdrew we lost. It doesn’t matter that Vietnam is so much better off without us there dropping napalm and chemicals on them. I still don’t know what we would consider as having won in Vietnam as I don’t know what it would mean to win in Iraq. I guess the neocons would consider winning as when every man, woman, child and dog that dare oppose us is dead.

I think the Democrats in Congress should agree that we, the country, must win in Iraq at all costs, then set a goal of say killing less than 20 children a week, and when we reach that goal, claiming victory (winning) and getting the hell out.

Just some off medication rambling.

[texastoast]

1. "Winning" is rooted in our survival instinct

And we are some seriously surviving creatures.

And that could be a good thing, but so far, it's not as good as it could be. Back on my meds now.:P

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. What cost winning if, by winning, we lose our soul?

A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil.

[texastoast]

11. We are a primitive bunch

Sigh. The body has a bunch of built-in mechanisms to make us live. When the real nutcutting comes, generally, altruism proves to be but a nice idea. Same is true of religion. We will keep our religion and spirituality so long as they don't get in the way of survival.

These are general statements, and certainly there are people to whom they do not apply. Selfless, kind, compassionate people, full of wonder and courage. I want to grow up to be like that. :)

[rhett o rick]

18. I like your response. May I use your second sentence? I have a hard spot

with the "lesser of evils" excuse.

[TechBear_Seattle]

19. Be my guest, as I stole it from someone else.

:toast:

[treestar]

6. How? We can survive without "winning."

Unless you mean over nature, or something like that. But we have always been able to cooperate and probably made most of our progress doing so. Winning is for games, and games are about playing. It's taking playing too seriously.

[rAVES]

2. If a big lug of a meathead runs over and punches a smaller kids face in, does he "win the fight"?

[rhett o rick]

5. Yes! And I lost a lot of fights in jr hi. nm

[undercutter2006]

26. you've just described

what happened when united states fought a lot of the small nations in the last century

[treestar]

4. Maybe insecurity or low self esteem

It is appalling sometimes. The Olympics are the worst. The network used to cover the contest. Now it only covers it if an American might win. Then people who come in second are said to have "lost." You can be the second greatest figure skater in the world, and you've "lost."

Though it's not limited to us. I remember a Japanese girl got the bronze medal for figure skating and "apologized to her country." You have a relatively small country, one of your citizens is third in the entire damn world, and it calls for an "apology?" Maybe it was just her individual mental problem, but if not it doesn't speak well for Japanese society either.

Another issue that is similar is how America is "the strongest nation" and "the only superpower" and anything that threatens that is spoken of as if it's a great disaster. Others, say randomly, Finns, Canadians and Kenyans have been surviving the past century without being number one, the only superpower. It's like, not the end of the world.

[rhett o rick]

8. You mention the Olympics. Yeah the US has to enter our pro basketball team

so we can dominate the other teams of the world. Dream Team I think they called it. I remember Charles Barkley punching out an African on some team. It's no longer about competition but domination and humiliation.

[undercutter2006]

27. russia is going through the similar phase right now actually

there is a lot of misguided hatred and nationalism taking place in russian politics right now because it's not a superpower anymore

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

7. I disagree. Most of us want to learn and be better people. nt

[rhett o rick]

9. You say most of the people of the US want to learn and be better people? I disagree. Have you been

to a pro football game recently?

[Common Sense Party]

14. Have you been to a soccer game in Europe or Latin America lately?

Ignorance has no borders.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

16. "Ignorance Without Borders".

Yup.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

15. Is that what you assert as a test of the character of,...ANY PERSON?

Silly.

I suppose you object to playing "rummie" or any game, huh.

Pfft.

[rhett o rick]

17. No of course not. Just sayin there are a hell of a lot of people in this country

that are obsessed with winning.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

23. Obviously, you FAIL to acknowledge all those who haven't won.

THAT would be 99% of the rest of us.

SO!!!

Get OFF the "winning" meme that the right-wing pushes.

The VAST MAJORITY OF US, live life as WINNERS in surviving it.

[rhett o rick]

28. You have an unusual method of discussion. What do you intend when you ask me to get off the meme?

I am trying to point out the fallacy of the, mainly right wing, issue of "winning at all costs". How does that offend you?

[undergroundpanther]

10. winning meant taking all

Winner takes all,winning has another side gambling on the risks.(insurances and lets you and him fight type of bullshit)
And with winning there is an unspoken other side, the "right" to plunder the "spoils" of the losers.Basically sanctioned domination and predation of the losers..This zero sum bullshit game is based in a reaction to scarcity,and it has gotten out of hand.Zero Sum and it's festering in our perceptions of our relationships with others far too much and it's ways have got to be questioned..As people do we really want a world divided a society stratified into haves to have it all and we the less vicious forced by the games assholes play,to have less or none? Zero sum is the way cancer works.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s1158704.htm
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/sum/
http://www.carycounseling.com/Staff/BKaye/conflict%20Inoculation.htm

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

12. It's easier to be obsessed with "winning" when it's not your own flesh and blood that has to be

maimed or killed to do the winning, and when you are not asked to pay any money for the expenses involved (even though you are paying just the same).

[rhett o rick]

13. Too true. And I like your name. nm

[blues90]

20. I never got into the so called sport of winning

I don't care about scores or who is number one , none of this matters .

The survival instinct may be there but then we have not progressed at all when we continue to play for win or lose rather than bringing everyone up to the same level then we will progress when we take winning and apply a new meaning to the word .

We are as a world really doing one hell of a job winning when the final grand prize is extinction .

Oh , ford is number one and GM is number one and this is number one and now they all got their money and bailed and who is number one now .

[lonestarnot]

21. I am not obsessed with winning.

Hope you enjoyed your off medication rambling.

[Bucky]

22. Another description for "obsessed with winning" would be "Understands what's at stake"

If you're interested in politics this year and you're not obsessed with winning, you're out of focus.

[undercutter2006]

24. that doesn't even make any sense when you apply it to iraq

there is no clear definition of victory in iraq at all

we can still stabilize the level of violence and end up with democratically elected islamic government that oppresses the hell out of their women and refuses to give us good contracts for oil, i doubt that's what the republicans mean by victory though

[rhett o rick]

29. Trying to put myself in their heads, which itself is frightening, I would guess that winning

to them is to put a dictator in place, like Saddam, that will allow the US to steal all their oil. They put Saddam in place but as typical of such a person, he turned on them so they had to take him out. But there is another theory that they are happy with the chaos as it allows them to play the fear card. As long as we are fighting in Iraq (or Iran), it is proof that there MUST be terrible terrorists wanting to kill us.

[treestar]

30. If you really press them, they will not answer

Change the subject, call you names, whatever, but they cannot define winning either. I have concluded that they just like war. They like cheering on the great big country over the little third world country as if it's an equal match.

I honestly believe that the kool-aid drinkers (other than those who are religiously insane, who do have an "explicable" reason for cheering on wer in the middle east) simply find that the Muslims/Arabs are a group they can focus their bloodthirsty hatred on without being accused of racism or political correctness - and they will let our troops die for that emotional satisfaction.

When you go ahead and do it anyway, they can just sneer and snidely ask if you want "them" to come and kill you or force you to wear a burka, etc. Which does not fit with their usual concepts of male/female relationships, either. You'd think the situation of the Muslim male, as they see it, would cause them to embrace Islam immediately.

[undercutter2006]

25. GREAT POINT on vietnam

I still don't understand what all these idiots are whining about when they say 'we should not have lost if vietnam'. If we 'won' in vietnam would the world situation be any different today? Vietnam was just a completely useless war, just like this one