What makes a loser a loser?
That was a question put to me this past week, and it’s a fair question. I guess I must have referred to someone as a loser, and my companion wanted to know how one would qualify to have that word directed at them, not to their face mind you, but cowardly just thrown in their general direction.
Perhaps she was just challenging me on my poor behaviour, but as the weirdo that I am, I dug into the whole thing a little more than maybe most people might, because I can be like that and maybe just wanted to know if I was, in fact, a loser myself.
There are different degrees of losers, just like anything else.
There are people, who, through no fault of their own, get pushed down on the socio-economic ladder primarily because they were raised toward the lower end of that spectrum by parents who found themselves in the same condition, either by poor choices or personal flaws. And we should all know, or at least realize, that once you’re born into poverty, there’s an awfully good chance you’re going to remain there.
Nobody asks to be poor, nobody requests that they get left behind, and it’s nobody’s fault who their parents are. But anyone who thought that we were all equal here n Canada, or anywhere, isn’t really paying attention. From the moment of birth we are rendered unequal, and while most opportunities are available for just about anyone, availability isn’t the same thing as equality of opportunity. If you’re poor or otherwise disadvantaged, then life has this very cruel way of keeping you there for the most part.
Loser in this context is simply a description of where a person sits on the money tree, and how many of us are blocked from climbing higher, because so many opportunities were denied us earlier in life that added up to our not being able to participate fully in the economic benefits of society, especially a society that claims to crave equality.
In this sense, the term loser is an economic one, and not a personal one, although the two can definitely co-exist. I could imagine there’s no shortage of bitterness such people would experience when they go to school and see all the kids with all the things that they themselves wouldn’t ever dream of owning. When they grow up and see all the Mercedes, Teslas and BMWs driving by, or the big kick-assed pick-up trucks that are well out of reach of a lifetime of potential savings. It must seem extraordinarily unfair, and it is. And you’ll never find a billionaire that claims that he or she has enough money, so that’s an added affront to the economic losers among us. Those that have want more. Those that haven’t can bugger-off.
And even being an economic loser is a matter of degree. Like the commercial says, as much as you may have, there’s always someone with more, and there’s even somebody around with more than them. Comparing yourself to others is a lose-lose proposition, but when you don’t have stuff, it’s entirely natural to look at the many people who have more, much more, and be resentful of it. I have to admit that I’ve been there, done that, and hated the t-shirt. Life circumstances have put me in a place where I never truly escaped that level of bitterness myself, so I guess I have some work to do unless I’m consigning myself to my final years being wasted with feelings about things I have no control over. So, to a degree, I count myself among the losers.
In another way, our society is brutally competitive. And there are “winners” and “losers” that are made as a result of that, although winner is too much of a positive term to be applied to some clown who got his money given to him and paraded around like an asshole. Likewise, loser is too strong a term to apply to folks who have merely been shoved aside, as if they don’t count, as if they’re nothing. But this is a human thing, and it raises another legitimate question, that being how do you get the asshole out of an asshole? I have no answer to that, because if I did, there’d be fewer assholes out there and I’d be a rich bastard driving a Land Rover, which would likely contribute to me being an asshole in my own right. Can’t freaking win.
That competitive streak is very much alive as early as the formative years of elementary school where a lot of kids have it built into them somehow to be the best, whether that term Is measured in gold stars for reading, the math scores, or whoever won the last game of dodgeball in the gym. I guess it’s inevitable that when we prize the last person standing, then all the other folks who had the misfortune of having a ball brush against them can now be considered losers by definition, in that they didn’t win. After all, winners win, and losers lose. Especially in a society where finishing second in anything denotes you as the best of the losers, which is a hell of a way to make somebody feel good about themselves, but at least they finished higher than all those other losers, so that makes them less a loser by comparison.
It’s what we’re born for, I guess. To point fingers at each other for whatever reason.
But I never use the term loser in either of the manners described above. For me, it’s a personal insult, something I direct towards someone who refuses to follow the established norms of society. It has absolutely nothing to do with opportunity and fairness, but is rather a choice people make to be assholes, a phenomenon that’s more prevalent than anything I’m comfortable with.
I may be an asshole, but I’m not this kind of asshole. I’m the kind of asshole that makes the effort to make these assholes look and feel and sound stupid, which isn’t hard because they often do all that heavy lifting for me every time they open their mouth or do something stupid.
Yesterday I published an article on the folks who are anti-vaccination types, self-styled freedom-fighters, boorish Red Hats, and cheerleaders for all of the above. These people, in my mind anyways, are five-star, blue-chip, gold-ribbon losers. If I’m a loser, at least I’m a good loser, a good asshole, not somebody who walks around spewing harmful things, other than calling losers losers, just not to their face. I called a guy an asshole to his face a couple of years back, and it looks like he took it to heart, because his offending behaviour seemed to disappear, so credit to the good assholes among us for keeping the bad assholes on their toes.
At 6’3” and 225 pounds, people tend to give it a bit of thought before entertaining any notions about pounding me into dust, lest they find themselves there instead.
That’s the thing about this type of loser. If you call them on their ridiculousness, and jump in their face, watch how quickly they turn into blathering, pathetic shells of the image they were projecting.
That guy that was throwing racist comments on that Filipino guy walking his dog was a lot less tough when he came around for a second pass and saw me standing there. The big fucking baby actually phoned the police on me just because I dared to stand up to him. Much younger than me, he couldn’t beat a retreat fast enough, although I’m sure he told his buddies in the garage later that he owned both me and the Filipino guy. If only his friends, if he even has any, could have seen him in action for real, cowering in fear, seeking police protection from a retiree and an immigrant out walking his dog.
That guy, and people like him, are the losers.
They bought into their title by choice of behaviour and choice of commentary. They weren’t born to it or necessarily shoved into it. It’s something they wear, bought and paid for with moral currency, or lack thereof, something which is evidently in short supply.
People who set out to hurt other people, or diminish them
I guess that’s what I mean by the term loser.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 