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| Gareth’s ‘losers’ or ‘winner’ Trump? I know which I prefer | Gareth’s ‘losers’ or ‘winner’ Trump? I know which I prefer |
| (5 months later) | |
| There is a large body of literature, and a growing number of podcasts, devoted to the psychology of losing – or “failure”, as it is more likely to be called in America, a term with very little to recommend it. Losing in the English sense – oh, how impeccably English that notion is: Captain Oates trudging off to his death with a stiff, “I may be some time,” or Captain Smith going down with Titanic. In America, defeat is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman: a sad man in a cheap suit for whom there is no possible chance of redemption. | There is a large body of literature, and a growing number of podcasts, devoted to the psychology of losing – or “failure”, as it is more likely to be called in America, a term with very little to recommend it. Losing in the English sense – oh, how impeccably English that notion is: Captain Oates trudging off to his death with a stiff, “I may be some time,” or Captain Smith going down with Titanic. In America, defeat is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman: a sad man in a cheap suit for whom there is no possible chance of redemption. |
| England’s World Cup campaign has given us a glimpse of a better world | Jack Bernhardt | |
| Viewed from abroad this week, these two versions of failure – of nobility in defeat, and of the American term “loser” – crashed up against each other via the juxtaposition of England’s football loss with Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain. The world is a mess, there are heatwaves on both sides of the Atlantic, and we’re all very tired and emotional. Still, it was hard not to be moved by a sense of competing cosmic forces when regarding Gareth Southgate and his boys – shaking hands with the Croatians, returning home not as failures but as victors in the larger sense – alongside the spiteful little man from the White House. | Viewed from abroad this week, these two versions of failure – of nobility in defeat, and of the American term “loser” – crashed up against each other via the juxtaposition of England’s football loss with Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain. The world is a mess, there are heatwaves on both sides of the Atlantic, and we’re all very tired and emotional. Still, it was hard not to be moved by a sense of competing cosmic forces when regarding Gareth Southgate and his boys – shaking hands with the Croatians, returning home not as failures but as victors in the larger sense – alongside the spiteful little man from the White House. |
| Losing and taking it on the chin is a rite of passage modern parenting seems consistently to get wrong. “It’s the taking part that counts” – a homily no one believed in the 70s, and no one believes now – was nonetheless held up as an ideal that, it is often said, has been pushed aside by the ethos of prizes for all. | Losing and taking it on the chin is a rite of passage modern parenting seems consistently to get wrong. “It’s the taking part that counts” – a homily no one believed in the 70s, and no one believes now – was nonetheless held up as an ideal that, it is often said, has been pushed aside by the ethos of prizes for all. |
| This only half holds up. It’s true that the school system in the US is fond of handing out certificates simply for showing up. But most parents I know still try to hose their kids down with a stern life lesson when they melt down after losing at Monopoly. | This only half holds up. It’s true that the school system in the US is fond of handing out certificates simply for showing up. But most parents I know still try to hose their kids down with a stern life lesson when they melt down after losing at Monopoly. |
| Still, if any good whatsoever should come from Trump’s presidency it may be this: the moral, writ large, of what happens to a person when they have a cast-iron inability to lose. This is what “winning” at all costs looks like: it is orange and fatuous and prone to tantrums. It lies and cheats. It despises those who, in a culture in which the ones who win do so largely because they were born in the right place at the right time, flunk these tests. | Still, if any good whatsoever should come from Trump’s presidency it may be this: the moral, writ large, of what happens to a person when they have a cast-iron inability to lose. This is what “winning” at all costs looks like: it is orange and fatuous and prone to tantrums. It lies and cheats. It despises those who, in a culture in which the ones who win do so largely because they were born in the right place at the right time, flunk these tests. |
| British MPs outraged at 'repulsive' Trump broadside against May | |
| Along with having no humility or gratitude or understanding of where luck intersects with effort, it is ugly and blames its shortcomings on others. It is also disingenuous. Losing as a precursor to success – a great linchpin of the self-help industry – is one of those sneaky bits of motivational psychology that tries to have its cake and eat it, in the process making failure as a concept so intolerable as to barely exist. | Along with having no humility or gratitude or understanding of where luck intersects with effort, it is ugly and blames its shortcomings on others. It is also disingenuous. Losing as a precursor to success – a great linchpin of the self-help industry – is one of those sneaky bits of motivational psychology that tries to have its cake and eat it, in the process making failure as a concept so intolerable as to barely exist. |
| It can’t be like this. Losing in and of itself has to have integrity, leading to nothing less than a state of grace. I sound a bit pious saying that, but that’s how it felt this week – like a moment in time we might look back on and say: this, and not that, is who we are trying to be. | It can’t be like this. Losing in and of itself has to have integrity, leading to nothing less than a state of grace. I sound a bit pious saying that, but that’s how it felt this week – like a moment in time we might look back on and say: this, and not that, is who we are trying to be. |
| • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist | • Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist |
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