Comments on: Hating to win more than fearing to lose: on competition, Hell’s Kitchen, and surviving in a broken world of finite rewards

By: meerkat

meerkat — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:06:59 +0000

I hate winning too. But I hate losing more. Losing because it marks me as inferior and a failure, and winning because not only does it make other people feel bad, but it doesn’t even make me feel good; after all, it just means that no one better than me happened to be in the competition, because I am not objectively and provably the best in the world. (Perfectionist much?) People say they feel good when they win through their hard work, but when I win it usually seems to me that I just happened to be good enough to win this particular contest. (Even if there is some preparation involved, it’s still luck that I was born with the talent to do it easily, because if it weren’t easy I couldn’t do it.) I have serious issues here because I’ve had working hard to achieve a goal fail horribly well over half the time, which is much worse results than just happening to be good enough already.

So I hate competition; it gives me nothing but pain, because defeat is meaningful but victory is not. But sometimes it’s fun in fictional stories about other people, preferably far enough removed from reality that I don’t feel the moralistic lecturing bits are all about what a failure of a human being I personally am.

By: Lisa KS

Lisa KS — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:12:10 +0000

I think I understand what Hugo’s saying about winning and losing–not that either winning or losing in of themselves have any intrinsic morality but that it makes him unhappy that our society is structured so that overwhelmingly, one can only be a “winner” at the expense of others, the “losers.” For instance, look at a race where the “winner” is the person of a group of ten that runs a set distance faster than anybody else in that group. By the definition of the situation, you can only have one winner; everybody else will be a loser. However, if the race is structured so that there is a set time that is considered the goal, and anyone who runs the distance faster than that time is the winner, you have no longer set up a situation where there must be “losers” in order for there to be a “winner”–theoretically, the entire group of ten could win (or even the entire group of ten could lose). Also, by setting the race up the latter way as opposed to the former way, you are actually testing people to purely objective standards–their individual speeds and running strategies–as opposed to the former, where depending on what the specific situation is, you may be testing any number of other things about them as well, including their willingness to win by, say, cutting someone else off in a running lane or using psychological tactics against someone else to worsen that other person’s performance. Though I didn’t see this aspect really coming up in his post, he may find some moral gradient in a society that places your ability to mess up other people as equally valuable as a “winner’s” tactic to actual athletic ability and dedication to hard physical practice.

I don’t have Hugo’s issues with winning; I much more hate losing–in a situation like his scholarship competition, while I’d have felt sorry for my friend and genuinely wished there’d been more than one scholarship available too, I’d have been perfectly happy to be chosen, as I would have felt that it was based upon my hard-won skills. (By contrast, I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it if I thought I’d won based on personal favoritism.)

By: SamSeaborn

SamSeaborn — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:57:01 +0000

Hugo,

“I still think that a great many of society’s winners and losers have their fates determined by factors well beyond their control.”

that’s absolutely correct. But this doesn’t say anything about attributed morality of winning and losing. This possibly means that someone who factually loses is none the less a winner in some sense, because the competition didn’t take place on a level playing field.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:35:09 +0000

Hugo, I was wondering reading this how much experience you had growing up with losing (I’m not sure if I saw that clearly), really I mean losing at things that you really cared about and wanted to win. You said that you were always okay competing at sports you weren’t good at because you didn’t care if you lost, and that overall you’ve won more often in life than you’ve lost. I wondered if those different experiences people have with whether they win or lose more at what they care about early on affects how they see competition. It’s intimate experience with losing, in my opinion, losing when you really wanted to win, learning to hate it, and taking the full measure of crap from others and from yourself for being a loser, that teaches an appreciation for competition (sometimes, it can get to the point at which one just drops out if one NEVER has much experience with winning, so I suppose there’s some need for balance there). In my experience, it’s getting your ass kicked a few times that gets you mad and hungry enough to force yourself to get better, and that’s the big value of competition: how it plays out in the iterated sense and can give people a reason and an opportunity to push themselves harder. Anyway, that’s just my opinion, but looking at your title: “Hating to win more than fearing to lose”, if it’s having the greater experience with the one or the other that determines which one we want to avoid (losing or winning) more.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:25:27 +0000

Touching and great post Hugo. I never allowed myself to be competitive while growing up either and behaved similar to you. Actually, I think I was taught to be more self-sacraficing and my competitive urges were probably stifled. I’d rather cooperate and be accepted by the group than pay the higer price of alienation. I recognized that I paid too high a price. As an adult, I’ve had to unlearn behaviors which were not serving me well. Yet, I’ve always preferred activities where I am self-competitive. rather than group activities. I can’t think of any good examples of people that I’ve met who I respected who were competitive in the sense that you speak of on the show. Most people I’ve experienced in competitions were poor losers and brutal competitors (dirty fighters)–they didn’t engender either trust or respect, unlike the self-competitive types that I’ve met.

Sam, yes, I’ve seen Seabiscuit (several) times as well as read the book. I’ve also seen the movie about Phar Lap, Australia’s legendary champion. I love horses, but I have little respect for the racing industry.

By: Hugo Schwyzer

Hugo Schwyzer — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:19:37 +0000

Thanks, STF. Livy, I hear you — my second wife was much like Kate’s brother — an incredibly competitive woman. We couldn’t run together after a while (the least of our problems.) Everything had to be a bloody race.

Sam, I have seen Seabiscuit. And I’ve grown to accept competition as a necessary evil, mind you. I still think that a great many of society’s winners and losers have their fates determined by factors well beyond their control. Then again, one of the joys of being an animal rights activist, to be incredibly candid, is that I can advocate for those who have so little agency. Animals are never architects of their own adversity as humans so often are.

By: Sweating Through Fog

Sweating Through Fog — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:39:49 +0000

Great post Hugo. You got great advice about this from your mother, and I’m sure she would be proud of the man you’ve become.

By: SamSeaborn

SamSeaborn — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:59:43 +0000

Hugo,

touching story and interesting glimpse into your thinking.

Interestingly, my main concern with much of the muddled modern leftist “justice” thinking is precisely what you point out drew you to it: the diffuse belief that there is something inherently immoral about winning and something inherently moral about losing… ever watched “Seabiscuit”?

By: kate h

kate h — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:15:59 +0000

I never tried to be athletic when I was living at home. I think I carved that part out because that was my brother’s area. I didn’t want to compete with him and win in the area that he claimed as his own. My brother is bigger than I am, very competitive, but more emotionally fragile than I am. Losing seems to hurt him more. He dwells on comparisons more than I do. So I deliberately didn’t step on the field. Which was probably not good for me (long term health wise and team dynamic developmentally), even if if made our home life easier while we lived together.

As adults, we bought roller-blades together and tried them out that evening, and he was so angry that he fell, and that I didn’t, that he didn’t put the blades back on again to my knowledge. I continued to roller-blade for years, until a muscle imbalance in my left knee forced me to give up blading.

By: Livy

Livy — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:09:18 +0000

I never really allowed myself to be competitive growing up, which I expect was part of my perfectionism/fear of failure, but I understand what you’re saying about hating to win. I also like your point about running, it reminds me of why I like to sail so much. In sailing, you are competing against yourself and nature as much as the person in the next boat over, and if you win, sometimes it’s down to strategy, and sometimes it’s down to luck. You can’t take all the “blame” for winning, and you can always soften your loss by trying to learn from your mistakes.

Coming from someone who was never competitive, it was interesting to finally discover why some people like it so much - there’s something very intoxicating and I think a bit savage about doing all you can to win. This is probably why I set very clear parameters for when and where I can be competitive. I find excessive competitiveness both threatening and obnoxious. I often feel that competitive people should be as deliberate in “turning it off” as I am in “turning it on.”