Everyone is a winner mentatlity

[Whizzy]

Lately more and more schools (not college level though) have been striving for an everybody is a winner mentality. What does everything think about this? I can see it having some positive feedback such as helping lower self esteem people or winners to not think themselves better than everyone. The list of cons seems much greater in my opinion though.

 

[Oskar]

I think it is well intentioned but only a pseudo-solution to the problem it's an attempting to address, which is, on the surface, inequality. Why do people want to eliminate inequality? Is this yet another example of humans trying to control nature (which is neither bad nor good, though sometimes foolish) including one another? My opinion is that many people misinterpret equality to mean that all people deserve to be treated the same (fairness ethics -- blah), instead of treating everyone with Love (in a Frommian / the original meaning of Golden Rule sense. That is, as one). Fairness ethics (which interestingly is the primary ethical byproduct of capitalism) actually propagates the idea that we should not feel responsible for one another, and we should feel proud that we are "self-sufficient". But what most think of as self-sufficiency is actually the inability / lack of necessity (in a life or death sense) to relate to other humans outside of herd logic. Conformity becomes the primary solution for overcoming seperateness -- separateness being the real problem here, as it has always been. It's actually quite simple: societies need people to conform so they can continue functioning as smoothly as possible, and modern communications technology (as a biproduct of capitalism) has enabled societies to spread conformity to heights never before reached. However, conformity is incomplete at helping individuals overcome seperateness. When everyone is a winner complacency grows and conformity spreads and is even considered normal, and anyone outside what society decides is "normal" is (ironically) ostracized to an even greater extent. At the same time the other two solutions to overcoming seperateness are repressed -- one because it can be equally destructive as it is constructive (orgiastic solution -- sex, drugs, peak experiences), and the other because it can lead to too much social deviance for a society to remain centralized (creative solution -- productive engagement -- deciding what you do and then doing it, not so much assembly line style work). Each solution has its own problems, but a balance between the three historically seems to make for the healthiest society. Of course, it's not as simple as all that.

-Oskar

P.S. Everyone's a winner mentality is moving into many colleges as well, just to a lesser extent. It's not like kids with this mindset are all entirely rewired when they get to universities.

 

[Rage]

This is an interesting topic, thought that I might give my two cents on it.

Everyone is a winner mentality = entitlement; the masses get entitled and feel that they are owed something from government, society, and other people in their lives. The “nice guy” phenomenon of “I’m a nice, cool great guy why can’t she see that” is a resultant of this (and their paradigm is made the norm vs. the people intent on becoming skilled seducers who say “what could I do to make myself more attractive and more desirable to women”).

The girlschase article “Are you smart? Why it doesn’t matter any way” I think talks about this a bit how people are conditioned into not valuing hard work. In days of the past kids would be encouraged to do hard work and would be told that hard work builds character. Today, kids are told (by Disney and media and stuff, forget which article it was but Chase narrated this really well somewhere) that they all deserve to live happily ever after, find the person of their dreams, and get all that they wish for just by wishing it.

That’s the key thing above (the bold text): mainstream brainwashing ingrain in people’s minds that they are all winners, that they all deserve what they want (instead of the truth which is that they have to work hard/skillfully/diligently to get what they want) and that it is the system that should bend to give them what they want when they aren’t getting it right away.

I’m not too familiar with the origins or progress of entitlement mentality (I need to read more sociology) but as far as what it is, yeah it’s pretty much what I described above.

But what most think of as self-sufficiency is actually the inability / lack of necessity (in a life or death sense) to relate to other humans outside of herd logic. Conformity becomes the primary solution for overcoming seperateness -- separateness being the real problem here, as it has always been.

An unfortunate byproduct of this phenomenon is that the masses that are caused to conform and think that they are entitled to things are sort of cut off from being able to achieve any monumental success in any field.

It ends up being a smaller improvement-oriented minority then that sees that “you have to work hard and smart to get what you want” and that it isn’t handed to them, that no one owes it to them, and that nothing just handed to them externally out of thin air will ever have value in comparison to achievements that they have personally earned.