It is useful to have the concept of a winner when you are trying to promote excellence of a capability that inheres in the individual.
Yes and no. The problem is that what “winner” means in modern capitalist society is not proven to be anything at all universal and so we can’t rely on it as a word that is accurate and consistent in describing “competition” throughout history (“competition” being another word that has the same problems).
In trying to come up with a more universalized way it can be described, I would say: it is useful to have the concept of success and fail states (partial or total), of quantifiably better and quantifiably worse, and these things showing up in outcomes, in behavior, in skill levels, which are relative to specific contexts and goals.
But I don’t think this is intrinsically the same as the modern capitalist concept of winner and loser, which carries with it extra baggage of the valuation of a human life through the lens of capital.
A good example of the difference, even within capitalist society, is within the context of video games.
Some games are designed in a more “punishing” way; that is, failures come with overt penalties or require redoing a long stretch of the game just to get to the part you failed at. Instead of honing in on where and why you failed, with the focus being on fixing that problem, those games are more about proving some kind of mindless persistence in the face of adversity and can cause great frustration in players, some of whom will just quit and give up.
On the other hand, some games are designed to be more “forgiving”; they might have difficult challenges, but trying again at the part you failed at is easy. This makes it more feasible to hone in on where you are making mistakes and how to fix them.
The first one is closer to how capitalist society functions; you “lost” and it’s not necessarily clear why and you might just be significantly worse off now and have to “grind” just to get back to where you were before.
The second is more like what I’d expect from a healthy use of challenge directed toward improvement (albeit without mentorship in the picture in the case of a video game); the purpose is to hone your skill for a specific use and so the framework of it is centered around that, not around anything else.
Play is even broader and doesn’t necessarily need to be about success or fail states, or about challenge at all. It can simply be about engaging with the creative parts of the mind and entering a more open and relaxed state for a time, which can help with connection and rejuvenation and so on. Play can include friendly challenges, but doesn’t have to.
So we can probably say that play and challenges with success and fail states (partial or total) are universal concepts, but “winner and loser” is much more shaky ground, as is “competition” alongside it. An example to try to get at why this is not just semantics: If I were to play you in chess and you checkmated me, it would have a different connotation if we said “due to the way our differing strategies and choices collided, your side of the board reached the agreed upon success state and mine the agreed upon fail state; let’s examine why that happened and try different strategies this time” vs. “you won, I lost, which means you’re a better player and I need to suck less.” Setting aside how stiffly academic the first way sounds, the point is that it’s more impersonal and focused on the mechanics of it in context, and actively trying to learn from the experience together. The second one is making a whole assumption from one game, that you’re an overall better player and being so vague with its language that it could imply I suck as a person, not just as a chess player, and this has contributed to my “losing”. The second also puts the focus on the individual and their responsibility to work through challenges on their own, in isolation, and receive credit (for “win or loss”) in isolation.
Even in a team-based game, we could look at it similarly. The first version could be a statement that implies both teams contributed to the outcomes and can learn from each other. The second would more likely imply the “winning” team is superior, through almost metaphysical characteristics (such as the often lofty term that gets bandied about “talent”).
Yes and no. The problem is that what “winner” means in modern capitalist society is not proven to be anything at all universal and so we can’t rely on it as a word that is accurate and consistent in describing “competition” throughout history (“competition” being another word that has the same problems).
In trying to come up with a more universalized way it can be described, I would say: it is useful to have the concept of success and fail states (partial or total), of quantifiably better and quantifiably worse, and these things showing up in outcomes, in behavior, in skill levels, which are relative to specific contexts and goals.
But I don’t think this is intrinsically the same as the modern capitalist concept of winner and loser, which carries with it extra baggage of the valuation of a human life through the lens of capital.
A good example of the difference, even within capitalist society, is within the context of video games.
Some games are designed in a more “punishing” way; that is, failures come with overt penalties or require redoing a long stretch of the game just to get to the part you failed at. Instead of honing in on where and why you failed, with the focus being on fixing that problem, those games are more about proving some kind of mindless persistence in the face of adversity and can cause great frustration in players, some of whom will just quit and give up.
On the other hand, some games are designed to be more “forgiving”; they might have difficult challenges, but trying again at the part you failed at is easy. This makes it more feasible to hone in on where you are making mistakes and how to fix them.
The first one is closer to how capitalist society functions; you “lost” and it’s not necessarily clear why and you might just be significantly worse off now and have to “grind” just to get back to where you were before.
The second is more like what I’d expect from a healthy use of challenge directed toward improvement (albeit without mentorship in the picture in the case of a video game); the purpose is to hone your skill for a specific use and so the framework of it is centered around that, not around anything else.
Play is even broader and doesn’t necessarily need to be about success or fail states, or about challenge at all. It can simply be about engaging with the creative parts of the mind and entering a more open and relaxed state for a time, which can help with connection and rejuvenation and so on. Play can include friendly challenges, but doesn’t have to.
So we can probably say that play and challenges with success and fail states (partial or total) are universal concepts, but “winner and loser” is much more shaky ground, as is “competition” alongside it. An example to try to get at why this is not just semantics: If I were to play you in chess and you checkmated me, it would have a different connotation if we said “due to the way our differing strategies and choices collided, your side of the board reached the agreed upon success state and mine the agreed upon fail state; let’s examine why that happened and try different strategies this time” vs. “you won, I lost, which means you’re a better player and I need to suck less.” Setting aside how stiffly academic the first way sounds, the point is that it’s more impersonal and focused on the mechanics of it in context, and actively trying to learn from the experience together. The second one is making a whole assumption from one game, that you’re an overall better player and being so vague with its language that it could imply I suck as a person, not just as a chess player, and this has contributed to my “losing”. The second also puts the focus on the individual and their responsibility to work through challenges on their own, in isolation, and receive credit (for “win or loss”) in isolation.
Even in a team-based game, we could look at it similarly. The first version could be a statement that implies both teams contributed to the outcomes and can learn from each other. The second would more likely imply the “winning” team is superior, through almost metaphysical characteristics (such as the often lofty term that gets bandied about “talent”).