i just had an idea for a book I’d like to read (or write!) about people who have lost (wars, debates, elections, and other such things) but who persist in pursuing and refighting their cause instead of accepting their loss. One example would be the Confederate cause in the American Civil War, the Lost Cause, but there are many others. The GOP today may be engaged in such a phenomenon, which got me started wondering about others, historically. Historically when a candidate fails to win re-election (Carter, Bush I) he’s damaged goods, but Trump seems not to have drawn that conclusion. The Germans after their defeat in WWI seem to have concluded that they were done dirt (“stabbed in the back”) rather than that they got their asses kicked in. Even in sports, which may going too far. there are teams that are popular with their fans after decades of losing. Is anyone aware of a book or a study of the psychology of losers?
This may not be exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s hilarious!
Britain’s contribution from 1745. And there are a million books on the subject!
Cialdini spends plenty of time on this in Influence, from disappointed sport-team fans to what doomsday cults do after the deadline whooshes by…
[Moderating]
Asking for book recommendations is a better fit for Cafe Society. I’ll move it there.
Weren’t there a few Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender after World War II and stayed in the jungle?
I had a history teacher that used From The jaws Of Victory in her lessons.
From the Jaws of Victory by Charles M. Fair (goodreads.com)
There are various Lost Causes replicated in various nationalist histories. The Serbs for example have the ‘Field of Blackbirds’ surrounding the defeat at the 1389 battle of Kosovo. Basically a celebration of national martyrdom (never mind the Serb nobles who quickly came to an accommodation with their new Ottoman overlords in the aftermath), which was one of the emotive hangups over the Albanian separatism in Kosovo in the 1990’s.
One of a veritable cottage industry in volumes of military failures/disasters/incompetents. They’re all mostly entertaining reading - failure porn, as it were.
This is all terrific, although they mainly seem to deal with individual conflicts rather than with Loserdom (Losership?) itself, what commonalities and differences various lost causes share. I’d like to be able to put the Trump struggle in a larger context, and see if that explains what seems to me an inexplicable attraction to a failed movement.
Interesting topic. Humans are attracted to communal striving. We love to strive in the ritual of pursuing an unattainable goal. That’s the 3 necessary components: ritual, strive and unattainable. Human activities, both great and mundane, share these components. Activities like golf, the Marathon, Libertarianism, organized religion and weight loss.
Trumpism is ritualistic striving toward an unattainable goal. Demonstrably appealing to a large segment of the population.
Wait; how is the Marathon unattainable?
Only one winner - the others are participants in a herd activity.
Obviously there are benefits to participation.
In 1997 Paradox Press (an arm of DC comics) put out The Big Book of Losers
I’m not quite sure DC Comics approached this topic with the intellectual gravity I require. In what sense are they describing “losers”?
Roger_That wrote:
I’m not quite sure DC Comics approached this topic with the intellectual gravity I require. In what sense are they describing “losers”?
They divide the book into different types of losers including political (Harold Stassen, William Henry Harrison, James Garfield, Thomas Paine, the Hunt brothers, Yukio Mishima, people who lost elections, or won them but faced absurd levels of tribulation); commercial failures that became butts of jokes (the Edsel, New Coke, women’s urinals, the Susan B. Anthony dollar), music (Milli Vanilli, the Cherry Sisters, Moondog, Carrie: The Musical); Explorers and adventurers (Ulrich von Lichtenstein, Fletcher Christian, Francis Gary Powers, Captain Kidd) and many others.
Some of their entries are about failed endeavors by people otherwise highly regarded (Mark Twain as an investor, for instance), or national movements that never quite caught on and thank God they didn’t (“Technocracy”).
These are, for the most part, one- and two-page comics stories. You’ll feel a little dirty laughing at some of these poor bastards, but the book (and its bibliography) could steer you towards a more useful avenue of research. Your public library might even have it!
Maybe not quite what you are after but fascinating in their own rights:
The OP might want to read a History of Catalonia, a nation marked by defeat after defeat. Their national anthem and the National Day of Catalonia refer to the defeat 1714 at the end of the Succession War, when Barcelona was besieged and bombed, they lost their autonomy and have kept a losing streak ever since. I believe they (we? I reckon I myself am something between 1/2 and 1/4 Catalan) strive to make defeat an art and are quite advanced in this endeavor. Losing can have an appeal: you may feel morally superior, you are right because you are oppressed, your adversaries are wrong by default. There is a kind of person who relishes self pity.
Being proud of being a loser is, of course, bonkers when applied to football (soccer for the US). But that is something for another thread.
Yep. There’s even a wikipedia page about them, which includes a list by decade of when they finally surrendered. The last one was Private Teruo Nakamura in 1974, only a few months after Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda.
Onada was with three other holdouts. Onada’s group engaged in guerilla warfare, stealing food, burning crops, and killing about 30 Filipinos over the years (mostly farmers). One of the holdouts walked away and surrendered in 1950, another was shot and killed in 1954, and the third was killed by police in 1972.
Onada released an autobiography called “No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War”. I haven’t read it, but supposedly he doesn’t mention his group’s attacks against Filipino farmers, fishermen, and other civilians.
Teruo Nakamura was initially with another group of holdouts, but left them in the 1950s and remained alone until his surrender in 1974.