Ways of dealing with loserdom

[Leucosticte]

I've seen people deal with it in a few ways.

One approach is just to deny it; to be like, "I'm not a loser, I'm a badass" and basically larp. The downside of this is that if you act like you have a lot to lose because you're such a badass and therefore can't afford to throw your life away in a sacrificial gesture for your cause, then that constrains your actions.

Another approach is to be like, "Yeah, I'm a loser, and everything's hopeless, so I might as well just not even bother trying to do anything ambitious." Then this type of guy will get drunk at every opportunity, and maybe fuck mares, or something. Not that I know anyone like this, but I'm just saying hypothetically, this type of person too would probably be constrained by not being able to attempt anything of significance because he thinks he's incapable of it. In reality, some tenacity can make up for a certain lack of talent a lot of times. It just requires some passion.

Another approach is to be like, "Yeah, I'm a loser, but loserdom is my superpower. I was born for self-sacrifice." Look at it this way. Suppose life is a game of chess, and you're one of the pawns. Maybe this is going to be a closed game, or maybe it'll be an open game. It could be that you'll be locked into a position that stays pretty static most of the game, or maybe you'll be sacrificed early on in some sort of gambit (which can be done, even if theoretically disadvantageous, for psychological reasons, and/or to throw the other side off-balance, e.g. by forcing them onto unfamiliar ground). Either way, you realize that you don't have a lot of power, and that your main strength is actually in your relative worthlessness; in the fact that your side doesn't have to devote a lot of effort to preserving your existence because you're dispensable.

So you can do stuff like, say, threaten the opposing queen, and force the other side to retreat rather than attack you, if to do so would put them in a disadvantageous position, or require them to make an unfavorable trade, or cause them to lose tempos. Your side would have to be more careful in its use of a more valuable piece, because the other side could threaten it and require your side to take action to avert the danger; in contrast, threats against a pawn are not really as significant, material-wise, so therefore they can't always as easily use that to force your side to take a certain action in response.

Heck, it can even sometimes happen that a queen needs to be sacrificed. Did you know that chess is perhaps the only game where a piece can go transgender, inasmuch as a pawn can become a queen? Yet, that queen may have to be sacrificed, perhaps immediately, for the greater good.

A lot of successful religions have stressed the need for self-sacrifice. And you know what, this can be a source of comfort to the loser, because he knows that the worst case scenario is that he gets to be glorified, maybe even as a saint, for his altruism; at any rate, the body that he is part of will be glorified for its success which he helps enable. People have a need to belong, and religion gives this to them. Especially in the case of someone who's a loser as an individual, he needs to feel like he's a useful part of a machine that is larger than himself, and that this machine is doing something meaningful in the world. He then is considered less of a loser simply by his having been part of that which was successful; after all, if he was such a loser, why did they find value in him?

When you consider yourself as not an organism unto itself but merely a cell in an organism, then your death is not really a failure necessarily, if the organism is able to keep living. Similarly, the capture of the queen in the game is not really a failure either if because of it or in spite of it, the opposing side gets checkmated.

 

[Oxblood]

I am a loser and I cope with a mix of the prospects you exposed here.

My coping strategy is centered on flexibility rather than on stacking copes one onto another.

- I drink a lot of alcohol.

I am not captured by the self sacrifice discourse. I don’t like the “greater good” thing.

Part of my coping mindset is thinking that I am a chosing every day to be a loser. In this case, my laziness and my parasitical presence, in my mind constitute no harm, because my coping capabilities are extremely strong and trained, time tested and very effective.

“Greater good” sophistry have no effect on me. “For the benefit of society” argument is another thing that isn’t effective on me.

Speeches on universally accepted generalizations on meaning of life, happiness, love, purpose, they have no effect on me.

My coping schedule can’t fail because I am able to improve it. You crush my copes, I rebuild them stronger and better. Copes constant improvement allowed me to learn new coping strategies and effective coping skills.

 

[Leucosticte]

@Oxblood One thing about loserdom is that it can be hard to define just what makes someone a loser. E.g., in that film Idiocracy, who is the loser, the yuppie-looking SWPL dude with the frigid wife who doesn't want to have his kids, or the redneck who has kids out of wedlock and lives in a trailer or something?

It really depends on what the standard of success is. Some dude can work in the corporate world or for the government at some job that really doesn't add a lot of value to society. He gets to retirement and receives a pension. Then he dies. Was he successful, or no? Do we judge it by his not getting fired? Do we judge it by what promotions he got? How many promotions does he have to receive to be considered successful? What if he got promoted but was a shitty manager and pretty much drove the organization into the ground?

Do we look at how many children he had? Do we look at how successful they were? What about how successful the society they built was? Etc., etc. How big of a picture do we look at; how far do we zoom out in time and space to decide whether he was successful? Do we let him set his own standard of success, and say that's what he'll be judged by? Why; why shouldn't we be the ones to decide instead? Vintologi is partly about helping people consider some other standards by which they might judge stuff, though; it encourages them to abandon arbitrary or undesirable limits on what they'd consider as options, which are dictated by others. At the same time, it might be in one's interests to be the one dictating standards to others and thereby have a double standard on a meta level about setting and adopting and accepting standards.

We're individuals and yet at the same time we're social animals as well, so it's hard to totally divorce notions of success and failure from either individual success or societal success. Mises wrote, "Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern: the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us."

He's not totally correct, though; you can thrust yourself into the battle and still lose, and therefore it didn't really serve your interests necessarily, or you can be a free-rider on others' thrusting themselves into the battle. Different people have different degrees of altruism. And the fact that people can be cowards or lazy and thereby avoid danger or self-sacrifice calls into question whether conflict is really that great of a means of assuring natural selection.

 

[Admin]

It's a bit unfortunate transmaxxing stops being viable at age 25* it's likely that losers males are more likely to transition but nobody has scientifically looked into this yet. Other great copes are

1. videogames
2. masturbation (including toys).
3. tv series
4. movies
5. porn

* the actual age where it stops being viable depend on many factors such as body length.