A friend and I were talking today about the current state of affairs, and it suddenly occurred to us that the Dr. Spock, everybody is special, everyone is a winner philosophy has backfired.
While well intended, the reality is there is no participation trophy in life. Teaching children that there is doesn’t make them stronger, more confident, and more resilient. It turns them into weak, whiny, entitled adults.
The fact is, nobody is special. Or at least not any more special than anyone else. There are winners and there are losers. The winners don’t win out of some supposed privilege, they win because they worked harder, prepared more, and pursued their goals relentlessly.
I have known people born into incredible wealth and advantage who ended up accomplishing little more than getting disinherited, and I know other people born into great disadvantage who have done very well in life.
I think children would be far better served by telling them the truth: If you want something, you have to earn it. Be better than anyone else and you will.
Let those who have ears hear.
I completely agree. It’s left my generation weaker than it should be. Particularly men who are stereotypically competitive.
The concept that everyone is a winner is supposed to bolster self-esteem and encourage people to feel motivated, but clearly it has the opposite effect. It produces weak-minded people with no motivation and very little self-esteem.
I try to teach my boy that there is no reward without hardship, and that nobody wins without getting the job done. I try to teach him that there are consequences for half-assing things. So far, it seems to be working, but there is some room left to undo some of the coddling that his mother has done. He’s still young, so he’s at that phase where he’s gone from baby to boy, and now is becoming a man. Some of it is to be expected.
Bloom, do you apply this to relationships though? I do feel guilty for having what I have. Even though I know that my hsuband and I have worked hard for what we have, I mean, the manosphere found **us** and my blog was pulled into it by being featured on blogrolls around the manosphere. It wasn’t the other way around of him being unhappy or finding out something horrible like I was wanting to cheat. But reading all the accounts of things like that happening, especially when it comes to kids being torn away from their fathers… makes me feel as though they were never set up to “win” in this.
I don’t know… just thinking… how could they “win” when they didn’t know?
Front page of the globeandmail, canada’s national newspaper the day before school starts.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/why-some-schools-have-ditched-academic-and-athletic-awards/article36159798/
Enough said.
Don’t exert yourself, it tires you.
Don’t think, it is draining
Don’t move, it makes you sweat
Don’t grow, it makes you change
Don’t lead, it makes you different.
The poor dears, however will they manage?
Government provide for them it will.
Government tell them what to do it will.
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/cadders-world/
My GF has 2 boys who are older now … once has a GF himself and the other is still at home but in his 20s. Both boys were quite active when younger in sports and according to the GF … her boys and all the other kids absolutely HATED participation trophies … the kids knew it was SJW bullshit and hated it.
Her story went like this. For wrestling they would break the boys into groups of 4 … about the same age and same size. They’d wrestle round robin … each boy wrestling each of the others. Typically on boy would be better than the others and win all his matches. 2 boys would be in the middle and one boy would always come in last and usually would lose all his matches. At the end they gave out Ribbons and each boy got a participation Ribbon. The boy who wrestled all of the others and won every match … got the same Ribbon as the boy who LOST EVERY ONE. The boy who won was pissed, the boy who lost every match and got treated the same was embarrassed and the boys in the middle knew it was bullshit. All the boys hated it and complained about it all the time … but the SJWs running the schools were shoving down their throats anyway.
This must have been at least 10 yrs ago so this shit has been going on for awhile. No wonder Millennial kids are so messed up.
https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/ontario-high-school-students-to-negotiate-final-grades-in-experiment/article36162866/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&
Includes grade 9 MATH!
Yeah but I got 8 out of 20 right, that’s 50%.
That is a pass right?
I tried really hard, and I am cute, kay!?
Call it a pass or I will get my mom on you!!
(Like the guys who screwed up the math converting pounds of fuel to litres and created the Gimli Glider.)
I give.
@stephanie, I am not sure I am following. I suppose you were lucky to be born into a good situation and to have parents who taught you well. it makes winning easier for sure, but at some pount you still decided to take that good advice rather than reject it, so I would not feel guilty. We all get dealt the hand we do, how we play the hand we get is our choice. I suppose not winning is also a choice, but not one I have ever considered an option. I was fed all the usual bunk, but after not winning w the “modern way” I went in search of answers. I have worked hard to grow and learn to be and do different. Thanks to that I have found another path that is working much better. Not being taught is no excuse, IMHO. Self determination is available to all. Choosing strength and resilience after hardship is better than choosing “I am not a winner and that’s somebody elses’s fault and/or somebody owes me” or perpetual complaining about things being unfair. No matter what one’s upbringing or background, they can choose to win and they can win if they are willing to do the self work to get there. 🙂 like our beloved Liz. She had a crap mom, very mean, but Liz choose to be a wonderful mom. I admire people who rise above greatly. Liz made the right choices and has a wonderful life to show for it! That’s a win!
In addition to the emotionally abusivd mom, Liz luckily had a dad who loved her and I am sure that helped offset her mom. Some kids unfortunately get two sucky parents. But those kids can still choose to win. I don’t believe anyone is predestined to fail, just like none are predestined to win. Win or lose eventually becomes a choice each one of us has to make. Even in relationships.
In a participation trophy approach to relationships, it looks like this: she doesn’t really put in any effort to build her marriage, but expects the world out of him. I see this approach a lot, and the marriages are never happy. Those women aren’t even happy. A lot of women have been taught they deserve it all, but what they weren’t taught was that it takes effort on their part to get it. I personally counsel women in real life all the time to stop being like that, to put in the work, and to make their relationship better rather than endlessly complaining or expecting their husbands to somehow do it alone.
Or let’s say the gal who married for reasons other than bc she was crazy for her guy. Even those women I tell to suck it up. Them “not being attracted to” or “not loving” their man is no excuse. They choose to marry him. They can choose to treat him with love and respect regardless of how they “feel” and guess what? If the do they will be more happily married and have a better marriage than if they don’t! Winning! 🙂
I am not perfect and could do better myself in many ways. We are all works in progress 🙂 hopefully progressing for the better!
“Them “not being attracted to” or “not loving” their man is no excuse. They choose to marry him. They can choose to treat him with love and respect regardless of how they “feel””
They did choose him.
And in choosing him they took away any chance that he could have had someone who actually would have loved him and wanted to meet his needs 😦
So yea, they definitely should treat him well and such… they would be happier like you said if they did that but it seems most don’t.
And Bloom these women know what they’re doing when they choose someone they aren’t attracted to, to marry. A friend I knew since pre-school did this, even with me constantly trying to get her to see during their dating relationship that she should leave him alone… she still married him! I think the drive for “being married” and also having babies is really strong. And just like with manosphere cliche, it happened right before she turned 29.
Interesting to see women on this board admit that women actually do pick men they’re not all that sexually attracted to, for marriage.
Fun to peek at the hens in the henhouse now and then.
Deti…”Interesting to see women on this board admit that women actually do pick men they’re not all that sexually attracted to, for marriage.”
Not surprising, I think, in that there are centuries of literature in which women do exactly that….but the difference now is that women have more choices. If you were a female Jane Austen character, your choice was to get married or be a disregarded spinster, and your mate choices were pretty circumscribed by class, family, geography, etc. But one might have hoped that the greater scope of opportunities (marriage opportunities *and* economic opportunities) now available to women would have reduced the frequency of marrying for (nothing but) money, security, and status.
There was a French guy named Michael Chevalier who visited the US in the 1830s…he was an engineer and his mission was to report on US roads, canals, etc, but he was equally interested in American society. After observing that Americans were the most money-obsessed people he has ever met, Chevalier went on to say:
“I ought to do the Americans justice on another point. I have said that with them everything was an affair of money; yet there is one thing which among us, a people of lively affections, prone to love and generous by nature, takes the mercantile character very decidedly and which among them has nothing of this character; I mean marriage. We buy a woman with our fortune or we sell ourselves to her for her dowry. The American chooses her, or rather offers himself to her, for her beauty, her intelligence, or her amiable qualities and asks no other portion. Thus, while we make a traffic of what is most sacred, these shopkeepers exhibit a delicacy and loftiness of feeling which would have done honor to the most perfect models of chivalry.”
But the American society Chevalier observed was one in which economic opportunities were wide-open, or at least perceived that way, and today with the prevalence of huge student loan burdens, etc, I think there has been considerable movement toward the more mercenary choice-making that C saw in his own country.
David Foster:
In ages past, women married men they weren’t all that sexually attracted to for one of the following reasons:
1) Among the upper classes, to consolidate and retain material wealth.
2) Among the rest of society, because they themselves weren’t all that attractive and an unattractive man was the best she could do
3) She wouldn’t be able to support herself unless she got married
4) Social conventions – she marries because she’s expected to do so
Today, women marry men they’re not all that attracted to pretty much solely because they ran out the clock having sex with men they are attracted to but can’t lock down, then frantically search for a sucker, er, I mean, man, who’s willing to marry them and they chose him because all the other men are either already married, or unwilling to commit, and the bio clock is roaring like a freight train.
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/detis-reprise/
I am not special? I call bullshit
@deti, I don’t think I have ever claimed some women don’t marry for reasons other than love and attraction, or that women sometimes don’t marry men for reasons beyond attraction. In fact I have written many times about women who marry “for convenience” and the attitude problems that often leads to. Maybe men never marry for convienence but women actually often do and have for generations. Women may have always wanted “the dream guy” (hypergamy) but they can only choose from within the options and offers available. There is only one George Clooney (or whoever the “it” guy is) but there are countless women who aspire to that but of course will in reality not come anywhere close. I’d wager even most women end up having to settle on less than their ideal. What they may not be in touch with, or admit to, is that their ideal was way out of their league anyway. Better to honor and respect than be dissatisfied and unhaaaaapy.
@ ton ok you are special but not in a participation trophy sort of way. Is that better? 🙂
As others have pointed out, this “marriage for convienence” idea is portrayed all over the place in literature. As are foolish women who chase cars and end up “ruined women” or wise women who marry and are sensibly content with their lot. And sometimes women who marry for love, but usually it’s presented as a “foolish” choice to be led by her heart. Marriage as a financial and business arrangement beyond love is also not an uncommon theme. So not sure why that would seem surprising to a man but like I said maybe men never marry for such reasons or even have the option to? Interesting… I suppose there are few examples in books or movies of a man choosing between the beauty or the “sensible but not as attractive” gal. Humm….
* cads not cars
@ Stephanie, something I have noticed in life, not to be negative and I hope this is not the case for you, is that nobody gets out of life w/o struggles and hardships at some point. I am glad fortune shines upon you and yours. And that when and if hardships come (financial, health, career, etc.) that your marriage will strongly weather those storms. Having a good marriage is way beyond luck, and often attitude can make all the difference between surviving the storms of life vs. crashing upon the rocks. Too many women think bailing during the tough times is the answer and its so clearly not! Who in their right mind would jump out of the boat in choppy water??? But many do…. And society today endorses such foolishness, (unhaaaaapy? get divorced and eat, pray, love!) making things even worse.
RPG – Men marry for the wrong reasons as well, but I think that they are different than the wrong reasons for which women marry. For instance, pressure from the family is a common reason men will marry when deep down they do not want to commit to one woman. I can tell you first hand that my family was pushing me to marry. I still loved my wife, but probably wanted to remain single and focus on career, etc. I think that more men are starting to see that there is no benefit though, and parents are now less likely to pressure them.
I think that the difference is that men don’t obsess over whether or not they could do better. We are usually pretty content as long as there is occasional love, kindness, sex, and attraction.
RPG….”Maybe men never marry for convenience”….just yesterday, I ran across an interesting example, both real-life and literary…a “dull, common-place girl” who was going to inherit a lot of money fell hard for a handsome young officer “without a penny to his name”…the officer’s interest in her being entirely motivated by the money.
The story was told to author Henry James by the actress Fanny Kemble, whose brother was the man in question and whom she described as “very luxurious and selfish”…Fanny advised the girl *definitely not* to marry her brother, whose motivation she called out very explicitly. (This was all circa 1880)
Henry James turned the story into the novel Washington Square, switching things around a bit (it later became the movie The Heiress)
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/can-she-be-loved-on-washington-square
As are foolish women who chase cars
If a dog she is
Do this she might
I suspect that the number of women these days who actively plot to marry a man for overly superficial/financial reasons is pretty low. I said ‘overly’ because success, power, stability, confidence, are all attractive to women and many of those elements have an aspect of finance to them. Men use these elements in seduction so we have to cut women some slack.
However, I’m guessing that the same ‘it may not really be intelligent but it feels good right now’ mentality that gets women to skip lightly into marriage also allows them to skip lightly out. When these conventions were created thousands of years ago, they were a survival mechanism and not to be taken lightly. A lot of people here talk about marriage and children being an invitation to allow the state into your private life. That’s problematic and not a good thing for men.
But before the state and before children and, possibly, before the financial burden, simply getting married is a HUGE right of passage for women. It’s their coming out, their confirmation, a celebration of them in a manner that simply can’t be compared to anything in male culture. It in itself is such a big reward that it hard for women to deal with it honestly. I know at least four women who have told me that they knew getting married to their husbands or ex-husbands was wrong … but they “couldn’t” back out because of the significance of the event, the pressure, the short term reward.
Oh definitely, Bloom! We’ve had all manner of trials from not being able to pay bills and buy groceries, to very rude and demanding (and racist!!!) in-laws, and you’re right it’s more than luck often it is very hard work. I just know how lucky we were to find each other so young, and that we were able to work things out and cling to each other etc.
Even right now, he just got badly injured (his knee at least) a couple of days ago chasing a bad guy (he still caught him) 😉 But yea, spent the last two days taking him to dr apts etc. and taking care of him. He’ll be out for a month at least and on light duty.
Not his first injury so at least we’ve been through this before 😉
Oh no…. racist in laws….. how horrible…. and boring as fuck
He has Mexicans in his family… and they hated “white girls,” hated that I wasn’t Catholic, blamed me for him changing from Catholicism (which was true though lol) so yea…. We don’t see the “white people” haters anymore.
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/perfection-is-the-enemy-of-the-good/
A new post at Spawny’s there is
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/desired/
Another post at Spawny’s there would be
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/10/trust/
Mr Rogers
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/modern-attraction/
There is a new post at Spawny’s
https://spawnyspace.wordpress.com/2017/09/16/young-sheilas-be-introspective/