[digitalchaos]

Hello community!

I have recently become curious about certain aspects of unique human behavior that I have witnessed in the past, and need help finding information about this.

The issue I'm curious about:
When a person developes significant negative emotion (severe biterness, anger) towards others they value highly in situations or at events they interpret as a loss. Especially things others would consider basic, as in playing games or the value of ones material items vs anothers. To clarify what I mean by anger; just an extremly defensive attitude to anything they percieve as.. a loss? To the point that they start to say negative things that sound like attempts to somehow regain lost ground.

I may need some help clarifying this, not sure how to say what I mean in this case, lol.

Anything you can add would be great!

my take on that is that a person who becomes that negative is sinking to a level that is going to be hard to dig out of. and of course one would try to regain lost ground. particularly if it mattered to you what your peers thought. that's my story and i'm sticking to it. pat

[Edgewood]

I might chime in, here, if you will. I would like to draw a distinction between childlike “Donald Duck” anger over things like lost bets, lost games of chance, or any of the other nonsense that we file under the “sportsmanship” category. . . and that anger which I consider to be justified regarding the social ill known as “the win/lose mentality.”

On the former, I say to all who are angry “grow up, it is only a game.” As to the latter, I believe there is a growing problem in our culture that places too much importance in placing people in either one camp, or the other in life. God forbid that you wind up on the “losing” side on any particular issue. Personally, I think life is bit more complex then “win/lose,” and prefer taking an optimistic approach toward living it . . . I think it yields better results.

I am not above healthy competition. Otherwise, there would be no innovation or change in our society. I can understand the frustration someone might have, if they are beset with a bunch of “type A’s” each day. People don’t know they are losers until some paranoid idiot (a “winner”) says they are.

If you want to have a look into an interesting book, check out The Winner Take All Society by Robert Frank. It is not exactly a work of science, but it’s an interesting read.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014...books&v=glance

[dottie]

Makes sense to me...Yorkieman. Thanks for the book tip.

TGC