Gleeful losing

 I was listening to a podcast about cricket of all things and had an interesting little epiphany. 

The setup was about a particularly challenging match that was recently played where the general expectation was that one side was going to dominate and had potentially stacked the deck against the other side.  The final result was that the underdogs got the win, but thats not the point I am playing with.

The point is that going into that match, what is the mindset of the players?  They know that the match is important, so they cannot pretend that its not.  They have to find something in their mindset that is almost "gleefully defiant" even facing inevitable defeat (according to the media). They need to go into the match looking for ways to make their opponents bleed at every opportunity, not from spite (as that just doesn't last) but from some form of joy.  They have to genuinely find some joy in every little movement and task that they need to perform within the match and the leadup. 

Some of the players have spent their adult lives training and competing to this point and to go into the match without a positive joyful mindset would make everything a grind.  At some point that would break even the most stoic player. 

Someone showed me a meme about Sisyphus pushing the bolder but happy.  It completely changes the way that the task gets perceived.  It made me wonder about how to communicate that kind of task to a group.  It also reminded me of some of the more challenging mindsets of farmers in dry areas or during droughts, who are trying to keep their farms going or having to make hard decisions about reducing their flocks.  How do they find a perspective to keep walking forward? 

I have in my head some of the pep talks that I have seen given to troops in various war movies before they do something lethally stupid and how their leaders give them a mindset to do the impossible and illogical tasks in front of them.  Often its not in terms of winning but "going down in some spectacular fashion". For instance, the Spartans seeking a glorious death.

I think  the concept of "gleefully defiant" is as close as I can get to that mindset.  Deciding that even though you might be loosing, there is some dignity and self worth in stepping up and making the world bleed a little before you go. 

Perhaps this is a uniquely rural Australian thing.  I seem to have met quite a few people who have some variation of this philosophy.  Confronting the impossible but going and doing it anyway with a "Fuck it, lets see if we can make it cry before it gets us" kind of attitude.   I suspect we would find similar attitudes in other harsh environments... I just have no experience with those folk to speak from.  

I cannot really say that I have heard this point of view described with a pithy phrase that sticks in my head, but I feel like I have encountered it. Equal parts fatalist mixed with clenched teeth pig headedness and a dash of defiance.

Sisu, grit, determination, courage, tenacity etc all have some sense of possible winnning encoded in the idea.  The tasks may be difficult and take a resolute frame of mind, but they still see a chance of winning, right from the start. Often the situation is painted as some stubborn person who sees the chance, and is determined to "show them all". 

The "gleeful losing"mindset I am thinking about involves an acceptance of the inevitable failure before it even starts.  The insurmountable odds, the "no chance at all" kind of mentality.   But couched in terms that make it into an almost manic frame of mind to make the sacrifice matter, if only by denting the opponents Armour. 

The interesting thing is that the mindset still engenders a very focused and productive performance.  There is no sense of just fucking around, its more about finding the opportunities to wound the opposition.  Wasting the opportunity is almost the antithesis of the idea, showboating or just going out in a blaze of glory are just different ways to get it over with.  But being determined and focused, while still accepting that no one thinks its going to matter is one step from stupid or just nuts most of the time.  Its similar to the "Failure to disengage" or gamblers fallacy, where they believe they are always just about to win. 

I feel like I have talked myself around in a circle but I still think there is an interesting point of view in there somewhere that applied to sport could give some athletes a way of looking at their performance in ways that they have not yet considered.  

Not quite sure how this mindset works in other area of life.  Most people are not ready to do start tasks that have no obvious chance of success.   Especially not without some alternative value proposition. (Cheer squads, money etc) 

Does make you wonder if this mindset is all around us in the form of people who have done terminally stupid things and written themselves out of history and its really only in the safe space of a sport that we can really observe and celebrate this mindset without the usually lethal consequences. 

Something for the researchers perhaps...

Do Women lie to each other for social reasons

 I ran across a video about Women lie to each other but did not save the link. 

It explained the idea that women are often in small social groups and will lie to each other to maintain social harmony and cohesion.  Because they are essentially "stuck" with the group.  When there is a difficult conversation, its more straight forward to bullshit, even casually, that it is to confront an unpleasant reality.  Either the person who is being "told" will lose face and potentially blame the "teller" or the "teller" will lose face for doing the telling... and the other women in the group will all have their opinions about who did what and why... drama ensues.  This ties in with the "indirect" nature of a great deal of female communication around what they see as difficult topics. Their social status and the derived social status of their children and mate often depend on how carefully they can navigate the intricacies of these social games.

A point was made in the video about how women will lie to men and expect men to lie to them in the same way, but men operate my different rules, which results in unexpected conflict. 

Men on the other hand, within their male groups often take delight in calling each other out with the bluntest public reality checks. This ties into the realities of making sure each of them is well grounded about any weaknesses they have and shortcomings as this information can be important during any conflict situation when the men need to cooperate and work together.  Deceit and delusions about capacity and competence can be a threat to the individual or the team and result in none of them comming home. 

 

This is not about suggesting that either strategy is better, as they are both adaptations that have been very successful within the respective parts of society and the world. Just that there are very different strategies towards interpersonal reality checks.

Possibilities vs probability and gender differences in threat perception

I think women and men differ in the way they perceive threat in their environment. 

My hypothesis is that women look at all the "Possible" threats they can imagine and see them as all equally dangerous.  This is because if any of the threats materialise, it will have a catastrophic (probably terminal) impact as they may have children or a pregnancy and so escape is probably not an option.  This makes them much more aware of the comfort and safety of their environment.  This is where they stand or fall. 

On the other hand, men look at the threats around them and always have in the back of their heads the idea that if some plan goes to shit, they can always run away.  I think this fundamental assumption about escape being an option has allowed men to focus more on the "probability" of any given threat.  They do calculations about .... if X happens, what are my options? 

The assumption that escape is always a fallback means that the lethality of a threat becomes more nuanced... men can consider degrees of threat.  They can "test" their ability to overcome the threat and if that doesn't work, then can fall back.  Perhaps they can throw a rock at it and the bear will back away... but if not, run!  So the threat is more or less threatening at different moments.  If the bear is a long way away... its less threatening. If its close, its more threatening.  If you are behind it, its less of a problem etc.  This lets men work with threat as a changing, moment by moment calculation.  It lets them work around dangerous equipment, situations and large animals. 

This mindset makes you more conscious of the threats that are infront of you at the time, not just their possibility.  

Back to the women, they need to see threats in a more absolute terms.  If a threat exists in their environment (that they cannot leave), it must be removed.  The threat may be a sharp edge on a piece of furniture that the children are playing on, but the woman knows about it and it exists as an absolute threat to the children.  Its not about the probability of the child getting injured, or how bad the injury might be, its that the children and herself are stuck in an environment with a constant threat.  Children have a way of exploring everything that an environment has to offer... the good and the bad.  This is the nature of children.  So even the dangerous stuff will instinctivly get explored.  Thats a problem... so a woman has to see threats in their environment as almost a guaranteed problem at some point. 

I think this is an issue with how workplace safety has blown up recently.  We have a bunch of female staff who are working in small groups, sometimes isolated or late at night.  Their perceptions of their safety is similar across a number of staff and seems to be a fairly common perception, but they are not very able to articulate any particular issues.  They all have horror stories that they have heard about and some have had weird experiences that they can tell you about... but none have actually had any bad experiences specifically in the environments.   I recognise their vulnerability, but there is no actual evidence of any of their fears having ever manifested.  So, doing a "probablity" calculation in my head results in there being no evidence to support there being any threat. 

However, if you look at the whole situation through the lens of "possibility", their behaviour makes sense.  They see all the dark corners and quiet rooms and remember all the shitty drama movies they have seen and the scary stories they read on the social medias and they see the "possibility" quite clearly. If you see the possibility through an absolute lens, then they are completely correct that they are constantly under threat.  

This does however create a problem.  Essentially, we need to employ even more "protectors" (security guards) to babysit these groups anytime they are working late.  There is some economy by sharing one security guard across a bunch of spaces, but I can forsee them wanting more at some point as the spaces are scattered around more and more.

This raises the issue of the indirect cost of hiring women to do these roles. If we have to hire additional staff to be "protectors" (male or female guards is not the point) does this change the cost of hiring women in the primary roles?

If we hired only men to do these roles and it came without this "safety tax"... what kind of conversation would that start?