It's interesting to think about the reasons for the rise in "Poor Loser Syndrome which has been so clearly manifest since Friday morning's announcement that a majority of British voters had chosen to leave the European Union.
I can't help thinking about the different ways in popular culture that winning and losing is currently framed. In some sports, especially those with a large TV audience, the concept of losing (especially a cup final or league title) has become massively inflated - both in emotional and financial terms.
If we were to view videos of the final minutes of FA cup finals from the 1950s to the present day, I suspect that, along with the improved production qualities, we would also see an increase in the severity of emotion expressed by losing teams.
The media have played a part in encouraging this mindset of over-reaction (since it has a popular entertainment value). as has the presence of big money into some sports, which has the capacity to induce strange and unseemly behaviour in otherwise stable and moderate people.
This drift towards the "awful-isation of losing" can also be seen in popular television game shows such as Million Pound Drop, where the failure to win large sums of money is framed - for entertainment purposes - as an unmitigated disaster.
Behind these trends is a growing idolatrous attitude towards money and power. The rise of grievance politics, in which the perceived failure of the individual to achieve personal political self-actualisation is presented as the lowest form of human oppression, adds to the toxic mix.
It seems rather prosaic, but perhaps a simple but significant contribution that many people could make to what Thomas Aquinas described as The Common Good is to simply express publicly the dignified habit of losing well.
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