There are winners and losers. When you sit to play chess, you’re accepting the possibility you come out on top or are left to pick up the pieces. This isn’t so different from everyday life, where people of all creeds are forced into the dichotomy of the pawn against its monarch, the citizens against their oppressive structures.
Problems begin to arise when everything is a game. If every possible social sphere is turned into an engine that churns out winners and losers, we lose the capability of collaboration and the freedom to be wrong or “deficient” in any given area.
Depending on the board they compete on, if a participant loses, they not only lose the associated glory that comes with victory; they’re also categorically punished. Therefore, failing is discouraged.
But failures are also necessary to the game’s structure and are, in many ways, its core objective. In chess, a winner and loser must be crowned (if there is no draw). In life, there must be a group that can be pointed to as “what not to do;” a group that is deprived of their wants and needs as motivation for everyone else still caught in the throes of the game.
In meritocratic systems, or systems that base one’s right to resources and social status on their merit, the objective is to earn the right to life through many simple victories. The American capitalist and educational institutions also hold this same idea in high regard: People earn their piece.
All one has to do is beat their opponents to earn a piece of “the good life.” Victory is just within reach, ripe for the picking. And when people fail, the blame lies on them. They didn’t try hard enough. They didn’t put their best foot forward. Failure.
But losing does not strip a person’s true worth. Losing their game only means they’ve not met the qualifications those in power see as valuable. However, losing their game can set a person on a discouraging path toward continued failure.
Showing up to a chess match without knowing the knight moves in an L-shape or that the king moves one space at a time puts a person at a massive disadvantage. If every time a person is forced to show up to play, without enough practice or sleep because they’ve been working or caring for family, or any number of things, how can they be expected to succeed?
This is the situation many students face every day with education. They’ve been categorically unprepared for this level of education, and every time they’ve shown up as they’re supposed to, they feel out of their depth and are punished by the pass/fail grading system. From there it isn’t unlikely to become despondent and give up on succeeding.
Many students work to survive while attending school. At home they take care of a number of tasks or people. Some have learned a second language just to attend school here in America. The list of challenges is endless. These students show up to the “chessboard” at a disadvantage.
The winners of these games in everyday life, such as school, create the objectives we’re forced to complete. People who succeed set the bar for success. And they order the required tasks for the next generation to make it into their position.
This can be seen in higher education, where statewide and nationwide those successful in academia set education standards. It can be seen with professors who secure their degrees by passing these standards. Whom now, as educators, find themselves enforcing the establishment of education. Intentionally or not, they restrict the valued behaviors and qualities of students to what appeals to the education system’s values. This confines the next generation to the very box they had to fit to earn their position.
This can also be seen in the workplace, where the standards for “hard work” and critical thinking on the job are determined largely by the people who have already gained their higher positions by appealing to those same sets of standards.
The problem at the core of systems that choose winners and losers is that they allow for the pool of winners to perpetuate themselves upward and disenfranchise their losers.
This authoritarian mode of organization destroys an individual’s capability to be creative and collaborative in a genuine sense, as everything they do is done as an appeal to the dominant structure: Tasks must be done exactly as ordered, when ordered, with little room for negotiation, nor free interplay between individuals.
This model also breaks down the capabilities of those “winners” in the authoritative position to thrive, spending much of their time conforming to maintain their power.
In an ideal system, everyone’s participation would be encouraged through free-flowing ideas and genuine play, allowing the inner self to flourish. An ideal system rules out the necessity of orders and discourages the subject to box themself up and appeal to the status quo.
When someone fails to meet the goals invariably set by the authoritarian umbrella over them, they’ll often sink. Even people who have made it this far, beyond the tumultuous emotional hurdle of middle school or the subsequent burnout of high school, can lose.
And when they lose, they’re likely to deplete their mental energy running in place trying to convince themself they’re not a loser.
“It’s so over. Soy un perdedor.”
It is necessary then for people to remove the qualifications of loser/winner from their own minds and to realize that a real system which is genuinely interested in their well-being is not a system that punishes them simply for trying. Nor should it disincentivize someone from ever beginning to try.
Rejecting the loser/winner dichotomy is not about setting new rules or forcing the winners to listen to the losers. It’s about rejecting the game wholly.
An ideal society gives people the chance to compete within the rules of a game for fun. This should come without threat of substantial harm to their life, unlike how it is done in capitalism; where losing can be something done in fields like education and employment. The loss of either leading their victims to a downward spiral of disenfranchisement and monetary struggles, hurting their ability to even eat or drink or be housed.
By playing the “game” of capitalism and meritocracy, by seeing every interaction as something to be won, as if it were a simple game of chess, the player accepts the dichotomy of winner vs loser, and the idea that only some people have the right to live. And much of this starts in school and on campus.
Do well, be somebody, dominate: Win.
Drop out, work or starve, struggle: Lose.
Walk away from the board.
