“Winning” and “Losing”, the Feud by Contagion of Human Misery, 2

The “winning” personality looks down on anyone, the “losing” one looks up to anyone. When the “winning” personality faces anyone else, he or she “knows” it is that anyone else the one in the wrong, compelled to stammer and falter and make mistakes and apologize and account to him or her. When the “losing” personality faces anyone else, he or she “knows” it is him or herself the one in the wrong, compelled to stammer and falter and make mistakes and apologize and account to anyone else. You may expect the first commandment of the “winning” to be “I’m faultless, you’re at fault, regardless”, and the first commandment of the “losing” to be “I’m at fault, you’re faultless, regardless”, but it’s even worse than that. “I’m right, you’re wrong, regardless”, is the first commandment of the “winning”; “I’m wrong, you’re right, regardless”, is the first commandment of the “losing”; and “the winning personality knows best, regardless” is the second commandment of both.

Attention between the two of them may help as an indicator of which is which – attention in terms of the dichotomy “interested versus interesting” –: where is each one’s attention? If it is on the other one, then one is interested; if it is not, then one is interesting: perhaps desirous to receive attention, certainly unwilling to give it. The “losing” will be the interested one, the “winning” will be the interesting. Because the “losing” is the willing one, willing to help by lending attention wherever someone else needs or even requires, including him or herself, while the “winning” is the unwilling one, unwilling to help by lending attention wherever anyone else would need or require, least of all him or herself. And this is detectable also when things are less elemental: One may ask questions, and asking question may indicate one is interested, but does one really take answers into account? One may be interested in some third item other than one’s interlocutor, and thus look interested, but is one interested in one’s interlocutor regardless of any third item, or does one use that third item as an excuse to deny one’s interest to one’s interlocutor? That is where you can detect which is which.