Winners and Losers

It may be my imagination or maybe it is just that I am turning into a crotchety old man who only looks to the past because things seem to have been easier back then, but it feels as if our world is turning more and more into a place where there can only be winners and losers. That is - every discussion or issue has a right side and a wrong side; that if someone wins an argument, it means that someone else has lost it; that there is no way of resolving a discussion by coming to a mutual agreement; that it is not possible anymore for both sides to feel as if they have gained what they needed to.

There is no doubt that the leader of the nation to the south of Canada has done much to perpetuate this ideology that there can only be one winner ( and therefore everyone else must be a loser). His most recent comments about the NAFTA discussions stated very clearly that if he did not get everything he wanted, the deal would not happen; that the USA would win what it wanted and he did not care if Canada lost. It may be that Trump's limited vocabulary or any awareness of some of the nuances within the English language exacerbated his stance. It maybe that he is unable to express something in any language other than in black or white terms. Regardless, while he may be the most public figure perpetuated this dogma of winners and losers, he is not alone.

Fundamentalist groups at either end of the political spectrum have always articulated the belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Such groups have never accepted that there is room for any compromise. For most of us, most of the time - we knew such extreme groups were on the fringe and ignored them as often as possible. However, what appears to have changed in the public's psyche is that such extremes are not seen as extreme. Even mainstream, well-speaking, political and community leaders talk publically about winners and losers. Most recently similar language (of absolute winners and losers) was used by the opposing sides of the Kinder Morgan pipe line debate after the latest findings of the Federal Court. In fact, part of the not-so-gradual transition to a win/lose society may be a result of the increased tendency to arbitrate our disagreements in court.

By definition, courts are an adversarial process. Civil courts were created to find a winner and a loser when there was no other way to decide who was right. But civil courts were never meant to be the first line of defence but rather they were meant to be used when every other option had been explored. It feels as if our society has shifted to " I will sue you" as our method of choice of getting someone's attention (see blog of June 27/18 - Lawsuits and the Unfairness of Insurance). By embracing this singular strategy of getting what we want from someone, we have allowed our thinking, our language and our society to ignore the possibility that in some discussions/debates, it is possible that both sides may neither be total winners or losers. We have allowed debates to be polarized so that there can only be two sides. We have created an environment where the only option appears to be aggressive; where we are not only allowed to be, but expected to attack the other side.

Perhaps I am a crotchety old man who looks too fondly at the world I grew up where it was acknowledged, at least by some of us, that there were very few things that could be looked at through black or white lenses; that many of the issues had a multitude of sides and therefore that the solutions were complicated and multi-faceted. But I can't help but think that such a view allowed us to be just a little bit more civilized to those we disagreed with.