Author Topic: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser (Read 841 times)

Nation of One · « **on:** February 17, 2019, 11:48:04 pm »

I mean no offence to Schopenhauer, the Buddha, or to legendary musicians and artists who have had an impact on millions of our individual monkey lives, but I want to explore the benefits of being a nobody.

INDIFFERENCE

When I refer to myself as "inner-directed," people tend to equate this with the term "introverted," but it means something more to me. I am told that we are "social animals," and to a certain extent, this message board is evidence of that. While I could just as easily jot down these thoughts in a private notebook destined to be devoured by the unforgiving rains or to just disintegrate with age, I prefer sending out what our ancestors would call "letters." Maybe my reflections might be of assistance to another sentient life-form like myself, to Holden or Raul or Silenus or Ibra or a solitary lurker who finds some solace in reading what we misfits type here. OK, so this is the directed outward to fellow monkey beings like myself. I will grant that I am sending this out, somewhere outside my interior life.

I'll start out by saying that one of the main benefits of embracing being a nobody is that it liberates you from many of the petty societal pressures of existence.

I can privately present unsettling theories to myself, theories that many be disquieting, such as the possiblity that my obsession with mathematics may be a kind of distraction, offering me false comforts of the mind.

I am comforted when I gain understanding of some method, concept, or theorem, and this may be a distraction from the existential fears I might confront were I to sit still in silence. As a nobody, I can honestly explore such things without any "societal pressure" to project some kind of image of someone who never suffers from self doubt.

Was it Pascal who stated that “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ?

I can sit quietly in a room alone, preferably with notebooks and mathematics texts and a computer. Of course, this is certainly not a desirable image were one to want the persona of a "rock star."

And here I am digging, scratching at the surface of something sublime that might turn out to be quite significant: there are benefits to being in a position to actually enjoy one's own company tinkering with things others would find "boring". There are benefits to being a socially inept misfit.

I recently read somewhere that we now live in a world where we’re connected to everything except ourselves.

I know that the title of this thread may appear harsh. I personally do not like to use the term "loser," but I wish to use it to make a point.

I did some searching and found (on about the 8th page in a search list): “Being Nobody”: The Stoic “Loser” by J. B. Bell

Quote

This is why the Stoic attitude to being a “loser” in the popular sense is indifference, since the correct measure of a life is whether it has been lived in accordance with nature: did I choose wisely, understanding my circumstances accurately and valuing my options according to whether they support true flourishing? If so, it doesn’t matter what others have to say about it.

Let us have a cenotaph, then, for the unknown Stoic, bravely cleaving to virtue with no hope of reward and not even any witness. For they must have existed, and almost certainly there are many more of them than the heroes we know of.

Nation of One · « **Reply #1 on:** February 18, 2019, 11:57:52 am »

I'm a bit confused about whether or not there is any difference between the concept of antihero and what literary academics may call "existential hero"? I prefer the term antihero, but I would not want to confuse this with terms which might describe certain monsters who chop people to peices and stick their body parts in the freezer.

I have always felt disillusioned by how alienated and indifferent I am to the opinions of others.

Fragmented Notes by an Antihero

our life situation is absurd

society’s roles and practices are absurd

A direct side-effect of anxiety and despair is solipsism.

Solipsism

While solipsism can vary in form, ranging from arrogant self-absorption to alienation, the form that is relevant to the study of existential antiheroes is that which results in the freed, self-recognizing individual retreating into himself or herself due to the anxiety surrounding their present freedom.

According to Heidegger’s thinking, this retreat “yields the existential figure of the outsider, the isolated one who ‘sees through’ the phoniness of those who live their lives complacently identifying with their roles as though these roles thoroughly defined them” (Crowell).

Consequently, the realized individual becomes “the socially marginal other in relation to their own society."

However, the social marginality is self-imposed due to their existential, self-identifying choice.

The antihero chooses to live authentically, pushing against the grain of society and producing dread within his or her self.

I will have to clear up my confusion before proceeding. Oatmeal with bananas, prunes, and raisins ... strong black coffee, then a rolled cigarette, of course. These are the highlights of this antihero's mundane existence. I would prefer to just continue with the math exercises, but I also feel compelled to work through my confusion and despair, to make some sense of it by acclimating myself to living as though I were some kind of literary character.

I will be looking into A Genealogy of Antihero, maybe in the middle of the night. For now, it is enough just to get a grip on the underlying despair and anxiety, to at long last make it clear that there does not have to be any specific "reason" for feeling this existential dread.

Nation of One · « **Reply #2 on:** February 21, 2019, 07:11:36 am »

Some of Cioran's aphorisms are like mathematical theorems. What I mean by this is that an aphorism may seem terse; that is, upon reading it, I wish it were further explained, or that some examples might be shown so that I might understand it more deeply (in my bones).

Here is one such aphorism:

Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.

Can anyone of our few contributors offer any insight into what this means to them?

Silenus · « **Reply #3 on:** February 21, 2019, 08:29:17 am »

Hentrich,
I'm glad you posted that one; it is my favorite of his.

For me, this one has great significance. I am personally certain that he did not mean "loser" in terms of a comparison to the so-called "winners" of the world. I imagine that he shunned such terminology and comparison as one of many forms of the decay and decadence around him. This is only spevulation, though.

I think what he was getting at is something similar to the Stoics
"premeditatio malorum," essentially, meditation on the worst possible outcomes of any future scenario. Elsewhere in "Trouble" he mentions Epictetus and Ecclesiastes and they summarize similar thoughts: prepare for the worst, for ruin, and accept futility and fate.

Learning to be the loser: preparation for disaster; acceptance of futility and strife.

I generally assume that all things will go awry in my life, in some form or another. As Carlin says, ffuck hope.

I may have more to add later but I am about to go visit my grandfather in the hospital. Here's to preparing for the worst in that scenario.

Take care everyone.

Holden · « **Reply #4 on:** February 21, 2019, 02:28:29 pm »

It might mean being the waiter who washes the liquor glasses at 3 AM in the morning while a live band plays a Queen Song( I want to break free...) .The waiter is only 19 ,you see, and sits on an upturned carte right outside the night club.The head waiter brings the half-filled glasses to him,he(the waiter) has a stove on which he simmers water and washes the glasses .

Some glasses are half full with a black liquid- he gulps it down for he thinks its soft drink but he gets to know that the soft drink is mixed with alcohol once he tastes it.He keeps a few torn pages out of a copy of 1984 in his trouser pockets(he cannot carry the whole book inside the hotel-not allowed).He reads them sitting on top of a gas cylinder after he has dragged a 25 kg container of soiled utensils to the hotel scullery from the night club.He looks at the boys doing the dishes and thinks that they are the only ones whose clothes are as dirty as his(he has just been putting coal inside the Indian Style clay oven).

He looks at the tallest building outside the widow and wonders how it would feel to fly down from its terrance.

It might mean ,once all the patrons have left, curling down and sleeping on the night club sofa for his next shift starts in four hours and reaching his house from the hotel would take two.

It might mean thinking that mathematics is not for the likes of him. It might mean being made fun of by all the other waiters for he turns out to be too clumsy in his body movements to be a waiter.

It might mean drifting off to sleep after a 17 hour shift and finding that, in his tortured dreams,he is Winston Smith while the last scene gets played out from 1984:
"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

( While the scene plays out ,in the dream,a melancholy voice is singing- Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we, Under the spreading chestnut tree.)

Being a loser might mean that,when our waiter wakes up,he,much to his dismay,realises that the scene has still not ended.

That it is playing on an endless loop.

Nation of One · « **Reply #5 on:** February 21, 2019, 07:08:44 pm »

I like to think of learning to be the loser as not giving a fuuck about what other people think of me, especially about the opinions of those who would judge me for "living off the taxpayers."

Learning to be indifferent to public opinion.

I will also think about this some more.

I think that it may depend on what we consider "losing" to be.

If the game is rigged, why fret over "losing" the game?

One might even consider the entire struggle for survival, the sperm swimming against each other toward the fertile egg. The only thing that matters is learning to be that sperm that does not reach the egg. Too indifferent to fight over the female. What about when chow is being served in the jail house? One has to be somewhat aggressive to get a bowl of soup or a couple cold pancakes.

Learning to get the small portion of food? Maybe.

Learning to be toothless, skinny, and bald - and fairly content not giving a shiit.

I really would like to embrace this aphorism about learning to be the loser in the spirit of one who is dishonored or shamed by society - and just doesn't care what people think of him. I don't want a PhD. I just want to study some math and programming ... and, yes, to be a living philosopher in the flesh, one who uses his wits to get through this life and take the dissappointments in stride as par for the course.

I have noticed many jailbirds and so-called "bottom-feeders" have a highly developed sense of their "philosophy of life."

Many do not want anything to do with "succeeding" with a "decent job".

Cioran sometimes lived around a college campus so as to eat in the cafeterias.

My daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to steal your money

Some is rich and some is poor
And that's the way the world is
And I don't believe in lying back
Saying how bad your life is

So we came to jazz it up
Never loved a shovel
Break your back to earn your pay
Don't forget to grovel

Daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to take your money

What law?

The old man spoke up in a bar
Said, "I never been in prison
A lifetime serving one machine
Is ten times worse than prison"

Imagine if all the boys in jail
Could get out now together
What do you think they wanna say to us
While we were being clever

Someday you'll meet your rockin' chair
'Cause that's where we're spinnin'
There's no point to want to comb your hair
When it's gray and thinin'
Hey

Hey
Daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to steal your money

So we came to jazz it up
We never loved a shovel
Break your back to earn your pay
And don't forget to grovel
Hey

Get away, get away
Get away, get away
Get away, get away
Get away

Daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to steal your money
Hey

Run, Rabbit, run

Strike out boy
For the hills
I can't find that hole in the wall
I know that they never will

Daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to steal your money

Nation of One · « **Reply #6 on:** February 21, 2019, 09:16:46 pm »

I think it is also important to remember that Cioran was The Philosopher of Failure.

Hence, failing to be a successful waiter can be counted as a great success!

Quote from: Holden

It might mean being made fun of by all the other waiters for he turns out to be too clumsy in his body movements to be a waiter.

"Human existence, at its core, is endless anguish and despair, and writing can make things a bit more bearable."

I did a little research to see if I could track down a statement made by Cioran in which he used the word "loser," just to see if he means this word in the way it is slung around today. I think he means what we mean, what our wealth-warped authority-worshipping societies mean:

From the above link:

"In Bucharest I met lots of people, many interesting people, especially losers, who would show up at the cafe, talking endlessly and doing nothing. I have to say that, for me, these were the most interesting people there. People who did nothing all their lives, but who otherwise were brilliant."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When he returned from Germany, in 1936, Cioran did a brief stint as a high school philosophy teacher in Brasov, in central Romania. This, too, was a spectacular failure, the last attempt he made to keep a full-time job. During a logic class, for instance, Cioran would tell the high school students that everything in the universe was irremediably sick, including the principle of identity. When a student once asked him, “What’s ethics, sir?” Cioran told the student he shouldn’t worry, that there was no such thing as ethics. His classes were in a perpetual state of chaos, and the students were as puzzled as his colleagues by this unlikeliest of teachers. When Cioran eventually quit, the principal, to celebrate, drank himself into a stupor.

When Cioran wrote that the only thing that matters is that we learn to be the loser, could he have been giving us a hint to a possible source of empowerment?

Maybe the solution to the waiter's dilemma does not have to be as intense as leaping off a tall building to his death. Maybe he can walk off the job, get kicked out of his apartment for not paying the rent, take to drink, sleep in the streets, maybe be fortunate enough to land in some kind of mental hospital for a little rest and a "check up."

He can discuss just why his job caused him suicidal ideations. Maybe the staff at the hospital might help him find a temporary room where he can at least stay warm, alive, keep safe from the streets for awhile.

Then, if he wants, he can still leap from the building, or he can return as a waiter, or maybe not. Maybe he might join the army and become a sharp shooter, step on a lnad mine and have his balls shot off.

Sorry for the vulgarity. Man (and woman) are placed in quite a predicament being born. It is best to develop a comic attitude toward failure and the metrics of society.

Silenus · « **Reply #7 on:** February 22, 2019, 06:43:23 pm »

Holden & Hentrich,

You both bring interesting interpretations to Cioran's "loser" and I'm glad to be able to consider them.

If I may add, yesterday evening I had taken a walk with the woman I recently had been "seeing" for a short period of time. Her and I both write, and she asked if I had been lately. I told her that I haven't, and that she knows that I never force myself to.

She went to say that she will be taking a writing workshop class in the near-future, so she can force herself to write. That's who she is and so be it.

The thing that got me was she summed that bit of conversation up with "I have to do something, you know?"

I looked at her and asked "why is it that people always feel like they have to do something?"

This is what I'm getting at: what is with this insane drive to always "do," to always keep one's hands busy, to have a project?

I have never understood this and have never taken it seriously. Ffuck careers, projects, and being a doer. I dont want to "do" anything, really.

If I have to live a life of bouncing around from job to job to secure a room, well, I will continue to work on my resignation. But I'd rather be a voluntarily poor nobody, a "loser" without money, automobile or offspring, living insignificantly, than being one of the doer's.

I'll pass!

Holden · « **Reply #8 on:** February 23, 2019, 09:20:31 am »

Mr.Silenus,
"There is nothing to be done; when an event is in impending which arises from forces immeasurably greater than our own, one must submit."
~ Mullah Nassr Eddin, BTTG

Nation of One · « **Reply #9 on:** April 24, 2020, 12:12:25 am »

Quote from: Der Steppenwolf (Herr H)

Some of Cioran's aphorisms are like mathematical theorems. What I mean by this is that an aphorism may seem terse; that is, upon reading it, I wish it were further explained, or that some examples might be shown so that I might understand it more deeply (in my bones).

Here is one such aphorism:

Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.

Can anyone of our few contributors offer any insight into what this means to them?

Quote from: Silenus

For me, this one has great significance. I am personally certain that he did not mean "loser" in terms of a comparison to the so-called "winners" of the world. I imagine that he shunned such terminology and comparison as one of many forms of the decay and decadence around him. This is only speculation, though.

I think what he was getting at is something similar to the Stoics
"premeditatio malorum," essentially, meditation on the worst possible outcomes of any future scenario. Elsewhere in "Trouble" he mentions Epictetus and Ecclesiastes and they summarize similar thoughts: prepare for the worst, for ruin, and accept futility and fate.

Learning to be the loser: preparation for disaster; acceptance of futility and strife.

I generally assume that all things will go awry in my life, in some form or another. As Carlin says, ffuck hope.

The Creation does not seem to give a lick damn about its creatures.

Silenus offers an interpretation that goes deeper than the shallow and simplistic view of "loser" in an economic or romantic sense. No, it is something far more insidious: we each have to be prepared for the illusions of security to come undone rapidly, and most likely out of nowhere.

Learning to be the loser: prepare for the impotency of herbal substances to cure one's misery, and this may do more to alleviate the pain.

Prepare to be abandoned and alone and outnumbered and hated.

Prepare for "friends" to deceive you. Prepare for the worse ... prepare to be disappointed, repeatedly.

Whatever it means to lose ... to have things not go one's way, to experience discomfort.

A strange biographical fact in my own life: as a child I was a "poor winner," not so much a "poor loser." That is, I would consciously choose a team which would have the best chance of winning whatever game it was. I was a poor sport, said the female gym teacher. I was supposed to be having fun, but I was so obsessed with winning, I suppose I ruined the fun of others - or so I was told.

Well, I have learned to be the loser, after all these years. I've been greatly humbled by life.

There are those who would equate loser-status with lack of social status, and that is similar to the game-analogy of winning/losing; but maybe Cioran's meaning is deeper, as Silenus suggests ... just coming to the realization that this life is not a party, and the worse is yet to come.

Also, there is the concept of entropy ... the universe itself is coming undone ... It takes a great deal of energy to keep up the farce of security, law, and order. (After all, from a broader perspective, what we call civilization is not particularly civilized.)

I thought the demons were my friends, getting me in the end - they're out to get me.

Does anyone think that the following Korn song captures the spirit ? That is, can "coming undone" be analogous to what Cioran is telling us to prepare for? Disaster; acceptance of futility and strife.

"Coming Undone"

Keep holding on
When my brain's ticking like a bomb
Guess the black thoughts have come again to get me
Sweet little words
Unlike nothing I have heard
Sing along mocking bird
You don't affect me

That's right
Deliver it to my heart
Please strike
Be deliberate

Wait
I'm coming undone
Irate
I'm coming undone
Too late
I'm coming undone
What looks so strong
So delicate
Wait
I'm starting to suffocate
And soon I anticipate
I'm coming undone
What looks so strong
So delicate

Choke choke again
I thought my demons were my friends
Getting me in the end
They're out to get me
Since I was young
I've tasted sorrow on my tongue
And this sweet sugar gun
Does not protect me

That's right
Trigger between my eyes
Please strike
Make it quick now

Wait
I'm coming undone
Irate
I'm coming undone
Too late
I'm coming undone
What looks so strong
So delicate
Wait
I'm starting to suffocate
And soon I anticipate
I'm coming undone
One looks so strong
So delicate

I'm trying to hold it together
Head is lighter than a feather
Looks like I'm not getting better
Not getting better

Wait
I'm coming undone
Irate
I'm coming undone
Too late
I'm coming undone
What looks so strong
So delicate
Wait
I'm starting to suffocate
And soon I anticipate
I'm coming undone
One looks so strong
So delicate
_____________________________________________-
On the other hand, there is the good 'ole simple idea of "losing" in our materialistic societies. Check out the song, What It's Like, by Everlast, left at the end of my own little stab at comic satire, Dialogue: A Concerned Citizen Confronts the Madman, recently edited here so you might enjoy some of my George Carlin inspired bad language.

Holden · « **Reply #10 on:** April 24, 2020, 12:29:09 pm »

I have been proclaimed a loser often enough.Primarily because my father tried to make me believe that I could not do maths because he himself finds it uninteresting.
But now I find,to my surprise, that he was wrong. That I do rather like maths.

Nation of One · « **Reply #11 on:** March 29, 2022, 12:14:13 pm »

"Slavers, landlords and bigots can go fuck themselves ... but in a sexy way, of course." ~ Anonymous Homeless Bucket-Beater paraphrasing Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age

Why are all my heroes considered losers, criminals, disgruntled employees, traitors (look up John Brown) or terrorists by the systemoids?

https://youtu.be/EWuIGypvbDk?t=1729

{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

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Author Topic: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser (Read 841 times)

Nation of One

The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Nation of One

Antihero or Existential Hero?

Nation of One

Re: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Silenus

Re: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Holden

Re: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Nation of One

Re: The Benefits of Having a Bad Attitude

Nation of One

????

Silenus

I don't want to "do" anything!

Holden

Re: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Nation of One

Re: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Holden

Re: The Benefits of Being a Nobody/Loser

Nation of One

Be a Loser if Need Be | The Philosophy of Epictetus