The Radical Loser

By Hans Magnus Enzensberger at Spiegel International (20.12.2006) :

It is difficult to talk about the loser, and it is stupid not to. Stupid because there can be no definitive winner and because each of us, from the megalomaniac Bonaparte to the last beggar on the streets of Calcutta, will meet the same fate. Difficult because to content oneself with this metaphysical banality is to take the easy way out, ignoring the truly explosive dimension of the problem - the political dimension.

Instead of actually looking into the thousand faces of the loser, sociologists stick to their statistics: median value, standard deviation, logarithmic distribution. Rarely do they entertain the possibility that they too might be among the losers. Their definitions are like scratching a sore place; and as Samuel Butler says, this scratching generally leaves the sore place more sore than it was before. One thing is certain: the way humanity has organized itself - "capitalism," "competition," "empire," "globalization" - not only does the number of losers increase every day, but as in any large group, fragmentation soon sets in. In a chaotic, unfathomable process, the cohorts of the inferior, the defeated, the victims separate out. The loser may accept his fate and resign himself; the victim may demand satisfaction; the defeated may begin preparing for the next round. But the radical loser isolates himself, becomes invisible, guards his delusion, saves his energy, and waits for his hour to come.