The inability to admit failure. Is it a male pride thing?

[Philosoraptor]

We all have to admit failure at some point in our life's endeavors, like admitting a marriage is failed, or a war, or a football game, it sucks, it hurts, but often it's better to admit defeat when it's staring you right in the face rather than stick around unable to admit it at your own further peril.

Is it a point of American foolish pride that we continue to fail in Iraq? I can't call it a defeat, that doesn't define it, this isn't something to be won or lost like a football game, we need to use words like 'failure', and 'disaster', instead of 'winning', or 'victory', that's childish.

If you are getting your ass kicked royally, there's no point in allowing your face to be bashed in if you can simply walk away. There's no shame in it, it's called retreat by the armies of the world. Strategic retreat, or cut your losses and run.

Even this simplistic concept of failure or success doesn't describe what's really going on, it's not meant to succeed or fail, just continue. It simply must continue for one reason only, there is so very much money being made off all this misery, and dick cheney needs more and more money to satisfy his demonic thirsts.

More than a defeat, this is an American failure, and a human failure, led by a presidential failure like none other in our history. The republican war is a failure on every level except one: It's a money making monstrous success. Hundreds of thousands of people die so that a few thousand can make hundreds of billions in profits. On that level, you can call it a tremendous success, but don't you ever dare to call it defeat.

[izzie]

1. Even us females hate to face that we made big errors.

I think you have to face it to move on. Guess we have to find some one for the WH that will say, 'That did not work so lets try this?' I wonder if we are so large a country that no man dares to try that? One seems to carry an error around for ever. And I am sure their are really only men out their that do make errors at times. So the head guy has to be a man who makes errors and does face up to them. Bush and Chaney are not for us as I see it.

[Philosoraptor]

2. Maybe it's nationalism

A quasi-religious thing, national pride, my country right or wrong, the greatest nation, etc. I wish we'd just stop all the posturing and puffing and just be a humble nation among the other nations. I just dream about how it would be if we'd just behave in a less aggressive manor and be nice. What a silly daydream.

To me, it takes guts and a real man or woman to admit defeat or failure and then move on.

[Vidar]

7. Not exclusively a male thing, but testosterone & jingoism is a deadly mix.

[izzie]

15. I guess that is part of it but we do need to move on and will

it is how we do it that counts. I can recall my father asking me. 'Well Tiger did you learn anything by doing that or watching your sister do that silly thing?' Some times you had to tell your father you had made a error as he said he had many times. We do have to face the sad fact that some will go over the cliff taking you with them to be sure you understand they are right. The country has even tried to make up for errors it made in the first days of the country. We seem to be still working on it. I love being an Am. but we do a lot wrong and I hope we will do it better and we are not always right.

[ktlyon]

3. success or failure

What we see is the result of these republicans' principles.
They are taking they're principles and way of thinking and shown us what the results will be if followed to the letter.

[The2ndWheel]

4. Isn't that the point though?

"It's a money making monstrous success. Hundreds of thousands of people die so that a few thousand can make hundreds of billions in profits."

It's 2006. Hasn't the point of existence for the last few thousand years been to acquire as much power as you can, then demand more, no matter who or what stands in the way?

America wouldn't be without that way of thought. America wouldn't exist without slavery and genocide. It was founded on a failure, a human failure. Every nation was.

[Smarmie Doofus]

6. "Natural man has only two primal passions:

to get, and to beget".(Osler)

>>>It's 2006. Hasn't the point of existence for the last few thousand years been to acquire as much power as you can, then demand more, no matter who or what stands in the way?>>>

[Nobody]

5. As I've been saying for about two years now

Bush would rather circumnavigate the globe before turning around after missing his exit.

He can't admit he's wrong about anything. It's not a male thing, it's an ego thing, a child thing. He always has to be right and rub everyone else's nose into it. My friends' four year old has grown out of this, it certainly isn't becoming in an adult.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. It's definitely a child thing

Most of us learn from our mistakes as we grow up. We screw up, we fix it, we go on to something else.

booooosh never admitted to his mistakes, and he always had someone there to bail him out. He never had to pay for his mistakes. So he never learned from them.

And now the rest of the world is paying for him.


TG

[Selatius]

9. All governments are failures with respect to admitting errors and wrongdoing

There is no centralized decision-making structure that calls itself a government on earth that could claim a clean record. Governments are institutions of pure force, period.

The war is a success for Wall Street, and that's who the government works for. To admit error is to threaten the illusion. Governments are often violently overthrown if the vital illusions that keep them in power are removed.

[natrat]

10. ding ding ding we have a winner

thats why he sleeps well at night-according to his rules he has been sucessful

[dave_p]

16. It's our fault too

"Governments are often violently overthrown if the vital illusions that keep them in power are removed"

I think this is an important point. It isn't just them, it's us too. The opposition. The people. We have a hard time letting them get away with admitting mistakes.

Yes, we want to party when they admit they got something wrong and they do something about it. But the problem is that the cost of admitting failure tends to be worse than that of toughing it out with a tame media covering your ass.

That means failure becomes fossilized into policy. Little failures become bigger failures. Policy after policy gets piled onto an initial error. Turning back becomes an ever greater loss of political capital.

So maybe we all need to be more charitable sometimes. When our opponents reverse course, they're doing something we asked. We should be prepared to welcome it and only to dig so far as the human cost of the failed policy demands - which is all the way in the case of this Administration.

[NashVegas]

11. Not Even Remotely Can This Be Attributed to "Male" Pride

It's simple pride, the fear of losing face.

Real men (and women, both) aren't afraid to admit to their mistakes.

[Deja Q]

12. I admit failure all the time and I'm quite the male too...

:rofl:

It's an ego thing. (about not admitting failure...)

And, no, we can't walk away. :( I wish it was that simple...

[JohnnyLib2]

13. Gonads or not, don't compare Bush to me!

History can help sort out what was Bush's major flaw, but I believe the problem is in his thought process, not his gender.

As an aside, there has been consideration to include "self-defeating personality" in the DSMs (for psychiatric diagnoses) for some time. Maybe it's time?

[Bonobo]

14. Yes, it's due to a hormone secreted by the penis, duh.

Why make it male/female.

We're stupid chimpanzees. All of us. Me, I'm a bonobo.