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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 17, 2017 12:47:04 GMT
Something a bit different. I'm interested in what forum members, indeed anyone who might come across this post, has to say on this matter.
No links please. I'm not looking for a load of psychobabble. I'm interested in what forum members themselves have to say.
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Post by hibernicus on May 4, 2017 21:56:21 GMT
Because we see ourselves as the underdogs?
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 4, 2017 22:25:51 GMT
Yes, but that could lead you to identify with the powerful and dominant. Isn't that what the "authoritarian personality" theory is all about?
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Post by assisi on May 5, 2017 9:28:48 GMT
Something a bit different. I'm interested in what forum members, indeed anyone who might come across this post, has to say on this matter. No links please. I'm not looking for a load of psychobabble. I'm interested in what forum members themselves have to say. I think that, as Irish and Catholics, we have been colonised by the British for so much of our recent history that we were able to sympathise with other nations or peoples that were suffering injustice by a larger power. Ironically an accompanying trait of the underdog syndrome is/was a need, by many, to show the big boys that we could be as 'modern' as them and, in so doing, hope that we may earn their admiration and respect. The big boys would have been UK and the U.S. and more recently the EU and the UN. However with all big boys in the playground they were not really bothered by the little boy trying hard to fit in.
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2017 21:08:15 GMT
Sympathising with the underdog isn't a purely Irish thing. Sympathising with the underdog and sympathising with the powerful aren't necessarily incompatible. The story shows the hero starting out from nowhere and displaying his ability by rising to the top. (Even the loathsome Ayn Rand has her supermen start out surrounded and oppressed by envious pygmies.) To have the hero start on top and stay there would mean there was no dramatic tension - as Chesterton said, nobody writes about Giant the Jack Killer. There is a novel called THE IRON DREAM by the 1960s SF writer Norman Spinrad which is a good example of how the quest motif and certain tropes of pulp science fiction can be misused. It posits that after the failure of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch Hitler gave upon politics and emigrated to America, where he became a science fiction writer. The novel consists of his last and most ambitious novel,LORD OF THE SWASTIKA,which is closely modelled on the real-life story of the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich (though the end is somewhat different) together with an introduction by a professor of literature arguing that the idea that such a regime could ever have existed is so implausible that no-one can possibly take the story seriously- one of its many chilling aspects is how closely it resembles some real-life pulp SF. (And of course the real Hitler presented himself as an underdog rising to the top by sheer force of genius and fighting powerful enemies for the future of the human race.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Dream
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 5, 2017 21:19:15 GMT
Indeed, I've often noted how various groups are quite willing to portray themselves as both the underdog and the norm, for different purposes.
For instance, Catholics in Ireland-- we like to appeal to the "embattled minority" and the "silent majority" on different occasions. (Not necessarily wrongly, I might add.)
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