The media discourse of ‘winners and losers’ is spreading. Yet in everyday conversation, people rarely describe themselves as ‘winners’. Often it is nothing but the subject of a joke. We should reserve judgment about the extent to which this perspective has been internalised. It is difficult to apply the ‘win-lose’ vocabulary. To begin with, this new ideology of ‘competition’ and ‘win-lose’ is a choice by elimination due to the lack of an alternative. It is forced on people by the impact of globalisation and international competition. It criticises past ideology, but it has not been embraced on the basis of conviction. Hence it remains somewhat strange and unfamiliar to us.