Between tribesmen and unhealthy rivalries, By Simbo Olorunfemi

There is that thin line between what might pass as healthy contest/rivalry and what is not. Perhaps because the line is so thin, many cross the line ‘unknowingly’, claiming to have either not knowingly done so or feigning ignorance of the existence of such a line.

Take sports, for instance. There was a time many could lay valid claim to being Football fans, people who finds pleasure in the game, irrespective of the teams on the pitch, in spite of possible affinity with other teams in the same league. It is a lonely or rather unusual place to be right now, I might suggest. With time, and especially now, the game has become more of an affair between fans on opposite sides, enemies of enemies and all that.

It is either you are for one or the other. If you happen to be for neither, you have to be against one or the other, or even both, for the sake of your team. It is not as if wishing one team fails, so that yours, even if not in direct competition might win, is bad. After all, given the intensely commercial and competitive nature of today’s game, it is now almost all about winning, nothing else does appear to matter.

I know about bragging rights. I know about banter, largely healthy. I know about rivalry. But as stated at the beginning, there is that thin line between keeping it healthy and going overboard. I wonder these days, if the tendency to go overboard is not more rife now than at any other time before.

But that is debatable though, because as Edward Wilson posits, “people must have a tribe. It gives them a name, adding to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world…the tendency to form groups and then favor in-group members has the earmarks of instinct. It could be argued that in-group bias is conditioned by early training to affiliate with family members and by encouragement to play with neighboring children.

Whether groups played for pennies or identified themselves in a group-based manner, say, preferring some abstract painter to another, the participants always ranked the out-group below the in-group. They judged their “opponents” to be less likable, less fair, less trustworthy, less competent.”

People are not only quick to split themselves into groups, they soon begin to “then discriminate in favor of the one to which they belong.” That we see play out on the social media platforms all the time. You do not have to enlist into a group for you to put in the box. Once you are deemed not to be for them, then you are automatically taken to be against them, even when they hardly know you. To them, as you are in the out-group, you have become an outcast who must be treated as one.

I would argue that this has become the Age of the Tribesmen, with negative partisanship, with people now more motivated by their antipathy for others or other beliefs than by affinity for their own or beliefs they share with others in their group.

It is now about never seeing anything good in others, simply because they do not belong to your group or share a worldview with you; and not seeing anything bad in anyone on your side or in the group with which you have affinity.

Staying with Sports, I am particularly intrigued by what has been playing out in the last few years in Formula 1(Motorsport) where interaction between fans of Hamilton (Mercedes) and Verstappen (Red Bull) have become so toxic that it colours everything to do with the sport, with objectivity a major casualty.

Negative partisanship has frozen the political space in many countries, with the different tendencies on the extreme ends of the pole, each holding to its version of truth or fact, even if it has to be fabricated to confirm pre-existing bias.

It is now a question of whether to draw the line between adoration of those we are accepting of and cancellation of those we reject. It is a question of where to draw the line, if there is still one that ought not be crossed.

Perhaps this is more of an issue for those of us stuck on a different staple to what is predominantly on offer these days. Perhaps it is all well and good that we are now all tribesmen, prisoners to our groupthink, wielding bows and arrows, seeking who to cancel on account of simply being outside of the realm of that which we hold as right or true in our world, even if our view is shaped by our limited knowledge base, ethno-religious affinity or political tendency.