Tribalism is tearing America apart. People vote on party lines regardless of individual merits. Racism is on the rise. The internet is, at the same time, atomizing individuals and connecting them to an echo chamber of like minds.
Many boogeymen have been implicated: the internet, President Trump, the gradual drifting from religion, too much affluence. But underneath it all, it is the tribalism instinct that drives it, and it is that instinct that everyone fights against in order to have a society any larger than a neighborhood.
Dunbar's Number is a fairly well known and accepted concept: that the human brain was evolved to maintain only a certain number of social relationships. (It's around 150.) Multiple rationalizations occur in a person's brain when one is asked to consider people outside of that circle: racism, apathy, compassion fatigue, NIMBY. However, our organizations grow larger than that, from our nation, to our state, to our city, all the way down to our jobs. We can be a cog in a machine, being of use to them, but the companies and states and nations are literally incapable of caring for us in return - not only the entities, but the people that make up those entities.
There are various mechanisms that are at work, attempting to alleviate the absolute tribalism of pockets of people: patriotism, religion, compassion. Even some of the more distasteful methods, such as racism, still pull against the tribal instinct to try and encompass something larger. However, we are in need of even more inclusiveness. You can see the attempts to include us all; Disney's "It's a Small World" comes to mind. But such solutions are barely effective. Engendering a worldly inclusiveness seems impossible.
So, what's a good substitute? Perhaps we can funnel tribal instincts into a beneficial expression of it. Right now, fan bases are doing that exact thing. Race and creed are lost when everyone on your side of the field is wearing the same color jersey. Some may mourn or mock the loss of individuality of a sports fan, but those that do, don't understand that acceptance and tolerance cannot come on its own. Until we breed it out of us, humanity needs to hate. Sports allows hate, while also constantly demonstrating that 'it's just a game', thereby calling out those who take it too far. Sports, and its viewing, allows hate to happen, and cleanses the palette of hate afterward.
One might make a case for other types of fandoms - movies, games, music. There might be a heated argument for who is the best guitar player of all time. However, these arguments are not practiced, expected displays of competitiveness. There must be an element of competition. There must be an element of harnessed hate and violence. Other fandoms can adopt these elements, but they are not baked into the cake, like sports is.
I tend to look at sports as an evolution of human behavior. Once humans began to have abundance (the start of farming is a good place to mark it), the competitive spirit took on a harmful element, in part. This can be seen in movie westerns - the gunslinger tames the West, but then has no place in civilized society when it comes to the frontier. The competitive spirit is then counter to civil goals. Societies had to develop a way to harmlessly funnel that energy. Societies that developed sports (and sports fandoms) do not destroy themselves from the inside.
You might hear of violence, even murder, due to sports fandoms. However, it is always seen as frivolous, and that's the secret to why sports fandoms are important. Racism, violence against the LGBT community, and war itself will always be deadly serious. But if a people's prejudices can be put aside for a different kind of tribalism - one that doesn't take itself so seriously, one that allows for violent behavior without the accompanying destruction - then maybe that type of tribalism is the key to peace.
(Roll Tide, Titan Up, Chop On, and BB King was the greatest guitar player of all time.)
