Is tribalism and group-think always a bad thing?

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Was all the time I spent here rooting for my team just encouraging dogmatism and tribalism? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I spent a few hours last night streaming the Super Bowl online, and, general awfulness of football notwithstanding, I actually enjoyed it. To be fair, that was largely because of Beyonce’s (amazing) performance and the fact that the new episode of HBO’s Girls aired a day earlier to accommodate the new Sunday lineup. That aside, there’s something just exciting about sports.

The relationship between religion and sports is often discussed, in fact Marcus Mann posted a great piece about this yesterday. It’s less common, though, to address what the two might have in common.

Eli Federman wrote an interesting piece for the religion section of the Huffington Post, recently, about why he wouldn’t be watching the Super Bowl. He concludes:

But as a society we should be mindful of the cult-like traits of groupthink, tribalism and consumerism — which blind obedience to sports can cultivate.

Leaving aside the serious issue of consumerism, I want to focus specifically on tribalism and dogmatism. These two things are often a particularly harmful mix in the world, and it’s the opinion of many of us here at NonProphet Status that it’s these things, not religion itself, that leads to many of the problems atheists point out. But does it necessarily follow that any indulgence of these things must necessarily be bad? Are ttribalism and dogmatism things that can be cultivated and applied to other, less benign aspects of our lives?

I’m somewhat skeptical. This may be pessimism or cynicism on my part, but I suspect that our status as a social primate will always leave a hole that groupthink and tribalism fit quite nicely in. It seems to me that finding something fun and harmless to substitute something potentially more harmful might actually be a responsible decision.

I might irrationally and dogmatically think that Yale is better than Harvard. I might root for us at a football or hockey game, feel a tinge of schaudenfreude when rival students get kicked out for cheating, or get unjustifiably happy to run into another alumnus—even one I’ve never met. There’s certainly nothing rational about any of this, but so long as it’s kept, like all things, in moderation, then what’s the harm?

I suspect this might relate to a broader attitude about similar issues, and I think it’s a common source of controversy. Does pornography serve as a harmless sexual outlet, or does it teach us to treat women’s bodies as objects and commodities, increasing the risk of sexual violence down the road? Are violent video games harmless fun, or does it allow us to more easily morally disengage from real-life violence? I’m sure we can all think of more cases.

These are empirical questions that might soon be answered (but at least in the case of violent video games, research has been going on for decades, and the answer still seems hazy. I think the case might be weak, but there’s still a case and it’s still not settled). But until then, how should we be treating ostensibly benign actions that may support more insidious behaviors or tendencies later on? Should we treat them as catharses, or proper objects of a better-safe-than-sorry mentality?

I find myself leaning towards the former, but I’m not sure if I’ve got a particularly strong argument for why.

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.