This World Cup has me thinking about teams. I was excited when the US beat Algeria. But I have spent half my life outside America and don't care about or know much about spectator sports, least of all soccer. What is our attraction to teams? There is much written about how soccer is a good, harmless outlet for nationalism: better cheer on the stands where there are very clear rules and referees than to take it outside the stadium.
What worries me is how this team mentality infiltrates the rest of our lives. After the attacks of September eleventh, 2001 there was a great sense of unity in America that, in part due to America's geographic isolation as well as opportunistic and aggressive political leadership, quickly turned to the need to go to war against anybody we could psychologically substitute for the attackers. We called this the War on Terrorism, a stupid phrase.
Teams are very powerful in Georgia too. I remember when my younger son was born to my Georgian wife and I. All her friends would come see him. At only a couple of weeks old, they all had the same question, is he Georgian or is he American? I remember thinking how strange an impulse to enforce that categorization on an infant. But in reality it was a question of team membership.
When I first came to Georgia in early 1997, people would discuss the Georgian national ideology. If Georgia was a great nation, it needed its own, not somebody else's ideology. Georgians have always looked down on languages that do not have their own alphabets and have to walk the streets begging for one, rather than having its own from the start. At one time there was the same feeling among some people about ideology. It doesn't matter if it is the best ideology or one that fits reality but it needs to be ours and ours alone.
It is connected to friendship as well. Bonds of friendship and loyalty are very close in Georgia. Friends are sometimes expected to favor friends over non-friends. Of course this has a dark side as well, many people are in prison because of it. If friends help friends getting jobs for example maybe it is smarter to have a lot of friends or at least influential ones rather than study and work hard. What does that do to us?
And it shows up in politics. Until pretty recently those in control had a very restricted notion of who was on their team. And they were clear that anybody who was not on their team was on the opposing team (whatever that was). One critical comment was enough to get anybody tossed off the team. Recently that seems to be improving and I think part of that improvement is connected to the governing parties success in the recent elections. On the other hand, particularly the non-democratic opposition, feels that one comment in support of a government policy or statement equals treason and a red card from the opposition team.
I also see this with many Georgians view of American politics. The logic goes like this: "I am Georgian therefore anti Soviet which means anti Russian, Reagan was anti-Soviet and also Republican. Bush danced at Habanot Ubani and seemed to like us, and he's Republican. And who are these Democrats? What are they doing electing this black guy nobody had ever heard of? They are confusing; don't take many pictures with Misha. That's enough for me, I'm on the Republican team. When a senior official buys a license plate that says "McCain", it is basically an expensive football jersey. But American politics and how officials, particularly ministers, relate to it is more complicated and important than cheering in a stadium.
We have been organizing ourselves into teams for as long as we have been species. Teams get things done. But sometimes the clarity provided by cheering for a team simplifies a situation more than the situation can realistically be simplified.
Let's be sure we know the difference.
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