Remember Wade Boggs on the Red Sox? I loved him.
Although I was young at the time, the story about Wade drinking sixty-four beers on a cross-country flight from Boston to Los Angeles, well, it seemed cool to me.
Teammates called him the “chicken man,” because he’d only eat chicken before games.
Oh, and the dude could rake.
But remember Wade Boggs on the Yankees?
I hated him.
Sixty-four beers is a bit much, don’t you think? And only chicken before games? Such a prima donna.
Not to mention a total sell out.
Remember Donald Trump the democrat?
Glad he’s on our side, right? YUGE checks to the party.
But remember Donald Trump republican?
Total grifter.
Trump University, are you kidding me?
Of course, Wade Boggs and Donald Trump didn’t change overnight. They just put on new clothes.
“I love the Giants, but when you think about it, who are the Giants?” Jerry Seinfeld was talking football but making a broader point about tribalism and picking sides. He said, “You’re rooting for clothes when you get right down to it. I’m rooting for an outfit. I want my team’s clothes to beat the clothes from another city.”
“People will love a guy. Then the guy will get traded. He’ll come back on another team. They hate him now. This is the same human being in a different shirt.”
[Here is the video so you know I didn’t make it up.]
And we do it because it feels good to be part of a tribe. It feels safe.
Tim Urban does a great job describing this phenomenon, calling it Disneyland politics. Us and them, good and evil, democrats and republicans.
Red Sox and Yankees too.
It’s cheering for clothes. Or what Urban calls Low Rung thinking. What you think is part of the story, but how you think is even more critical. And we want to improve how we think.
Low rung is being a fan. Fan is short for fanatic. Fanatic is short for crazy person. It’s true, look it up.
High rung is being a student of the game. A student of the game brings objectivity and a growth mindset.
If you see a sign that says PATRICK MAHOMES SUCKS, and you catch yourself nodding in agreement, you are low rung. You are cheering for laundry. You want him to suck, but that doesn’t make it true.
He does not suck. It’s silly to even think it, but you’ll produce some narrative, some story to convince yourself.
He is a system quarterback, he got lucky, he’d be nothing without Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift.
You make up that story to convince yourself more than anyone else, and you’ll spew it around town to anyone who will listen.
How about this one…
The Android operating system has more computing power than the first space shuttle.
And it’s TOTAL TRASH.
Why?
Those green text messages on my iPhone. Can’t stand those things screwing up the whole text chain.
You are a fan. Tim Cook thanks you for your service, but even he knows the truth.
You can tell if someone is low rung because they answer with no nuance, ever. Tribal lines are not crossed. Independent thought is not accepted.
They stick to the script.
And the script tells us that Wade Boggs changed his clothes, so he is a bum now. It tells us that Donald Trump, a person we have nothing in common with is “our kind of guy” now. Why? Because they got new hats.
Tribes are alluring. You get indoctrinated. Pressured.
It’s an ideology.
My grandfather always said, “It’s a free country, you can vote for anyone you want, as long as they are a democrat.” He said it with a smile, of course I could vote for whomever I wanted, but it was clear what he’d be doing.
My grandmother had one question when I told her I was getting married. “Is she a catholic?”
My grandparents were smart, accepting, and wonderful, but the preference was to grow the tribe.
With that type of upbringing, it’s no wonder people borrow their politics from grandpa, their religion from grandma, everything else from mom and dad.
And we do it because it feels good to be part of a tribe. It feels safe.
But it has its downside. If you don’t come to any of these beliefs on your own, that means you’ve been programmed. Following your programming takes a lot less effort, but you don’t really see the world as it is. You know what you believe but you don’t really know why. Like Thomas Anderson before he becomes Neo.
In the United States we have two primary political parties. Two tribes.
But most people at the low rung see things like this.
Two tribes.
Do you see the difference?
The red and blue structure turns our overlapping circles into something else altogether. The two tribes now have nothing in common.
Pick a side, and cheer for your people.
We do overlap on a few things, right? Like potholes? Nobody likes potholes, right? Can we at least overlap on potholes?
And bacon?
Other countries are slightly more civilized. They have a few more parties, a few more circles.
More circles mean you can pick one that’s a little closer to your own beliefs. Most issues have more than two perspectives. The world isn’t black and white, and it’s certainly not red and blue.
But three parties, or four, or five, it still falls short.
We are still putting ourselves in these tribal circles, these bubbles, these echo chambers, and we BOOOOOOO the other tribes, even though we overlap on so many things.
And the reality is, the world is filled with different circles.
We just need to give ourselves the freedom to draw our own, and accept others so they can do the same.
And if we do, things will look a lot more like The Original Spirograph.
Circles and patterns are almost infinite.
And when we break from the tribe, climb to a higher rung, and express our own true circle, things get a lot more interesting. A lot more colorful.
Seinfeld identified what the masses are doing, same human, different shirt. A different comedian described why it’s so uncool.
“I love individuals. I hate groups of people.” George Carlin described the telltale signs to Jon Stewart.
He said, “Because pretty soon they have little hats. You know? And armbands, and fight songs, and a list of people they’re going to visit at 3:00AM. So, I dislike groups of people, but I love individuals. You can see the universe in their eyes if you’re really looking.”
The universe in their eyes? Beautiful. I’ll settle for a Spirograph. It’s an upgrade from political Disneyland and all this cheering for clothes.
We all have a version of this, where we need to upgrade our thinking from low rung to high. Where we need to recognize that it’s not as simple as two tribes, us and them. Everyone has an opportunity to rewrite some of their programming.
It can be easy to start. It can sound something like this.
“I love the Giants but when you think about it, who are the Giants?”
Did you enjoy this post? If so, please consider sharing it with a friend.
