Overdoing Democracy by Robert B Talisse

Author:Robert B Talisse [Talisse, Robert B]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780190924201
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

4.3 Belief Polarization

Our analysis of belief polarization begins in what may seem to be unlikely places: the sports stadium and concert arena. Take a moment to recall the last time you watched your favorite professional sports team win an important game. Or, if sports aren’t your thing, think for a moment of the last time you saw your favorite band perform an especially rousing concert. In attending the game or concert, you immersed yourself in a large group of fellow enthusiasts. Importantly, your immersion was not a matter of simply attending the same event as the other enthusiasts. Rather, in attending the event, you became a kind of participant in the group. For example, it is likely that you made an effort to dress like the others by donning a team jersey or a concert shirt; in any case, you sought to signal and express your membership in the group of devotees. And so you unreservedly rooted, applauded, and sang along with the others. In doing these things, you felt swells of excitement, elation, and perhaps even joy. Amidst all the cheering, you probably made some new friends as well. All the while your identification with that team or band was being reinforced. Moreover, in watching the team prevail or the band perform especially well, your mood was elevated. Finally, your estimation of the team members’ or performers’ talents amplified. In the course of the performance, you came more firmly to hold that the team or band is truly excellent, and thus deserving of your commitment. In this way, the team’s victory and the band’s exhilarating performance were experienced as an affirmation of your identity as an enthusiast.

I take it that the description captures a familiar phenomenon, the experience of being a fan. What is important for our purposes is that when one joins a large group of others to watch a favorite team prevail or a beloved band perform especially well, one experiences a range of satisfying intensifications of mood and affect than in turn affirm one’s sense of identity. This in part explains why fandom is so widespread—being a fan generally feels good. More importantly, it also explains why stadiums and music venues are so often crowded; although the benefits that drive us to become fans are largely individual, the rush of being a fan is partly a collective phenomenon—it is enhanced in the presence of other fans. Hence even when we cannot attend the game or performance, we nonetheless devise ways to enjoy it with other fans. Perhaps this collective dimension also helps account for why when a home team loses an important game, the shared frustration and disappointment of the local fans can lead to violence. Fandom is a phenomenon by which we collectively provide to other fans an affirmation of their identity, and so the team’s loss can be experienced as a personal affront. Even though there’s no “I” in “team,” there certainly is a “Me.”

There are respects in which belief polarization mirrors the experience

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