That's just like any sport though. Look at soccer where people have riots for "their guys", or any american football fans that identify with their hometown/whatever. I mean obviously that's all stupid, but the Olympics aren't any MORE stupid, i don't think. At least with Olympics you are competing on a global scale.

The reason people WANT to have a favorite sports team is that it makes it all seem more important to them. If you watch a generic sporting event with 2 team with like, randomly selected athletes you'd be bored because you wouldn't care who won.

Not that I don't get bored anyway. I don't like watching sports usually (or playing most of them). Olympics are no exception.

The nationalism does make it a little more nauseating though.

"Go my favorite sports team!" -Brian Regan

Personally, yes. I can't think of a single good reason for the concept of nationhood except that it allows groups of people to more easily polarize, compete with each other for resources, and dehumanize each other to the detriment of humanity as a whole. National pride doesn't exist to make you feel better, it exists to exclude other groups of people so that you can become superior to them.

Fuck this is all making me want to take a sociology class or read a book on the subject because I'm sure people much smarter than I have already worked it all out.

See whenever I end up thinking this (religion too, imagine how much violence and bigotry could be "rid of" by eliminating religion), I always feel like they are just scapegoats and no artificial ideas (like religion or nations or social castes or whatever) are ever the "true and only" cause of these issues. If we rid the planet of all these things, I don't think the average amount of hatred/bigotry would change, at least not significantly. People will always find something to argue about and no matter how often or how many regular people learn about these social and psychological problems it will always be present. I'm not saying we should just give up trying to get people to give up these childish ideas and move on I don't think they are the true cause of any real issue.

Humans are just evolved and hard-wired in very specific ways that, probably, only evolution can ever get rid of. You can never get rid of nationalism, especially not by just getting rid of nations. I think if every single leader of every country on Earth could get together it's possible we could create a worldwide environment that would gradually evolve our own species to the point where we aren't "hard-wired" to be in small groups and to try and identify with only that group, etc (these are the sources of all these nationalism/culturalism/etc. issues) then we might stand a chance at like, "tricking" our evolution to proceed in a way we want. Humans really weren't designed to live with a global focus and intellectualism alone will never get us there.


If that sounds like a bunch of bs sorry, it's just I always end up thinking about how these dumb institutions and sort of "base" ideas (I mean seriously how non/anti-intellectual do you have to be to TRULY BELIEVE that what nation you live in has any bearing on ANYTHING AT ALL of importance, namely about character and legitimate-ness of a person) I always can't help but think we're doomed to act this way. Religion and football teams are just the modern expression of tribes and whatnot. There will always be something and I think we'll be in real trouble when the world is divided and wars are waged based on your indentation style in C++ or which serif font you prefer for TV screenplays versus film screenplays or which way you hang the toilet paper (over the top is always correct DIE BOTTOM-HANGING INFIDELS).

or which way you hang the toilet paper (over the top is always correct DIE BOTTOM-HANGING INFIDELS).

Ugh I hate how this is even a topic of debate, even 'silly debate'. (I'm pretty sure its solely because of a fucking commercial, which fuels my rage of dumb commercials a bit more) Like I have an 'opinion' on it. But to share it would be to legitimize it as something to debate. I have actually encountered people arguing about this and it makes me want to SLAP THEM. Talk about anti-intellectualism. "heh heh I'd rather discuss this thing of absolutely no importance rather than discuss something that matters because serious discussion is to scary for my cave-person brain".

Sorry random bitter tangent.

But yeah the rest of your post is a bit pessimistic. I think its pretty impractical to assume we will KILL each other over inconsequential things that are clearly inconsequential to even laymen.

Only things that seem important but are in fact inconsequential. Like whether you believe/worship in one god or the other or live in one place or the other. This is why we need to educate and explain to people why killing each other over such shit is bad (really killing people in general is bad but you get the picture). And maybe abolish those things all together.