Who are you? — Jon Kaye

Last weekend, I watched the boat race live on the Thames.

It was an unbelievable atmosphere.

I also watched some FA Cup football. Different crowds, different chants, different uniforms. Same underlying energy.

Pick a side.

Red or Blue. Light Blue or Dark Blue.

We dress it up as tradition. Rivalry. Banter. Identity. But strip away the oars and the shin pads and what you’re left with is something much older.

A deep, almost physical need to belong.

But why does “we” so often need a “they”? Why does connection so easily turn into opposition?

And more importantly, can we have the good bit (belonging, meaning, togetherness) without the bad bit (antagonism, tribal blindness, zero-sum thinking)?

I think we can. But it needs work.

Why Tribes Feel So Good

Belonging is not a nice-to-have. It’s fundamental.

You can tell yourself you’re a sovereign individual, floating through life on pure logic and artisanal self-control. And then the crowd at Twickenham erupt into 'Swing Low' and your chest does that weird warm thing.

That’s not weakness. That’s wiring.

Tribes solve three problems humans have always had:

1) Safety
Being part of a group used to mean you didn’t get eaten.

2) Identity
A tribe answers “Who am I?” without you having to overthink it.

3) Meaning
You matter because you’re part of something that matters.

And this is why tribes don’t just form around sport. They form around politics, religion, brands, work cultures, online subcultures, even diagnoses.

I've written about this before: labels create community, language, in-jokes, a ready-made “people like me” group.

Same engine. Different costume.

So the urge to pick Oxford or Cambridge, City or Arsenal, is the same urge that makes humans build friendships, communities, families, movements. That part is good.

The problem is what happens next.

Why “Us” So Often Needs a “Them”

The problem is that a tribe without an enemy can feel flimsy.

An enemy helps to sharpen boundaries. It makes belonging clearer. It turns “my group” into a story, with stakes.

And once stakes exist, we get all the classic behaviours:

We exaggerate our virtues and minimise our flaws.
We interpret “their” behaviour as evidence of a character flaw, and “our” behaviour as “normal”.
We start defending the group, instead of pursuing truth.
Winning becomes moral.

That last one is the killer.

Because as soon as winning becomes moral, the other side isn’t just different. They’re wrong.

And now you’re not enjoying the spectacle. You’re fighting a tiny symbolic war.

Sport is mostly a safe container for this, which is partly why it’s so valuable. It gives us a controlled arena where rivalry can be acted out without (usually) burning the town down.

But the habit leaks.

If you practise “us vs them” every weekend, don’t be surprised when it shows up in the office, on social media, in family WhatsApps, and in how we talk about anyone who doesn’t share our worldview.

So Can We Build Tribes Without Enemies?

Yes. But not by preaching “let’s all get along”.

That never works. It’s too abstract. And it ignores what tribes are for. The better move is to build what I’ll call non-zero tribes.

A “zero-sum” tribe needs someone else to lose for you to feel like you’ve won. A “non-zero” tribe creates value while other people also create value. It’s not “we win, you lose”. It’s “we play, we grow, we enjoy this, and you can too”.

That is the difference between:

a football fan culture that’s basically tribal humiliation with scarves
and
a running club where everyone suffers together, and then goes for coffee.

Both are tribes. One needs a target. The other needs a shared purpose.

And this is where I think the answer lies.

If you want belonging without antagonism, you need a shared purpose that is bigger than comparison.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

When the purpose is “beat them”, you get hostility.

When the purpose is “build this”, “learn this”, “support this”, “serve this”, you get connection.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

Here are a few practical design principles I’ve seen work (and yes, some of this is me trying to talk myself into being a better human):

1) Make the identity additive, not exclusive

“People who do X” is healthier than “people who are not Y”.

Fans of rowing. Lovers of live sport. People who enjoy a day on the river.
That’s an open door.

“Oxford people are superior” is… not.

2) Build rituals that create togetherness, not supremacy

Rituals matter. They’re the glue.

But the ritual has to point inward (“we do this together”) rather than outward (“we do this because we’re better than them”).

A chant can be joy. Or it can be a weapon.

Same mechanism. Different intent.

3) Elevate the shared human story

One of the smartest things about the Boat Race coverage shift in recent years has been the explicit focus on human stories and accessibility, not just “tradition and rivalry”.

When you zoom in on individuals, enemies become people again.

It’s harder to hate someone when you can imagine their mum watching them.

4) Create cross-tribe contact that isn’t debate

Debate is where tribes go to die.

If you want to reduce antagonism, you don’t put rival tribes in an arena and ask them to “discuss their differences”.

You give them a shared task.

Fix something. Build something. Run something. Coach kids. Clean a riverbank. Create a mixed team. Do work that makes “we” bigger.

5) Reward generosity inside the tribe

A tribe becomes toxic when it rewards purity tests and punishes nuance.

It becomes healthy when status comes from contribution.

I’ve said versions of this before: community doesn’t grow if you only take; it grows when you give your time, attention and energy.

The Hard Bit: We Have to Practise It

I don’t think you can “solve” tribalism, or indeed, that you need to. But we could channel it.

We could take a powerful human impulse and just give it a better job to do.

We could build better tribes on purpose, in small repeatable ways, until it becomes normal. And then keep practising.

Takeaways for the Week Ahead

If you want something actionable (because I always do), here are three small experiments:

1) Join a tribe built around a craft, not an opponent
Pick something where the purpose is creation: a sports club, a volunteer group, a choir, a local project, a writing circle.
Notice how different it feels when the point is the work, not the win.

2) Try “rival respect” as a personal ritual
Next time you’re watching sport, force yourself to name one thing you genuinely admire about the other side.
Not as a fake moral cleanse. As training. You’re teaching your brain that “they” can be competent humans, not cartoon villains.

3) Make one cross-tribe connection that isn’t ideological
Have a pint with someone you disagree with and talk about literally anything else.
Kids. Work. Music. Food. Ageing. Sleep. The price of petrol.
Your goal isn’t consensus. It’s re-humanisation.

Belonging is one of the best parts of being alive. I don’t want less of it. I want better versions of it.

More “we’re in this together”.

Less “we win, you lose”.

And if sport can teach us anything, it’s that strong emotions don’t have to make us enemies.

They can also make us feel more alive. Standing side by side, looking at the same river, cheering at the same ridiculous human effort, and then walking home as people again.

Until next time,

Jon "Light Blue Forever" Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately