New York recently went nuts because some taller-than-average guys proved better than some other ones at getting a spherical object through a raised hoop. Next: the World Cup, where a spherical object is kicked into a net. People will go nuts over this too.
Well, better this than glorying in real warfare, full of blood and death. Indeed, pro sports team fandom is a sublimation of that tribalist instinct, our atavistic lust to find some foe to crush, and then whoop over the victory. Sports fans often don tribal clothing, even smear themselves with war paint, and scream in tribal rapture. Suggesting, as some believe, that civilization itself is but a thin veneer upon our primitive animal nature. (While others refuse to believe we did evolve from animal precursors.)
But pro sports triumphs are meaningless in the truest sense. For one thing, reveling in one’s own athletic achievement, whether alone or as part of a team, is perfectly reasonable; but why get so psyched about the doings of a group of strangers? Pro sports teams aren’t your tribe-mates at all, their members very different from you, with many hired from far and wide (for profit, rather than any group solidarity). Not guys you hang out with at the local bar; rarely even seeing them in the flesh, except at a distance.
Secondly, a battlefield victory tends to be meaningful in a literal sense, not just involving death and trauma, but often with serious real-world consequences for many people beyond the combatants. Thus the celebration of WWII victory, in New York’s Times Square, was an entirely valid cathartic outpouring of emotion. The 2026 partying, over the Knicks’ win, was an ersatz shadow of that.
And thirdly, as I’ve suggested, pro sports are intrinsically meaningless from a sheer physical standpoint. Human achievement has many quite genuine examples, impacting our lives. Like our vaccines that banish diseases like measles (until some people opted out). Getting more balls through a hoop is no such achievement. Fixating on such triviality is ridiculous.
That’s even more true of football (soccer). At least winning at basketball might show one team more skilled than the other (even if the particular skill is nugatory). But in soccer, with so few goals scored, the role of sheer chance in the outcome may trump whatever skill is involved. Teams might as well roll dice or flip a coin.
All that said, there is of course one way in which many people do have a real personal stake in the outcome of pro sports games — gambling. Though the sports mania long predated the widespread popularity of such betting. Which many now do seem to enjoy. Whether it’s otherwise rational behavior I’ll leave aside.
Anyhow, many people get together to view, and party over, pro sports competitions. Such gatherings are admittedly positive social phenomena. I have similarly invited friends to my house — not to watch games, but election returns — vastly more consequential.
New York’s Knicks celebration was heralded as a wholesome public expression of joy and good feeling, especially welcome during a time of societal anxieties and antagonisms. I certainly get that too, and wouldn’t deny sports fans such jollies. To the contrary: my carefully considered philosophy holds that the only thing that can matter in existence is the feelings of sentient beings capable of feeling.
So, go for it. Once more, it’s preferable to killing rival tribes. I guess that’s progress.
