Team Sports Aren’t Just Dumb – They Are Actively Harmful to Humanity and Its Evolution. We Can and Should Do Better

I’m going to preface this by saying that by “Team Sports”, I am NOT including sports like Track and Field, or the various Swimming events, or others like them where there is athleticism operating in parallel. I’m talking specifically about the most popular sports in our society, such as:

-Football
-Baseball
-Basketball
-Soccer/International Football

And the like.

They all can be summed up badly by saying that they are a bunch of apes playing a “game” with specific rules that they all agree on which requires them to be actively in opposition to each other in a way that can and WILL cause physical altercations, in order to determine “winners” and “losers”.

Those physical altercations happen fairly frequently and can cause injuries caused by another person, usually from the “other team.”

Why are team sports so popular? Examine the Monkeysphere: https://www.monkeysphere.us

We are a species that became the dominant species on the planet by knocking out ALL of the other Hominid species during the “hominid wars” about 40,000 years ago, and it lasted so long that it SEARED directly into our DNA a distinct pattern of dividing ourselves, and then fighting ourselves; fighting other hominids that look like us.

Team Sports are all just tribalism, plain and simple.

They are essentially just different forms of “play war” that scratch that monkey itch that we have to see “our” tribe beat out “their” tribe. We accept it within our society because it allows that itch to be scratched without anyone actually dying (most of the time).

Now, sports supporters will claim that team sports teach things like “teamwork” and “cooperation,” which are valuable to our society. That sounds like a solid argument at first.

But then, when you look harder, you realize that there’s other ways to accomplish these feats WITHOUT supporting a culture of conflict against our fellow man. Without playing “zero-sum” games where there has to be a winning and a losing team of your fellow humans, and without the chance for one human to physically harm another. Without teaching ourselves constantly to carve ourselves into groups from one unified whole into two “tribes” in perpetual conflict.

On top of that, these team sports solidify and promote within our culture the ubiquitous acceptance of dividing ourselves into arbritraty subdivisions, literally tearing ourselves apart artificially to be in conflict when we don’t have to. This bleeds into the rest of our society, from politics that affect every aspect of our lives, all the way down to childhood play.

For a small list of examples. I mentioned swimming and track and field, but how about:
-Gymnastics
-Body Building
-Bowling
Golf (as much as I REALLY hate how elitist it can be)

At least these sports, even though they technically have “winners” and “losers” do NOT involve direct physical altercations and conflicts between our fellow humans, and can even be played alone – because they are really ultimately against YOURSELF and your own ability rather than being against somebody else. It forces people to push themselves further, to improve themselves and make themselves better.

While current popular team sports that I mentioned at the start of this rant also push people’s physical limits and make people be better, more improved versions of themselves, they all ALSO include the element of inspecting your “enemy”, trying to find and exploit their weaknesses. Which, really, is tearing each other down when we as a people, as a species, should be trying to BUILD EACH OTHER UP.

Ideally, what I would REALLY like to see, to scratch that itch that we have for “competition” if we still feel it’s necessary but still actually BUILD something rather than destroy ourselves from the inside out.

How about things like competitive…

– House Building? Solve the homeless problem AND still exert yourself physically to your limits!

-Cooking? This already exists on reality TV for individual dishes and celebrity chefs (I do love Iron Chef), but why don’t we have cafeteria-style team based cooking events where your goal is to prepare as much food for the hungry as quickly as possible?

-Logging and/or Tree Planting/Gardening? Acquire more resources for your species and protect your homeworld!

How about some “non-physical sports”, like:
-Engineering?
-Disease Curing?
-Artistry?

I’m sure we could figure out a way to “sportify” these things that help us rather than harm us.

All the statisticians that get their rocks off by compiling stats about players abilities “on the field” on these team sports could direct those energies to doing the same thing for activies that BUILD US UP as a society, culture, people, species, rather than activities that divide us and tear us down.

And if you think those ideas are ridiculous. Why would they be any more ridiculous than “put ball past line / in hole as many times as possible”?

Why not? We’ve tried the other way for thousands of years with us holding oursevles back. Why not try for a bit to promote a culture that pushes ourselves forward??