The thrill of being in a club or team or group is the exclusivity and that other people aren’t in it. Just how people are fans of a team, they believe they belong to that organization. They are a part of that team. They are fans of that team because they’re not fans of all of the other teams. I show my fandom for the Los Angeles Lakers by not being a fan for the rest of basketball teams in the league. I belong to the Lakeshow because I choose not to belong to anything else.

We crave this belonging. We go out of our way to be part of community, by ironically excluding others. By not embracing other groups or other people who are not part of the team. If you want to join, well then yeah sure come on down! We’d love to have you. Just adopt these certain beliefs, follow this list of acceptable things to do, and don’t do this list of things not to do. For those that choose not to join our team/community/group/religion, those are the outsiders. That is where the cultural divide really lies. We see it most easily with sports teams but it gets a lot deeper and more serious with religions and countries. You are more a part of this group by showing how much not a part of another group you are.

What if we accepted that humans were a team as well and we didn’t care for all the races/religions/subdivisions? What about if we were grouped as animals to include dogs, cats, wolves, etc and there were no exclusions? We can go down the list to species on earth, then earth materials, and eventually dust of the universe.

We all just belong to one large team.