People like playing football because it releases our hunting instinct. So, why do so many people like watching football? Next, let's answer this question.

Why can football make so many people follow? The explanation read in this book is that football activates our inner tribal instinct and connects people firmly in a tribal way. Among them, tribal instinct is a word I summarized for you from the book. You can understand that there are many emotions in a person's heart. When you read a love poem or watch a love movie, you will easily become emotional. This is because love poems and movies mobilize your inner emotional side and touch your emotional instinct. Girls can't help but want to protect their baby when they see it for several months. This is because the baby mobilized the maternal nature in the girl's heart and touched her maternal nature. Similarly, we can understand football in this way. The game is like a tribal hunting, which mobilizes the tribal side of our minds and activates our inner tribal instinct. In other words, football is a contemporary tribe.

You may say that from the perspective of modern countries, tribes are a very backward, primitive and even a bit barbaric organizational form. Except for a few isolated places, most tribes in the world have disappeared. However, according to Morris's observation, although this organizational form of tribe is on the verge of disappearing, as a way of life that has accompanied human beings for hundreds of thousands of years, tribal genes have always existed, and may even be resurrected in another form. Football is a manifestation of human tribalism. Let's learn about all aspects of football according to the characteristics of the tribe.

According to the definition of sociology, tribes generally refer to a group of people with similar blood ties in primitive society, and each tribe has its own territory, dialect and customs. Among these characteristics, three points deserve our special attention, which is also the key for us to understand the tribal attribute of football.

The first feature is that the range of loyalty is limited and the loyalty is high. In modern society, people generally advocate the consciousness of * * *, emphasizing that the world is a whole, but in tribal culture, people are only loyal to their own tribe and follow it until death. Wherever the tribe goes, people follow. Look, is this similar to football? In football, fans are only loyal to their own clubs. During major games such as the World Cup, a group of loyal fans will quit their jobs to watch the game, and they will follow wherever the team goes. These fans have strict organization, specific costumes and slogans, and have extremely strong emotional expressions: when their team wins, they will open champagne like players to celebrate; When the team loses, they will cry and even burn their jerseys.

Fans' sense of identity with the teams they support sometimes even exceeds that of city residents. For example, two teams in the same city are often tit for tat. In football, the contest between teams in the same city is called the same city derby. The neighbor who greets you today will probably give you the middle finger in the stands opposite the stadium tomorrow. Note, however, that this only shows the loyalty of the fans to the team, not that they are a small group.

Except for international competitions, every fan is loyal to his national team, and the rest of the time is loyal to a club. This loyalty has gone beyond the scope of the country and the nation. For example, Manchester United, a football club in Manchester, England, is just one of many teams in Britain. However, Manchester United has 350 million fans around the world, equivalent to more than seven times the total population of Britain. Therefore, you can think that football is both narrow and broad. Its generality lies in that people's loyalty to the team goes beyond the geographical scope. Its narrowness lies in the fact that the loyalty range of fans is very limited. They don't like all teams, but are loyal to their own team. Loyalty is limited, but it must be loyal to the end, which is the first feature of football and tribes.

Having said that, let's review the three tribal characteristics of football. The first is limited loyalty and extreme loyalty; The second is a high degree of exclusivity and extreme desire for victory; The third is to have an independent set of cultural symbols. In fact, as long as we go further, we can easily find that football has many other tribal characteristics. For example, FIFA is like a judge in a tribe, upholding justice; The chairman of the club is like a tribal elder, managing daily affairs; Physiotherapists and trainers are like witch doctors in the tribe, responsible for adjusting the physical and mental state of soldiers. Of course, these tribal characteristics exist not only in the field of football, but also in other sports, only football develops these characteristics more thoroughly.