The NLD and our Mesolithic Neighbours

A crazy detour that might just cheer you up!

Sep 26, 2023

Regular readers of Arsenal Wonderland will know that I sometimes premise an article with a seemingly unrelated topic that seamlessly (yeah right) morphs into an article about Arsenal. So if this article seems a little off-kilter at the beginning, don’t worry, it’ll all make sense by the end (yeah right).

After Sunday’s somewhat excruciating North London Derby, the dog and I headed straight into the forest. We’d already been out for half the day but there’s nothing quite like a forest as the late evening sun streams side-wards through the trunks to bring the spirits back to equilibrium. So we sloped off into the dim eventide and let the whole thing wash off us.

trees on forest with sun rays — Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

Why was I so disappointed? What was it about Tottenham that made this draw more painful than the usual draw? After all, I lived for a long time in North London. I know what to expect. Wherever there are big teams in close proximity there’s always a massive social overlap. Some of my dearest friends had been afflicted with the Tottenham bug. Of course there's banter and teasing but (in my world) it’s all good-natured. Partially it's just how I am and partially because, well, isn’t there enough anger and siloing going on in life (especially these days) without finding another reason to despise each other?

Okay, there’s an ongoing (and historical) narrative generated about Tottenham (and about Arsenal). So much of the content we read, watch or listen to is continually encouraging us to dislike each other. Online exchanges can get pretty twisted. For that matter so can offline exchanges (am I really describing everyday life as offline? How ridiculous!). So, as the dog and I breezily tramped through the retreating evening light, thoughts began occurring to me, which dear reader, I’d like to share with you.

In David Graeber and David Wengrow’s fascinating book “The Dawn Of Everything” they describe a phenomena they’ve dubbed Schismatogenesis. This (strange and almost impenetrable) word describes the phenomena whereby ancient societies intentionally defined themselves in opposition to other nearby societies. In other words, whatever your neighbours did, you tried to do differently.

man holding composite bow — Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Graeber and Wengrow wrote “Ever since Mesolithic times, the broad tendency has been for human beings to further subdivide, coming up with endless new ways to distinguish themselves from their neighbours”. If the neighbours fished, you grew beans and corn. If the neighbours were hierarchical, you ordered yourself in a flattened more fairly distributed society. Over several thousand years these differences magnifyed until vastly different cultures sprung up all over the world.

This Schismatogenic tendency drove cultures to keep boiling over with divergent traits and revolutions because people are always looking for new ways to express their group characteristics. Is Schismatogenesis one of the ongoing driving forces behind cultural innovation and change because people are always striving to reinvent themselves?

As I began to think about Graeber and Wengrow’s concept and apply it to the tribalism surrounding football (and especially derbies) I realised that, with hilarious irony, it’s actually our very affinity and kinship that encourage such powerful narratives of difference and contempt. For some reason we want to be the most different from those we are the most similar to. Arsenal and Tottenham fans (or any close rivals for that matter) are like mini-mesolithic tribal groups perpetually coming up with “endless new ways to distinguish themselves from their neighbours”. But because we are all fixed to the rules and structure of football, there’s no re-inventing ourselves in radical and unusual ways. Instead we’re left with creating narratives concerned with despising and belittling the “other”. When I thought about it like this, it all seemed a little ridiculous.

When I first arrived in England as a child there was a lot of things that were new to me. The weather for one. Grey and cold and damp and raining. The food was a challenge. And the crowdedness. People and cars and houses everywhere. And then there was the historical class differences. People had ascribed value to each other in an intricate cultural dance that started centuries ago and was still being obeyed. It was all pretty strange and absurd. And of course, there was football. Kids were all “allocated” to teams I’d never heard of with strange names like Aston Villa or Sheffield Wednesday or Crystal Palace or Tottenham Hotspurs. They would ask me who my team was? “I don’t have a team,” I’d say. That was a mistake. You had to have a team. You had to align. You had to be defined by a range of arbitrary and external narratives.

Eventually, I became an Arsenal fan ( a story for another time - but it could just as easily been otherwise). And then my journey of alignment with the Arsenal historical narrative began. One of the first things I had to learn was who to despise, who the “enemy” was. But, I wasn’t that great at conforming. There were things about the “enemy” that I actually quite liked. Players like Ricky Villa, Ossie Ardiles and Glen Hoddle were amazing. And that cockerel. It shone with a gorgeous mixture of arrogance and ridiculousness. Even the name White Hart Lane had a poetic and archaic attraction. But I’d learnt enough in my new grey, rainy, bland tasting and overcrowded island to keep quiet about my failure to fully align to these powerful narratives of estrangement and disparity.

a large red and white sign on the side of a building — Photo by Huy Phan on Unsplash

Of course these cultural codes with their symbols and meanings are in some ways powerful and attractive. It’s wonderful to be a member of a group, to be able to say “we” and enjoy the warmth of togetherness. To be a “we” there has to be a set of defining characteristics. And there has to be a “Them”. Because there’s no “we” without a “them”. And right there, that’s the problem. Because essentially, just like England’s arbitrary and absurd class system, cultural codes are arbitrary narratives made up and repeated over and over until they become the defining feature of a group and seem to have value.

In other words, the reason that a draw in the NLD can be so disappointing and painful, compared to, say, drawing with Brighton or Aston Villa, is precisely because of this enforced historical narrative that insists that estrangement and disparity with the neighbouring club is greater than with any other.

man in black and white star print vest — Photo by Patrick Collins on Unsplash

Okay, so what am I trying to say here? I suppose I’m saying that even though I love that Spurs are the Joker to Arsenal’s Batman, I also know that the Joker and Batman aren’t real, they are just stories about conflict and resolution. In fact it’s the very conditions and rules of football itself, the competition and pseudo-conflict, that create the conditions for perpetual threat to the group-self that encourages us to generate these divisive narratives of disdain.

And as the dog and I began to emerge from the now darkening forest I wondered why we are so easily persuaded by these stories that divide us, instead of embracing stories about our similarities? And I felt a little daft.

Arsenal Wonderland

The NLD and our Mesolithic Neighbours

A crazy detour that might just cheer you up!

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