this ain't where it's at.

Okay, my brain’s been thinking about this idea for a few days and I want it to stop so I’m typing it out and putting it on the internet. I’m gonna save myself some time and say: add “generally” to every sentence, this obviously doesn’t apply to literally everyone. “Fight” = anything from play fighting/slightly abusive “banter” to actual, y’know, war.

1. So, when you were at school, you had your group of friends. Occasionally, members of your friendship group would fight, in some way or another, it’s what happens. You sometimes would find it funny, or annoying, but generally just accept it as a thing that happens, unless it gets serious. 

-But if someone from outside your friendship group tried starting a fight with one of your friends, more often than not, you group together to stick up for them. 

-If two people in a different friendship group start fighting, you leave it alone because it’s not your problem.

2. So in your school, there were a lot of these groups of friends. Occasionally, groups of friends would fight, in some way or another, it’s what happens. More often than not, you would probably have found it entertaining to watch the two rival friend groups fight. 

-But if someone from outside of your school tried starting a fight with someone in those other groups, more often that not, you group together to stick up for them.

-If two random people outside of your school start fighting, you leave it alone because it’s not your problem.

3. Right. So. What I’ve been thinking is this kinda thing continues being true as you go up in scale: Cities. There’s groups of people in cities that don’t like each other and fight, but in a circumstance like a sporting event where it’s easy to identify who is from where, you end up with people from the same place backing each other up, and a fight between two of the other city’s people being none of your business.

4. Again, people from different cities that fight among each other will often band together in a situation where it involves another country. A lot of people get very defensive if another country does some perceived damage to any part of their country.

5. Continents to some degree, but we’ve split the world in a different way to that really. Although both are made up of “cliques” of their own - we’ve got “the west” and “the east.” Just the idea of having a west and east as a set location on a sphere makes me laugh, but that’s another thing.

So, if one of the eastern countries attacks a western country, this mentality dictates we back them up, we go to war for them. But, being in the western world and seeing countries in “the other place” fighting, going to war - on the whole, we do nothing, we appear to naturally react that way. Media coverage is pretty much equal to high school gossip.