The moral proximity of rooting

ABSTRACT

Rooting, defined as a spectator’s demonstrative encouragement of a contestant’s effort, ideally has the morally positive aspects of benevolent concern and helpfulness but in practice strains against reasonable standards of conduct by being rude, excessively biased, exploitative, fanatical, and superstitious. Rooting may activate an atavistic, morally cogent sense of fighting for one’s group that is at odds with the universalism of civilized morality. The ‘merely play’ excuse can cut both ways, deflecting moral objections but also removing moral credit from rooting. Although rooting is often not humane, humane rooting can occur and is supported by humane commentary by sports participants, broadcasters, and journalists. Humane rooting supports the premise of benevolence theories (Mengzi, Hutcheson) that morally ideal benevolence has a foothold in an innate general benevolence – seen in this area especially in benevolence toward efforts. Being partisan, excited, and demonstrative, rooters cannot perfectly embody ‘universal calm benevolence’, but they can consciously minimize the inhumane aspects of rooting and achieve a more fully prosocial satisfaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Benevolence
• effort
• morality
• pulling
• rooting
• spectatorship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The use of social media is reducing the practical difference between being in the physical sport arena and being in the enlarged arena generated by broadcasting; athletes now interact with fans on Twitter in the midst of their contests.

2. See (Mumford 2012), 110–119, on the interest of rooters in being heard by each other, intensifying their collective emotional reveling in the event; and see (Fisher 2005) on the intensification of a spectator’s experience by the mere belief that others are watching concurrently.

3. (See StackExchange 2013). This derivation is supported by the American Heritage and Merriam-Webster dictionaries. Another theory traces sports ‘rooting’ from the snout-rooting of pigs through a sense of ‘working hard’ (Online Etymological 2021).

4. Or as-though-real-time in the case of watching a recording.

5. ‘Upon the fragment of a 6^th-century B.C. vase by Sophilos we can see the excited spectators responding with outstretched waving arms to the chariot races held in honor of the slain Patroklos (Book XXIII of the Iliad). The tiny figures are quite obviously screaming their heads off’ (Guttmann 1986, 17).

6. (Howard 1912), 46.

7. (Lorenz 1966).

8. The claim of a normal human benevolence toward all innocent efforts, though important and plausible, has not been unambiguously made by a major moral theorist. Adam Smith takes note of our moral partiality toward success but explains it as gratitude for benefits received and as reconciling us to the dominance of our social superiors (1976, 179, 408). Compare Dixon’s more limited claim (2001, 155), in support of partisan fandom, that a lack of empathetic bonding with people with whom we have become familiar is a character deficit. With obvious relevance to sports fandom, Dixon’s emphasis falls on the moral value of selectively loyal support.

9. Using the terms of discussion set by (Dixon 2001); see also (Feezell 2013), 73–91.

10. (Howard 1912), 46.

11. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this point.

12. See (Brown 2019).

13. For a ‘cognitivized’ ideal of partisan fandom, in which deep attachment to favored contestants is inseparable from deep knowledge of a sport’s workings, see (Davis 2018).

14. Regina discusses how ‘parasocial fans’ superstitiously believe that their support is essential to a team’s success in general (2017, 80–88).

15. ‘Who can justly doubt that the partisan spirit or “emotional set” fostered during the school and college years is a powerful subconscious support of American partisan politics? It is a seminar in which the athletic claque-leader is in training for the shady tricks of the “ward-heeler” or the “city-boss”’ (Howard 1912, 46).

16. I admit I am influenced by the famous waterhole scenes in the ‘Dawn of Man’ segment of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968: A Space Odyssey, but the premise of intergroup confrontations over access to resources is not unrealistic. On the evolved psychology of human intergroup conflict see McDonald et al. 2012.

17. Note that in Dixon’s formulations (2001, 2016) there are nonmoral as well as moral moderating factors in ‘moderate partisanship’ – notably, the intrinsic value of fine play as appreciated by a purist.

18. See (Fisher 2005) on the emotional gain of watching with fellow fans and (Thonhauser and Wetzels 2019) on crowd jubilation.

19. Arguable because one might yet insist, like Kant, that only rational judgment can give the force of moral obligation to benevolence (see e.g. the recommended steps of moral instruction in Kant 1964, AA 6:479–480), or instead, like Hutcheson, view moral reasoning as an auxiliary to the core moral motivation of love of benevolence (Hutcheson 2004, 180). But any mainstream moral theory views benevolence as an important moral prompt, at least, if not also a dominant moral principle.

20. (Mengzi 2003), II A 6.

21. This seems an uncontroversial claim, but quite different ethical rationales can be given for it; for example, compare Smith’s appeal to the reactive emotion of gratitude (1976, 196) with Kant’s appeal to a moral command that must not depend on emotion (1964, AA 6:400–401).

22. Compare Dixon’s (2001, 2016) favored model of romantic attachment as a beginning of fan support.

23. (Hutcheson 2002), 33.

24. This is a sense of loyalty not considered in Russell’s (2012) rejection of Dixon’s (2001) attribution of loyalty to moderately partisan fans.

25. I allude to Mengzi’s ‘heart that cannot bear the sufferings of others’ (2003, 38 [II A 6]), which is conceived as an innate compassion that tends to grow toward full-fledged moral humaneness.

26. I am indebted to Elise Smith, Matthew Clark Smith, and anonymous reviewers for invaluable advice on this essay.