Baseless rivalries

Michael Ignatieff uses the phrase “the narcissism of minor difference” during his discussion of the violent collapse of post-Tito Yugoslavia. Whereas once Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats were able to identify themselves on the basis of all sorts of characteristics, beliefs and affiliations, Ignatieff argues that the deteriorating security system effectively stripped people down to a base identity established in race, thereby splitting communities, undermining trust, and pushing things farther along the road to violent upheaval.

The intentional amplification of trivial differences seems to be a particular human talent – like seeing faces in random patterns. Among the most absurd examples of this intentional polarization and flimsily-grounded vitriol is the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry. It boggles my mind that people could feel hostile towards the other school, or people from there, simply on the basis of the minor differences that exist. In organization, in history, in societal role – Oxford and Cambridge are essentially the same.

There are some who argue that such rivalries are a form of healthy competition and that they somehow drive people to excel. This is the school of thinking that led to the brutish conditions in so many boarding schools where children are encouraged to fend for themselves and, like the participants in the Stanford prison experiment, rapidly begin to brutalize one another. While rivalries of this kind do create competition, it is not a competition that fosters or encourages healthy outcomes.

And yet there are intelligent, normally right-thinking people who describe their fellows at the other institution in derogatory terms. I suspect that it is precisely that similarity that generates the impulse to defend one’s choice through an assertion of superiority. The criticism is always semi-joking, but that hardly exonerates tho who carry it out in my eyes. Saying in jest that you despise someone for an utterly insignificant reason is no credit to you as either a comic or a human being.

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here. View all posts by Milan