The universal sportscaster

Doug Arellanes reports that Czech soccer commentators are… not brilliant. Some things seem to be constant across cultures.

Likewise, have you ever wondered about the fact that in every culture known to man, there’s a political left and right? Even if they aren’t called such, the two (or more) sides co-exist and thrive by deriding and scheming against each other. (Ever wonder about those those cave-drawings of donkeys and elephants?)

Is it that, as with the Y chromosome or the gene for left-handedness, we’re all born with some marker that tells us which side of the aisle or barricade to stand on? Or that we’ve all got some kind of natural born political IQ; some people are simply smarter and get “it,” the political truth, while the other dummies just see things from the wrong side?

More likely, it’s that humans are hard-wired to cluster into groups and then define our groups in opposition to other groups. The stakes are social as much as they are ideological.