When asked once, while speaking to a bunch of students, to make up a short inspiring poem, Muhammed Ali said “Me. We”. I think this is still the shortest known poem in the English language. What he meant is that I am part of who you are, and vice versa, but he was talking about society, culture. My question is this, when we are saying “we”, what do we mean?
Watch a football match, listen to the fans being interviewed as they leave the stadium. They all say “we”, as if they were not in fact a spectator but a participant. How does one arrive at the conclusion that the result of a sporting event would be different if we weren’t in attendance?
Weirdly, they, the spectators/fans, will take their role in the success of their team, yet will shoulder no blame for the lows. I mean there is never the statement “they need a different crowd of supporters, this one is really letting them down” uttered, but you will hear them call for the manager to be sacked because “he” is solely responsible for the lack of success. I find that a weird sort of dissonance.
For many years I have watched Snooker, I am a big fan of the Northern Irish lads of course, I’m even lucky enough to know a few of them and have known them since they were youngsters. I never say “we”, I never allow myself to think that I am somehow wired into their successes or failures, I think they are much more responsible for them than I am. I do however recognise where their peers, the guys they honed their craft with and against, may take some pride in being involved; very few sportsmen exist/arise in a bubble. I know that the current World No1 Mark Allen developed his devastating game in the company of some great amateurs from all over the island of Ireland, and then competed regularly with other professionals from both countries of that island before going on to being a top pro himself and eventually the man at the top of the world of snooker in 2024. Everyone he kicked past on the journey probably contributed to that journey, I suppose that’s likely to be the same for most sportspersons.
Does the “we” arise from a sense of being a club contributor, does it enable the “we” when you buy enough merchandise, is the “we” by association with the geographical location, is it a tribe of sorts? I do not know, I just know it seems to happen when it’s a team sport in question rather than an individual. But that isn’t consistent either, there are fans of the Repsol Honda team in MotoGP that don’t say “we”, and fans of Williams F1 that don’t either. Those are teams.
My ex Mother-in-law used to describe the family business in terms of “we”, with statements that indicated herself as a major participant, in equality with her husband and his brother who drove the miles and did the work and worked the shop and dug the holes and laid the bricks. This is the same “we” as when you watch Grand Designs and the guy is out in the rain putting the weathering on the building he constructed from the ground up, while his wife is describing the project from the corner of the site where her feet won’t get filthy. Maybe she made some sacrifices, maybe “we” are a team like a tandem ride where it doesn’t matter who peddles the hardest, maybe “we” are all in this together. Remember that nonsense when David Cameron said it right before waging a war on the poor by removing every part of society that the government supported that they needed? The rich don’t use the local library or the municipal pool, the rich get therapy privately, they book in at the Nuffield, they do not rely on the bus service into town. Sure didn’t look like “we” at the time or since.
When I say “we” when referring to the family unit I am indicating a shared responsibility or goal, shared ownership, I am talking about us and how we align. Yet if she worked and I didn’t, I might say “her work” rather than “our work”, but I might also say “our money” rather than “her money”. This “WE” thang is not that easy to define, where does the line blur? I know this if I know nothing more, “we” were not on the pitch, “we” did not take the penalty, maybe “we” have overestimated our participation and our importance!
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