What are your basic needs?
Food. Clothing. Shelter. Companionship. OK. Irrational Hatred? YIKES!!
Somehow a strange thing happens. A need to feel superior to someone else jumps in seemingly out of nowhere. A need to put yourself above someone who is probably a lot like you but just different enough to give you a strange need to put yourself above them.
I can just imagine cave dwellers turning up their nose at early agriculturalists (just a fad). Cattle herders looking with scorn on sheep herders (wussies). Giant fans and Eagles fans showering each other with abuse. There's never friction with groups that have no contact with each other. If someone told me I was superior to a Madagascarian I wouldn't know and wouldn't care. It only matters when it's someone you know and feel some sense of competition with. Maybe it served some useful function back in our developmental past preventing us from trying to mate with walruses. Whatever the reason the trend remains, long outliving its usefulness.
So it is even among the tree hugging hikers of the Appalachian Trail. You'd think we'd all be in the same boat needing the same services and suffering the same scorn of disbelieving porch dwellers. But no. The need for superiority surfaces even here. The dividing line; northbounders and southbounders (NoBos and SoBos in trail shorthand). Each complains that the trail is easier in the other direction, signs are pointed in the other direction, relevant landmarks left off of signs, maintainers leave more goodies (trail magic) for the other group, guidebooks are written in the opposite direction etc.
This was the sad and selfish state in which I found myself early in my southbound hike of Virginia. First it was cold (obviously a northbounders conspiracy), then the hiker hostels weren't open then the shelters got progressively more crowded as I met up with more and more NoBos. Fortunately a good long walk gives one time to reflect on these matters, slowly come to the error of one's ways and turn things around. My relationship with the NoBos is certainly fleeting but I've met a much more varied group as a result. From the rugged obsessed speedsters at the front of the pack, to the stealth hikers staying a step ahead of the larger throng to the larger mass of thru-hikers. It's been fun to watch and the more of Virginia I reacquaint myself with, the more respect I have for them. I no longer bristle at the questions of what direction I'm hiking in (although I do make it clear I thru-hiked the trail ten years ago) and I've gotten back to why I chose this itinerary in the first place, working my way to higher and higher mountains further and further into the wilderness. Nothing like the ups and downs of the trail to even things out among the people who travel there.