RSS feedPeople Need People
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| How do you prevent social exclusion? © The Belonging Initiative 2006 |
The Belonging Initiative blog throws up some great questions. Is belonging a human right that ranks alongside freedom of expression, or access to food and water? What does “belonging” mean? There’s a link to an article by Gerda Wever-Rabehl at Suite101 on the evolutionary reasons for the need to belong:
“For our ancestral brothers and sisters, becoming a social outcast would have been disastrous. Rejection from the group and lacking the benefits that the group offered would have meant death. From an evolutionary standpoint, our survival has depended on the ability to prevent rejection, or to reclaim membership to the group once rejected. This is, in a way, still the case. Evolution has instilled in us a powerful desire to be part of a group of people we can know and whom can know us, and while our world has changed, and while our social ties to others have become less personal and more complex, social connection (and our fear of losing it) continues to be crucial to the quality (and in some cases, even quantity) of our lives.”
If it is a right, it’s one that can be subjective – a depressed person can be surrounded by others who love them, and still feel alone, for example. How do you objectively measure a person’s emotions in this way, and how do you take concrete steps to creating a sense of belonging that encompasses so many individuals?
The Belonging Initiative calls for “an appreciation for interdependence and reciprocity” – which is a starting point. If we acknowledge that we are already interconnected and dependent on one another, we can begin to think of that as a strength, and not a weakness.