I regretted the thoughts in my brain. Forcefully, I tried to make everything make sense. All the questions coming up, trying to fit under a “common tent.” Coming from a combination of backgrounds, intellectual identities, emotional belongings, and unexpunged independence, I was feeling in an empty field. I was almost sure about the fact that all of these identities were utterly human-made. Belonging was just human fiction. Insincerely, they were created to ease the ego of humanity, to fit into any social group hierarchy, without feeling in “danger.”
Belonging was just a pure, inevitable feeling that exists in human nature. In “The Need to Belong,” Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary argue that belongingness is a fundamental human motivation. Indeed, if it wasn’t so essential, then lacking a sense of belonging wouldn’t have such severe consequences. This universal desire is so real that the need to belong is observed across all cultures and different types of people. (1) According to the social identity theory, we start by perceiving ourselves and others in particular social categories. After we find our categories, we continue to determine the relative value of our specific group. Furthermore, we establish its members and its social standing according to our standards. Instead of comprehending the social situations as independent observers, we choose to sense who we are and how we relate to others in the way other individuals and groups around us perceive. Whether intellectual, emotional, or even physical, our knowledge of belonging is determined by this cycle and continues to circle in our heads until we figure out the perfect place to belong. (2)
Since our nature feels safer when it belongs to something, we intuitively find ourselves trying to fit into a place, exemplifying options to belong, and even sometimes forcing ourselves to belong somewhere we else shouldn’t — or somewhere we would be in misery. However, belonging somewhere meant comprehended restrictions and lack of freedom. Right here, it becomes easier to see the contemporary problem with the relationship between the humans needing to be independent/free and the humans need to belong in a social environment. Whenever the opposite desires for these sides increase, it creates a more atomized community. It becomes less like a community where we feel safe but transforms into a contradictive group of individuals. At that point, the belongingness is broken and this leaves the human in misery. (3) This situation can happen frequently: an individual may seek intellectual freedom and contradict the place s/he emotionally belongs, resulting in an internal conflict. I mentioned this because this search is correlated to a modern universal style of thinking, known as existentialism. It is the most crucial consideration for individuals being independent and conscious beings (“existence”)—rather than their labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories (“essence”), belong. (4)
Therefore, when it comes to the non-belongers, the people who feel their belonging is everywhere and nowhere, these theories collapse. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka showed us that Gregor Samsa had been transformed into a giant beetle. (5) It was a way of showing the extent of alienation, which is a feeling of empty distance and non-belonging, in other words, “otherness.” Just like a beetle, my paradoxical search to find the place I belong, whether emotionally, intellectually, or physically, ended when I discovered that independently belonging to something is just as fictional as being free from a belonging. This internal conflict put me in confusion, making me feel like I am one of the non-belongers. And then I realize I belong to non-belongers.
And then I said I am okay, and will always be.
Author: Yagmur BINGUL
Editor: Ramazan Ege SOLAK & Ahmet Utku Ersahin
Resources
(1) Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497-529. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497.
(2) https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-identity-theory
(3) https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/139880.pdf
(4) https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/139880.pdf
(5) Kafka, F. (2019). Metamorphosis. King of Fruits Publishing.
*Bernasconi, Matteo. Metamorphosis, The Overthinking. Sydney Art Month. Sydney, Australia.
