Belonging is a subscription based affair

Belonging, is in my mind, one of the pillars of the human mind. It's my opinion, that the very reason we have egos, or identities, or an elaborate self-image, is because it's a way to seat, or position us, in a role amongst other people. Or, to put it a different way, it plugs us into a group (what I call a collective).

I call it a collective, because it's really just a pooling of resources. Humans think their power is in their abstract thinking, but are slow to realize that much of it is in our collective, concerted efforts, which are possible because of the ability to communicate as well as we do. And that that ability to communicate, is in part, the reason we think so abstractly, because it's a way of encoding and transferring ideas from one person to another.

When you understand this fact about collective power, you can then expect that there will be some provision that seeks to glue individuals together. And that's where identity comes in. It tells you who you are, and where you belong.

You cannot belong, without an identity. All that belonging is, is a kind of statement that says, you are so and so, and these people are such and such, and the implication is that you fit together. Therefore you are of this and that group. It also defines who your enemies are, in the same way.

A problem can arise in at least two scenarios that I've so far identified. And likely a lot more. In the one, a person has acquired an identity that says, "you don't belong anywhere, and that is who you are". This is like a kind of virus infection of the identity software in your mind. It can come from your upbringing, and past experiences. When the infection has set in, because identity is the director of how you behave, you will behave exactly as someone who does not belong anywhere. And not only will it diligently the fulfill the expectations of an image that says "you don't belong anywhere", but, since your identity software is a collective thing, others will also unconsciously see it, and oblige. They will re-enforce it without knowing, because that's how it works.

"If you quack like a duck, and if you walk like a duck, we will oblige and call you duck."

The second scenario that I've identified, where a person has trouble belonging anywhere, is when they are undergoing a process of becoming aware of their own identities.

The way identity works, necessarily, is with one part truth and one part make belief. This is why fake it till you make it is even a thing. It's really just you updating your identity software.

There are even builtin faculties within your mind that help you build and defend these identities, against the light of the truth that threatens to expose it's made up aspects. Since after all, it's important software to how a human lives and survives in the world.

Some of these builtin functions, are like different forms of self-hypnosis, if we're being optimistic, of self-deception if we're being frank. Therefore identity maintenance, necessarily, and evidently, requires a lot of self-deceiving, half-truths, or outright lies. In order to maintain the image of who we think we are, in the world.

When a person begins to notice these builtin function in action in real time, and starts to see through the whole illusion of identity and world-view, and how it all ties into the individuals survival and way of life, the curtains start to fall, they can no longer buy their own BS, so to speak. They may still play along, or try to. But it can never be as absorbing as it once was.

And again, since this is a collective thing, when you don't believe your own BS half of the time, neither will others.

Put another way, when you don't feel like you belong anywhere, because you don't feel like identity, and belonging, are real things, others will sense it, just as they sense it with the person who doesn't feel like they belong anywhere, because they have an identity that says so.

It's the same, but different. I know because I experienced both.

In the first, there is a lot of despair. It's overwhelming. Because belonging is so important to a human beings way of life. Poking an eye, hurting a tooth, hurt because those things are very important. Not belonging hurts because it's very important. It's really just biology (or evolution, if I'm permitted to use that word on this site).

It's so overwhelming, that the person will do literally anything to belong somewhere. And if they can't belong with the outcasts, or the baddies, then they will bury that pain under a mountain of self-distracting tactics. Also involving those builtin mechanisms of identity maintenance. Which are emotionally driven as far as I can see.

The task then becomes to alter the world view so that the world is not worth belonging to, and to alter the identity so that it belongs to itself. And a kind of highly abrasive, or downright destructive, megalomania ego is the result. World view and identity are like two sides of the same coin.

When all of this is partially seen through, and illusion doesn't have as strong a hold as it used to, you still feel the pain. But it loses much of it's power. You still feel sadness, rejection, anger, and anxiety as the result of not belonging, and being alone, but you see them for what they are. Emotional responses. And they color and pepper your experience like hot sauces on a hot dog. It's unpleasant, but you can't even tell if you like it or not anymore.

And sometimes you feel a kind of compassion for others for how clueless they are about how things works. And how vulnerable they are to those things, because they are completely bound to it, and completely bought into the narratives of their own mind.

The mere alluding to the idea that the narratives of your own mind are narratives, can provoke anxiety and anger. It's like a gag reflex, because such things threaten to compromise mind software that's too important to your way of life and how you function.

But if you were to somehow start to study you own mind, with objectivity and keenness, you would find that many of the emotional and mental problems we (I) deal with, are rooted in beliefs that we have have about ourselves and the world. Beliefs we harbor not for no reason, but because they are legos blocks in our self-image and worldview.

Thus, belonging is a subscription based affair. To belong, you really have to subscribe to common set of beliefs that are shared by your group. The main one being, that we are a group.