Belonging: close or intimate relationship
Who wouldn't want that? Right? Isn't that one of life's great pursuits? I'm pretty sure Belle and Sebastian dedicated an entire album to it. And to be fair to the rest of art.... MUCH art is either dedicated in some way or created to get nearer to this inate desire for a "close or intimate relationship."
Now, this desire for a close or intimate relationship doesn't need to be fulfilled romantically. In fact, I would argue that this need for "belonging," is more often fulfilled in our live's by connecting with some sort of idea, group, community or team. For example, as a child I was a devout fan of the Detroit Red Wings. If you were a Colorado Avalanche fan I immediatley despised you. No joke. It would have been very difficult for you to convince me that you had any redeaming qualities.
This is of course rediculous and while I still root for the red wings I realize that the same fervor and affection I have for my Wings, Colorado fans have for their "lanche's" ---(how do you abbreviate Avalanche?)
That whole "my" Red Wings thing is where it gets weird though. People get so invested in their sports teams, their politicians, their religion, their favorite bands that they attach them to their identity.
Identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is
When someone or something threatens "who or what you are," you are hard wired to respond defensively. You are conditioned to protect yourself. It's innate. You are under attack. If someone is taking the Christ out of christmas, you are going to get pissed because YOU are under attack because you identify strongly as a christian. If someone is drawing a picture of Mohammed, you are goint to get pissed because YOU identify strongly as a muslim. If someone says Steve Yzerman is an overrated pussy then... well, then that person clearly doesn't know anything about hockey, but yeah... I may feel a bit threatened because a part of me still identifies with being a Red Wing fan.
We have this innate need to belong to something and this need is a GOOD thing in many regards. Hell, it may be why a lot of people seek out Hubski or other aggregators. We are pack animals, we need each other. But, it would be nice if we didn't need to go outside of actual inerpersonal exchanges to seek belonging. I'm pretty tired of religion. I'm really sick of it.
I'm also very tired of politics and nationalism. I like Bernie Sanders a lot. I've given the guy money and I've convinced no less than 8 people to vote for him, but I don't "identify" myself as a Bernie Sanders supporter. If someone doesn't like him I don't feel threatened.
I'm getting tired of all the hurt that the need for "belonging" is causing in the world. It's a real shame.
John Lennon famously sang, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." --I think this is about where I'm at with things.
So, I used to identify as a Red Wings fan. These days, I would answer the title of this post with "I'm a musician." or "I'm a father." rather than I'm a ___ism." What about YOU?
How would you answer the question, "I'm a ____?"
I might say, "I'm a Hubskier."
:-)
'My gut feeling when I saw the title was "dick". It's been a rough week. My kid won't listen to me and do what she's told, just put your fucking pajamas on kid. She was sent to bed with none of the nightly fun privileges she normally gets. Spent twenty minutes sobbing in her room. Makes me feel like shit. The drunken Somali kid that I didn't beat up when he wouldn't get out of my shop a week or two ago... You might have seen him mentioned in a conversation with steve a little bit ago.... Well he came in the shop and wouldn't leave and I gave him a little beat down... I could have used my words... I tried to use my words but he wasn't responding well, I started to give him a gentle hustle to the door, he started poking me in the ribs telling me something along the lines of "hell no bro." He just didn't want to get pushed out the door, I could have used my words, I worked ten years in a bar and never laid a hand on a patron... I picked him up and slammed him on the tile floor. It was the absolute wrong way to handle shit... They just opened a fancy grocery store right around the corner from my house. People go in that place, mouths a gape, like they just entered Dolly Land or the Magic Kingdom. That store is the end of on street parking at my house. Shit annoys me. Third shooting of the week happened at 4:30 this morning a few blocks from the shop. So we have one shooting half a block from the shop, one half a block from the house and now a few blocks away. A family friend got sick two days ago and died this morning. I only met the guy a few times but he's important to a bunch of other people in my family. Guy was only a year older than I am. I never heard anyone say anything but what a great guy he was, he was my sister in law's best friend. People are all kinds of fucked up over it. I feel tired and ragged out. I feel like a dick. I have little patience or love for people right now and an just going to have to act the part. Ah well. Wish I had something profound or uplifting to say.
Sometimes you have to choose between being a dick or being roadkill. My kid? I gotta lean against the door to keep her from getting out when she throws a tantrum like that. It opens in, which means I'm right up in there with her, which means she tugs on my leg and stuff... but it's all about boundaries. She's mad, she's not getting her way, but she's safe and she's learning that daddy's in charge. Makes me feel like shit, too. I still do it. Had you beat the kid up a week ago he wouldn't have come back. Or, he would have come back with a gun. All you can do is use your best judgement and hope you guessed right each time. If you didn't second-guess yourself you'd be incapable of learning. If you had to choose between "the end of on-street parking" or "the end of shootings" which would you choose? 'cuz the grocery store is gonna clean up the neighborhood. Their investment far outranks yours. That's one thing about gentrification - it's hell on crime. Grace under pressure is a great attribute to have. For some of us, it's more of a goal. Take care of you.
Gentrification is great for coffee shops as well. I said in a comment the other day that in five years you'll be able to by a scented candle or a dog coat on every block and that in away the neighborhood won't be much different than it is now, filled with things that I dislike which only tangentially effect me. My gentrification goal is to have a hot summers day where I have more customers than I see men without shirts walk by. I know that day will come. The Somali guy is really a sweet hearted looser. He gets sooooo high on crack and malt liquor that he's not captain of his own ship any more. He's also a real pain in the ass and makes a huge scene every where he goes. People say I should call the cops on him but I just can't. He's already a burden on his strict Islamic family and they aren't rolling in dough to pay his tickets or fines.
Not gonna lie, dude. I did a thunderous demographic analysis with veen's help when we sited the birth center. But before I put my faith in my own math (15-minute isochrones containing the highest number of white women 25-35 with some college education, from census data), I mapped out all the Whole Foods Markets. 100% correlation. Out of 150 midwives in LA, there are 4 that aren't within 10 minutes of a Whole Foods. Then just to see, I looked for a negative correlation - I decided that Five Guys' market demographics probably overlapped the alternative birth community by coincidence at best. 0% correlation.
cgod and kleinbl00 we ought to have an entire post on how to best handle tantrums. My daughter is very smart, I would be shocked if yours weren't too. As such, she has become adept at trying to manipulate situations to her advantage. I would welcome a post on dicipline at some point. Good luck fellas
I'm not a parent, but I feel your pain. Children are born as an virtual tabula rasa, with none of the understanding of the world that you've accumulated, and it can be very annoying and even maddening when coupled with children's naturally-overblown ego. They want to the world to bend to their will, and when that doesn't happen, they feel either very angry or very sad about it. But ego-breaking - the process in which the child understands that the world won't bend on its own - is necessary in a child's upbringing, and as heartbreaking as it may feel for you as a parent, it's what has to be done. Your parents probably felt the same when they were raising you, but you never got to see their tears both because you were occupied with yours and because they'd never let their kid see them. As pragmatic as it is, think of it as present joy versus future happiness: it's better for both of you if you break a few lectures to her to make her a better person. Stay strong. I can only imagine how hard it must be to raise a child, but you're doing God's work by letting her learn how the world works. She'll thank you later if you keep being a good father.My kid won't listen to me and do what she's told, just put your fucking pajamas on kid. She was sent to bed with none of the nightly fun privileges she normally gets. Spent twenty minutes sobbing in her room.
Time-traveler. About 2/3 of the time I travel into the future at a rate of 1 second per second, but about every 16 hours or so I travel forward 7-8 hours in a wink. I've watched technology and culture change. I've seen computers move from data centers into just about everyone's homes. When I started my travels we had a black and white television in our house. I remember when MTV was formatted like a radio station, but with videos. I've watched babies born and grow into adults. I've watched adults grow frail and die. I can't travel back in time, and the closest I can come to adjusting the settings is to either waste time, or do something with it. It's frustrating that I age just about as fast as I travel. I can see that so much time passed before me, and so much is going to pass after. I can see the Mars rovers exploring a place that I won't because of how slowly I time-travel, and how quickly I age. Everyone else I know is the same kind of time-traveler as I am, but most people don't like to dwell on it.
This time traveler is out of badges or you'd have one.
"Failure." Been one since I was born. It's a comfortable identity, but it comes with a terrible cost. No, I'm not fishing for compliments so let's just STFU about that but it's so easy to believe that your every setback is a result of your fundamental inability to ever amount to anything. Also, your fellow failures never hassle you for what you haven't accomplished. Some identities we're born into and spend a lifetime escaping.
Technically we would all be failures from birth if we viewed failure as a child the same way we view it as an adult. I mean none of us got walking on the first try, and even once we "got it" we still messed up. I quit things when they start to get difficult because I'm afraid to fail. If I was born with that idea I would have just crawled and gave up on walking.
Damn. I took for granted that, despite how ragged and hard my childhood was at times, my dad always made me feel that I was the man he never was. Granted, a major barometer of success was to simply not get a girl pregnant before I turned 20, but in lots of other measures, I was made to feel like a champion. I say this because it occurred to me, "what's the opposite of being made to feel like a failure since your first memories," and for that hypothetical I didn't have to look far. I was made to feel like my dad's savior. I never thought hard about what the inverse of that would feel like. I'm sorry kb. If it helps, by even the strictest standards, I think you're kinda swell. I know you don't draw upon internet love for your self-esteem, but thanks for sharing. I didn't know "failure" factored into your identity.
I'm a white dude. I was just talking to someone last night about how the "White Savior" as a criticism of aid or intervention is overstated. It's valid to point out that relief or service work should be about the work itself, especially when it's done in a sustainable and efficient manner, and that the last thing it's for is the Facebook pictures. But I think a lot about the color of skin when I'm coaching a 95% black high school lacrosse team, and seeing how well my black coach can speak to these kids. Or when I'm working in Detroit mucking and gutting basements after the city-wide sewage system backs up, and it doesn't seem to faze the occupants that this is breakdown of health and civil systems on the order of a third-world country. Or when I drive home through Baltimore and see houses and stores falling apart, people sitting on their stoops with nothing to do, and think about the more than half of all African-American wealth that was destroyed as a result of the 2008-09 financial crisis. And everything I am, and everything I want to be, takes a back seat to the realization that I'm a lucky ass white dude.
Don't you think that part of the luxury of whiteness is in not having to define yourself by race? I think it's unenviable that so many people are essentially painted into a corner whereby they need identity politics to represent their interests. I have great love and affection for the Scots and Fins, but I wouldn't ever consider voting for a person based on their Fin-ness or Scottish-ness. That's a position that only WASPs can enjoy fully.
That's very true. A lot of white people do enjoy that luxury. I think about race more because of my environment. Though for me it's a soujourn. For a lot of others it's a daily obligation. And unenviable is a good way to describe it.
If I had a badge for every time I said this and didn't come back, I'd be kb
I'm a wanderer. This is less physical and more mental. I have never pinned down something I've ever felt close enough that it was worth staying with. I'm slowly preparing myself to leave my hometown and move to some place where everything is an unknown. Then I'll be a wanderer both in mind and body.
I've always felt like there was something wrong with me because I have literally never cared enough about anything to identify with it. That's not to say I don't enjoy things, I've just never become invested in anything like other people do. I just float from one thing to the next.
That's one way to put it. It does sound very Buddhist, but to go back to my favorite article of all time, "Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath," Fallon's experience of psychopathy also sounds super-Buddhist to an outsider. Would you want to be a psychopath if it helped you get to enlightenment?
It's always seemed like a short coming though because it looks fun to really be a fan of something. Or have a long standing hobby, I jump around between things all the time. I think I get that from my dad, he'll put his all into something and then one day just be content with it. Then it's on to some new hobby.
Yeah, I have had music most of my life and I don't ever see not having it as my hobby. But it's more than a "hobby" at this point, it's like eating. I kind of have to do it. But I also jump from more casual hobbies to another one. I take up things, like golf, running, tennis, painting, different board games, podcasts etc. These are things that could be a lifetime pursuit for some people but for me I find come and go. Good luck! It sounds like you are doing really well though and I bet you learn a lot going from pursuit to pursuit. Right?
That's what I want with something, I want a passion. I do learn a lot except with rugby I think I might have forgot a few things with the blows to the head I took. Fucking awesome either way. I think there is something that holds me back from really getting in to hobbies, damn commitment issues, but I do learn something from every new things so it's not a total waste. Good luck with your music :) I enjoy those posts on here.
No, not really. I like this question a lot because I can put any amount of depth into it: I can soul-search or I can be really flippant and either way I get an answer. It's very convenient. Having said that... I don't have any passions or goals, and I'm not really living for anything. I don't even have any problems, really. Not ones you could measure. I have different sections of myself that I show to different people, and because of that I tend to mimic things that those people would like to see. Mostly I'm empty. I don't have anything to contribute. I'm here because I want to be noticed.
The question implies a single answer, which I can never give. Identity is not of a single item. One's defined by hundreds of things, with very few more important than others and none - most important of them. I wish I could give this single answer - perhaps to fit in or to please TNG - but I can't.
An angsty teen, which is to say I don't really have an identity. I find myself at the fringe of the fringe, an outsider among outsiders, basically I am submerged in nuance. I like to think of identity as a river with the self as some sort of ethereal container moving through the river as time progress. Identity is kind of like a liquid to me. Every time you experience something you're filled with it a little, and if the experience involves people you share that liquid with them. An identity is simply an aggregate of experience, relationships, influences, etc.; and at the core of that is your values, but even they change and even you contradict them, and you. But what the fuck even is "you"? I am my favorite books: Kurt Vonnegut, The Thin Red Line, The Fountainhead; I am my favorite movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Synechdoche New York, Annie Hall; I am my philosophy; I am my relationships with my dad, my mom, the failed relationship with my ex, and my (sometimes rebellious) response to them. This is kind of a bullshit psuedo-philosophical answer. I guess you could say that I'm in an early life crisis, my adolescence is closing up and I find myself filled with regret and confusion. I got out of my first "relationship," if you could even call it that, it was short and messy and now I'm confused. This is where the pain that comes from searching for belonging comes in. She was an artsy intellectual, and really quite beautiful and neurotic, like myself. I let her become my only source of validation, I let her "complete me". It ended with her telling me she isn't ready for relationships, that me having feelings for her made her overwhelmed. I guess I wasn't ready either. Being in love can be really fucking painful. This is a long way of saying that I'm one of those artsy white boys you see in those fictional self serving autobiographical coming of age movies that are from MTV films are something.
Outsider, which is a kind way of saying "other." All my life the things that make me wake up in the morning are looked down upon by the rest of 'normal' society. Video games, D&D, Metal, math, computers, astronomy all end up in the same linguistical space: nerd. Back in the day when we walked uphill both ways in 20" of snow and 115°F being the nerdy dorky bookworm was not a good place to be. That idea of being outside of the room looking in is something I've never been able to shake, even though now the tides have turned and the rest of the world is standing outside the house looking at the party indoors. The good thing about growing up this way is that you forge your own sense of self. It forces to you dig down and really understand who and what you are so that you can defend you identity, revel in it even. Which leads me to something you said that needs to be addressed. Belonging is not something to be ashamed of, nor is it necessarily a bad thing. The problem is when people get so wrapped up in the group that they insulate themselves from the outside influences of the world and radicalize themselves. Put on that team jersey and go to a bar on the day of a game and you are instantly part of the family. Go to your church and you have instant access to a community of people that have at least that one thing in common. As human animals, we need social groups to function; the challenge is how do we build the groups and fight the divisions that come with them. And if anyone has an answer to that question I'd love to hear it.I'm getting tired of all the hurt that the need for "belonging" is causing in the world. It's a real shame.
IMO it's knowing that once someone can be inside the group others cannot, by definition. What we really need is understanding, and inclusion is a poor substitute for it.As human animals, we need social groups to function; the challenge is how do we build the groups and fight the divisions that come with them.
"Blessed" Which is a funny word for a militant atheist to use, I realize, but it does describe my life very accurately. The most amazing shit happens to me. I get the most incredible opportunities in my life, and they appear - seemingly magically - exactly when I need them. For years I kept this to myself. But my fiancee began to notice how things just kinda fall into place for me, just when I need it. For example, I have been down to my last penny, with no job, no prospects, every door being slammed in my face, and one week to come up with $1000 for rent. Then, two days before rent is due, someone will pop up out of the woodwork - maybe a job I bid on six months ago, and didn't get - and will be ready to move forward, and have cash in hand. This happens far too often to be simply coincidence. It's gotten to the point where, when one of these magical things happens, my fiancee and I will look at each other with that knowing look in our eyes, and smile, and not say a word. "It happened. Again." You can call it karmic payback for all the stuff I do for other people, you can say "luck favors the prepared", or you can just say people like my blue eyes or whatever, but the fact is that my life is a series of magical blessings that I do not ascribe to a higher power, I never "expect" them, but they happen. And they happen often enough that people notice. So me? The opinionated atheist? I am blessed.
Okay, blessed is a verb though. The question isn't I am ___ it is I am a ___ Need a noun. But glad that luck befalls you :)
OooOooOooooohhh! Hmm. That does change things a bit. Lemme see what my wordy wordy brain can come up with: I am a source. People come to me when they are lost. Or need direction. Or need some resource and don't know how to find it. Or just need someone to talk to. People have always sought me out. Either just to talk, or to help them find a solution to something. So I am a source.
"Scientist" I used to like the word, just as a less elitist / snobby version of "intellectual." But I also just enjoy learning about the physical world around me, studying how people study it, and seeing the crazy technology people build with and for it. I've bumbled around in a few different worlds (mostly software-based), but if there's one that convinces me to get up out of bed after already having worked all week, it's science. "Hippie-ish" is also somewhat apt. Though I fear the east coast may have shaved a decent bit of that out of me.
If this were the (very well written) FL blog comment section, I would.
dang I guess for a very long time my answer would be "student". They seem to form a particular group in society because their responsibilities and priorities are different to everyone else's... I'm still in the process of figuring out what to call myself. I feel like just using my job title is too narrow. I mean, that's just what I get paid to do. As for politics, I would definitely call myself a feminist and a socialist. I was close to signing up to join the Green Party of England and Wales at one point (who have weirdly now been outflanked on the left by Jeremy Corbyn, quite a few people I knew joined the Labour Party in order to vote for him, despite having hated the party since they voted for the Iraq war). But for me, political ideology is less about being in a particular group or following a manifesto or leader and more about accepting a few ideas about the way society works. If my own moral priorities/beliefs change, I guess the label will change too.
I'm going to go ahead and make it a point to not answer your question. I'm not trying to be rude or anything. It's a good question. But there are three main issues that I can see arising from me trying to answer. The first is me. I have a set of beliefs and a set of interests, but there isn't one belief or interest that I feel strongly enough about compared to the others that I would use it as a label. The second is labels. Humans are complex creatures. To condense someone into a single word or phrase is a disservice to that person and all of their nuance. Not only that, but label carry their own complex meanings as well. Your perception of someone will undoubtedly be colored by your perceptions of the labels they choose, or perhaps didn't choose. Labels are fast and easy, but they lack accuracy and precision. Lastly there is language itself. Language is clumsy. There are so many things that simply cannot be expressed through language. Take emotions for example. I have emotions that I can't put into words almost constantly. What was that feeling that I got when watching season 7 episode 25 of Adventure Time? I have no idea, and neither do you. The only way you could know is to literally be me, because I don't have to words to describe that emotion. The 'simple' emotions don't translate very well either. When is anger just anger. When is happiness just happiness. I can't think of a single time in my life when I have felt a single pure emotion. There is always some mixture of feelings that creates an indescribable form of anger, happiness, sadness, etc. This is where it ties back to labels. There are so many things that people do/enjoy/believe in so many different ways that you just can't fit all of that nuance into a word. In any case, I feel that I've gone a bit off the rails with this. The point here is that I'm the type of person that makes a point of not answering questions. Edit: Sorry for the incoherent rant. I've been feeling a bit, uh, existential (?) lately.
I see your point(s), and agree that it's a bit hopeless to convey ourselves by picking a label and expounding. But. I view this question, and a lot of the others asked around here, as an opportunity to be cajoled. By asking lots of questions, framing and stating them differently, asking the interlocutor to speak to a different aspect of something, a lot can be gained. It's an opportunity to see how our different brains work (like how you chose to address the limits of this question, which I appreciate for the little bit it reveals about you). I don't really think that we're moving closer to cold fusion as a result of some of our conversations. But I learn a lot about the other folks who use this site, and occasionally, some answer is given that warps my brain slightly, or even not so slightly. When I'm with interesting people, it almost doesn't matter what we talk about. We can go on a walk, point at different things, and ask each other, "what do you think about that?"
I see what you're saying, and I agree. My response was largely meant as a subjective telling of my own disdain for labels and my inability to communicate. I have no doubt that there are many people on this site who are perfectly comfortable answering this question. I don't see anything wrong with that. For me, however, using a label would be in conflict with who I am and who I want to be. I'd like to put myself out as undistorted by preconceptions as possible. This method is probably much slower, but I think it leads to a better understanding of me for both myself and those who wish to understand me.
That's an interesting point. It's probably impossible to go completely label-less. Just by virtue of being part of a society, you're going to acquire labels weather you want to or not. Even as an individual we can unintentionally label ourselves, as you have noted. Though, I think my 'answer' is a bit of a half-answer. Saying "I'm the type of person to _" is a way to give a descriptor of your personality without actually latching on to a label. It's more nebulous, and it lacks the grouping tendency that labels have. You don't see people gathering behind the idea of "we are the type of people to _," but you can look at just about any label and see people attaching themselves to it and forming groups. These groups tend toward homogeneity. The groupthink becomes so loud that any dissenting opinions get drowned out. That's not to say that labels are necessarily bad, but it's important to be careful when using them. It's easy to fall into the trap of "I'm a _, therefore I think this" instead of "this label accurately represents my beliefs on this topic." Labels can be useful tools, but they should be descriptive not prescriptive. I avoid labels because the descriptive capabilities of the labels I could adopt are outweighed by the baggage that those labels carry. The "type of person" descriptor doesn't carry that type of baggage, and I don't have to worry as much about falling into that prescriptive trap.
Fair enough, you did specify "type of person". Specifying that you relate but are not only a label, that you are a "type of person", is a good way to keep a label from some of its ability to dictate what you are or are seen as. I also agree with your reasoning for not liking labels because they tend towards becoming limiting and exclusive. That is one of the things I like most about travel. The moment I get on a plane or in a car headed somewhere new I feel free from the labels that my friends, family, and acquaintances put on me. I can be almost anyone and I am free to try out new mannerisms, thoughts, and behaviors without anyone raising an eyebrow and saying that I am not acting like myself (not conforming to the labels that they have chosen for me).
I would completely agree with this with the caveat of being careful what you wish for, because it might not always be what you want. At a certain level of interest and intensity the group or idea you seek can fall short of expectations and leave you further away from that feeling of belonging than where you started. If this happens, how can you really feel fulfilled or trusting of others when they don't match what your "sense of belonging" dictates they should? Everything in moderation, I guess. What am I? "I'm a confused, unfocused individual".In fact, I would argue that this need for "belonging," is more often fulfilled in our live's by connecting with some sort of idea, group, community or team.