We’re in a time of high isolation in terms of single family homes, nuclear family units, and a growing class divide. We are live in a society organized by profit, and those in power make more money if we’re all living individual lives instead of sharing or collectivizing. If every household has the smallest number of people in it all working frantically to keep it all functioning, then they need as many shortcuts and conveniences as possible. In that case it is easily justified to pay for any efficiency or support that keeps the household going, creating more opportunities for profit.

Let me be clear… this is not just an individual-person problem. This is a systems problem. We’re doing what we have to do to make ends meet given the way the systems are set up. We can get food from a restaurant, have our groceries delivered, and we can get almost anything from Amazon prime shipping so that we don’t have to make that extra trip to the store.

These systems, though, continue to create more space between us. Now we don’t run into our neighbors at the grocery store, or get to know the clerk at CVS. According to a 2023 Surgeon General’s report only 16% of people report feeling deeply connected to their communities.

And it’s also true that systems are the aggregate of individual actions, that culture is built from the ground up. While we have a systems problem; systems are made of people, which means the entry point for change is always human behavior at the small scale.
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Brief connections with our local community members, though they might seem trivial, have real effects on cognitive, emotional, mental, and physical health. That means that this growing distance between people isn’t just about our feelings, our bodies also respond negatively to not having deep and meaningful social connections.

It’s not that the particular things we’re doing are bad, I definitely love restaurants, but it’s the system of separation that is the problem. And it goes far beyond what I’ve named here so far (you can follow some of the links provided for more examples and details).

When folks do gather it tends to be in identity groups, creating distance between not only us as individuals, but between people like ourselves and people who think or understand things differently than we do. The common phrasing “birds of a feather flock together” reflects this tendency, which in social science is called ‘homophily’.

This habit of gathering with people like ourselves is amplified by the ways that there is more space between us and other local folks. The affinity for someone who feels comfortable and reinforces what we already know, think, and believe, is enhanced by not interacting with people who are different within our communities.

And this impacts our ability to hold each other in our humanity.

When we see everyone outside of our affinity groups as “others” then they become mysterious entities that we need to defend ourselves from. They are perceived as threats to our own beliefs, expectations, assumptions, and perceptions.

And, when we center differences rather than our similarities, it’s easy to create narratives that pit us against each other. We can be convinced that other people are “bad” or any number of negative things. It’s easy to lose sight of how they are also just humans, trying to make ends meet too. It’s easy to feel like they are separate, and to withhold our compassion and empathy. But this continues the separation.

If we are really as lonely as the polls say we are, and we are lamenting not having “community” around us when we need them, we need to name and intentionally resist the narratives that create isolation.

The hard part here actually isn’t seeing the system, or noticing the effects, it’s in repair. I don’t actually believe that systemic repair must happen simultaneously with individual action... I truly think systemic repair is born of the small individual actions. Culture doesn’t arise magically, it comes from the actions of the humans participating in it.

How do we restore community? Because “community” doesn’t just mean someone is here when I need them, it means that I am also there when they need someone. Community is inconvenient, time consuming, and sometimes irritating. Being in community requires skills that individualists don’t tend to possess, because the skills of relationship aren’t prioritized when you spend most of your time alone, or with one or a few other folks, or when systems of hierarchy establish acceptable behavior with others.

And so being in community invites us to acknowledge, tolerate, and dance with difference. This requires communication skills, the ability to hold each other in humanity, compassion, empathy, and good listening, to name a few. So if we want more community, I suggest starting here. With our own skills. So that when we find that group of people we’ve been waiting so long for, we can engage with them in ways that affirm our lives and theirs.

That means we do the little things that feel hard: find out your neighbor’s name even though you’ve both been living there for years, linger at the local store for a tiny conversation with the cashier beyond “how are you?”, talk to another mom at the playground instead of scrolling on your phone. Small connections with others really matter.

Recent studies suggest that just 40 seconds of compassionate interaction between two people can have measurable, positive, and enduring physical benefits. Small acts of kindness and connection, like telling a short story in a group that doesn’t know each other, relaxes everyone. Repeated, these small acts change us, contributing to our own sense of belonging.

It turns out that culture is made of individual people taking small steps to collectively rewrite the dominant narrative. We can take small actions, and create community around them, we can build a different kind of system from the ground up.
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As we gather together, we gather momentum.

Belonging allows me to see myself as integral rather than apart from. Belonging, a felt sense of it, changes my perception and my inner dialogue. I am no longer separated from my needs through needing to justify them. I am no longer separated from others as a source of connection. My belonging is the foundation and framework.
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If my belonging is broken, if I perceive myself as an outsider, as unworthy of basic rights, or as subject to someone else’s control, then I am dehumanizing myself. I have internalized the dehumanization I received from others through abuse, neglect, abandonment, indifference, and rejection. I have agreed with them and deemed myself unworthy of having my needs met. I accept the position that I should not have an expectation of my needs being met.

This creates in me a suppression of the very things that make me human; my needs for connection, love, safety, and friendship. My needs become the very symbol of my brokenness and a vicious circle is created. I hide my needs away, refusing to tend to them, and I struggle with relationship and worthiness. I see myself as broken and irreparable.

But if my belonging is intact, if I can perceive myself as having a sense of belonging simply because I exist. I can find renewal and regeneration of humanizing and healing narratives. My needs become my path forward to connection and relationship. I become fortified by both the discernment that I learn in the process of reclaiming my needs, and in the building of relational skills.

With a foundation of belonging I am able to see rejection and abandonment when other people saying “no” in unskilled ways, but they no longer mean that I am bad, wrong, or unworthy. Those actions belong to the people who make them. Not to me. I am able to see abuse and neglect as actions of power that create inhumane conditions. And again, they are not mine to hold as the recipient of those actions. They belong to those who perpetrate them.

If I am unwilling to hold these inhumanities in others’ behavior, then I can reclaim my own humanity.

But individuals aren’t the only ones who hold power. Systems of dominance create a self-generating process that relies on creating inhumane conditions for others. In the face of these systems, how do I define my belonging? How far can I go in reclaiming my own humanity if I am still under the umbrella of these systems, trying to survive in them?

How do I not slip into conformity as a proxy for belonging? It is easy to do this when we swim in the water of dominance systems. We have to participate in them to some degree in order to have our needs met. In order to get food, housing, clean water, clothing, I must participate in capitalism as it exists where I live. It is extractive. It requires someone to be at the bottom, barely (if at all) able to get basic needs covered. It justifies those at the top continuing to make more money than they can spend because the system is set up to reinforce itself.

It is not easy to be in touch with our inherent belonging in the midst of these domination systems. But it is worth the effort. A friend and I started a group with others who were willing to explore what being together would be like if we all began with the premise that we belonged. It broke me open to my own sense of inherent belonging.

Where systems hold us in domination, we can gather as small groups that create a new kind of culture. We can experiment in these groups with what keeps these new foundations under our feet. How can we work together to create a culture in which we assume that all who join belong, and what practices do we cultivate that keep us together? It is an emergent process. It is unfolding with each gathering we have.
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It is up to us to create such connections. The practice of this is not easy, especially when we are embedded in and being acted on by systems that encourage and normalize dehumanization. It takes an effort to unlearn our ways of being together that undermine our humanity. It takes dedication to try and try again; to keep learning, listening, and finding a new way forward.