False Sense of Belonging

Sense of belonging. It's something that keeps us comfortable and free to be whoever we want to be. That's what I think sense of belonging will cause to an individual. It doesn't matter whether the group is big or small. It could be just one other person; it could be a group of 50 people. It doesn't matter. What is only needed is some "wall" to reflect our ideas upon and be validated. To have a group of people that has the same interest as we do, have the same way of thinking, sometimes even have the same names!

However, what happens when this gets out of hand? Literally out of hand in the sense of physicality. In the modern world where the internet has brought millions if not billions together to meet, to interact, to play games, to share ideas, to brainstorm and many more, it is inevitable that we will meet people that are very similar to ourselves especially in interests, hobbies, beliefs, values, many more that may govern our lives and the way we behave. The rise of internet usage and availability to different areas around the world has enabled us to communicate and break the culture barrier like we have never experienced before. The scary thing is... this is only the beginning.

As mentioned earlier, we tend to fall back into a specific group of people for a sense of belonging. People that have differing beliefs and values as us, we tend not to socialize as much as the people that are similar to us. It may be because of the ease of communication or the fear of having conflict with others, whatever the reason may be, we love our comfort zone. Nobody loves changes. However, putting the ease of access of the world wide web, we are able to broaden our comfort zone to the entire world. International. Wow.

We go to forums that we have interests in and interact with others that have the same interest. Even Though social media websites allows us to widen our circle, I do think that they in themselves are a "clique". People that are heavy users of Instagram would find it easier and have more opportunity to talk to people that uses Instagram religiously. Same goes for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr... Anything can be a platform for similar people to form their groups and start to "belong". They use in-group specific terms like following for Twitter, Like for Facebook or other lingo that I'm aware of.

This will soon become, if it isn't already, a big issue. When people are only interacting with people that are similar to them it will cause a few things to happen. These things aren't exactly good. In fact, they can bring negative impact to the individual and society too. I'll be addressing two here.

The first is the more obvious one. We are lopsided in our thinking and beliefs. Once we hold firm to something that we deem as true, our constant reinforcement of it's trueness through unceasing interaction with the people that are like us and the lack of healthy debates with other people with differing thoughts will not allow us to grow. We will merely be stuck in the initial stage and understanding of a certain belief with no doubts (mainly due to the lack of opposing thoughts rather than the absence of reasonable doubt). This would also be true for hobbies and activities as well. How so? Shouldn't interaction with other people of the same hobby or interests actually cause our knowledge of that specific field to widen and deepen due to the sharing of ideas? Well, it is only true to a certain extent.

Imagine someone who is interested in watches. This person loves to collect different watches and know different brands and designs. They know the ins and outs of a typical watch and can even list down all the differences between a mechanical watch and digital watch along with it's pros and cons. Up to a point, this person would have to learn about the history of watches, the science behind the mechanics, the ingenuity of the design that results in such precision of the watch. All of these inevitably will need that individual to venture out of the field of interests that they are in and start discovering uncharted "land" (knowledge) to broaden the whole are of watches. Being confined within one's realm is a sure fire way to limit one's imagination and creativity.

The second one is the result of the first one but leads to an entirely different consequence. That is, yes you guessed it, the title. People tend to develop this false sense of belonging. It is true that there will be some degree of sense of belonging while interacting with people online. However, this can never replace the true sense of belonging while interacting with people in real life. How much can one feel belong while online? I would argue a lot, in fact, to the extent that it feels like a real and tangible sense of belonging. The constant agreements found within the online "clique" will lead to an unwarranted pride and distorted view where the world consists of many people that are similar to you.

Once a person leaves the keyboard and screen and begins interacting with the world, they will find that the individual differences found in society is so diverse that they will not be able to deal with it. They won't be able to handle disagreements wisely. They will find it difficult to understand what other perspectives are like. Of course, these examples are extreme cases and chances of it happening is rare. However, it is undeniable that the constant positive feedback online and being surrounded by like-minded people in the virtual world will cause us to think that everyone is the same. Then, the above mentioned problems will no longer be far from the truth.

It is important that while interacting and using the internet for resources that we do not forget to hear both sides of the story. Even if the opposite side may seem false to you or foreign. It is good to hear what others have to say that are opposing to your idea.

"One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron." - Francis Collins