Communities make us feel special
Communities play a vital role in our daily lives. Our sense of identity is closely tied to our communities. Many of our daily thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the communities we inhabit. One function of communities in our daily lives is that communities make people feel special.
Feeling special is a normal human desire. Everyone wants to believe that they are somehow unique and that their life is important based on that difference. Communities can function with two types of feeling special. First is the positive feeling of specialness, which can result in high self-esteem and a group feeling of superiority. Many communities with a sense of superiority also have an Us vs. Them mentality. Secondly, communities can have a negative feeling of specialness. Members of these communities feel different, or less than, members of other communities, resulting in low self-esteem and a sense of inferiority. Negatively special communities can promote, or deter, these feelings of inferiority. A community, whether it gives a positive or negative feeling of specialness, has positive and negative functions in our daily lives.
Communities form a sense of superiority when members of a group believe they are separated from non-members based on differences. This difference, whether trivial of substantial, is the basis for the belief that members in the community are special in some way. David Berreby, a writer for the New York Times, touched on this issue in his article “It Takes a Tribe.” Berreby uses the relationship between rival Universities to explain how communities believe that “an essential trait separates them from the rest of humanity” (120). When members of a community believe that they are better than other communities because of a unique quality, a sense of superiority forms.
A community feeling of superiority may sound like an inherently negative thing. But there are both positive and negative results of this community function. The positive effect is that members of the community form close ties with another and form high self-esteem. Members of college fraternities or sororities often feel close ties with other alumina. These ties can develop into personal and professional connections that result in opportunities non-members may not find available. The negative result is a possible belief that others are inferior and deserve to be treated as such. This was a large factor in racial prejudice throughout history. Europeans believed African people were inferior. That belief was why European slave owners were able to justify their practices. This feeling of superiority based on differences between groups is also key to the development of an “us” vs. “them” mentality.
When a community places importance on a fundamental difference between themselves and others; they are classifying the two groups as different. This is best described as a feeling of “us,” the community, and “them,” the outsiders. In and of itself, this differentiation between groups is simple classification. But often communities form relationships with other communities that take on a competitive edge. This results in the “us” vs “them” mentality. Results of this mentality, like all aspects of communities forming a sense of specialness, are both positive and negative.
Some competitions, like friendly rivalries, boost motivation to improve, without causing friction between communities. In high school, I competed for my school’s NJROTC program in Individual Armed Drill. This competition relies on basic drill moves, and more varied exhibition rifle spinning skills. Competitors were driven to improve their spinning skills, but competitors would spend time every meet helping others learn new moves. The “us” feeling of my school pride drove me to beat the “them” of the other schools. Yet the competitors were more interested in general improvement than in defeating opponents.
Other results of this mentality include the obviously negative result of hatred between competing groups. Sports fans are an obvious community of likeminded people. Yet fans of opposing teams often get into brawls for no other reason than that the two groups support other teams. This hatred between “us” and “them” over simple competition can be found in work places, within larger communities, and between members of opposing groups and often have negative impacts on the lives of the individuals involved.
Inferiority, like superiority, is connected to the feeling of specialness that is a function of communities. Members of communities that feel inferior to others do feel unique and special based on their differences. But unlike members of communities with feelings of superiority, members of communities with feelings of inferiority do not feel better than others due to their differences. Instead, members feel as if they are worse than non-members.
Mim Udovich, another New York Times writer, illustrates an example of this type of community, the pro anorexia community (pro-ana), in her article titled “A Secret Society of the Starving”. Udovich speaks with Ellen Davis, the clinical director of the Renfrew Center of Philadelphia, a eating-disorder clinic. From Davis we learn that members of this pro-ana community “believe they're unique and special” (152). Pro-anas describe themselves as “vile, worthless, and useless” (Udovich 153). They see themselves as special, but also believe this specialness is a negative.
Membership in these communities results in low self-esteem and a distorted view of self-worth. For these communities the specialness that they feel is detrimental to daily life. The function of communities in this situation can take two forms. One, these communities can function in a way that promotes the view that their specialness is a negative thing. Two, these communities can deter the negative effects of this view by encouraging and supporting each other to face life in a more positive way.
The pro-ana community is a community that functions to promote the inferiority aspect of the community’s member’s lives. Online web-pages act as support groups for the anorexic lifestyle. Members are discouraged to receive treatment because the community as a whole portrays treatment as unhelpful. Members are led to believe they don't “deserve help”, because they own symptoms are not as bad as other community members who are surviving without treatment. Communities like the pro-ana community, ones that promote the inferiority that members feel, only serve to worsen the lives of its members. If these members were a part of a community that functioned to support members and deter these feelings of inferiority, they would be more willing to seek treatment and improve their lives.
Communities that function to deter feelings of inferiority, have a positive effect on the lives of their members. Members of one group who feel inferior based on their unique difference are the grieving. I recently spoke with a coworker, a recent widow. After many years of fighting cancer her husband passed this last summer. She had supported him through many heart surgeries, including a heart transplant, and multiple cancer remissions and recurrences. In the past months she has kept her strength, thanks in large part to the grief support group she joined. This community of fellow grievers encouraged her to accept that “it's okay to grieve”. The community supported the positive aspects of her new life that allowed her to make it through the toughest time in her life. With their help she was able to stop feeling inferior to people who she perceived as handling their grief better than her. When communities who function with an inferior view of specialness support one another, they are able to accept their uniqueness and promote healthy lives.
Communities affect how we evaluate our own self-worth based on our perceived specialness. The function of that feeling in our lives can take many forms. It can make a person feel better than a rival. It can make a person feel like the worst person in the world. It can form friendly rivalries. It can form anger-packed competitions. It can lead to helpful social connections. It can lead to harmful racial prejudice. It can promote a positive self-view. It can promote an unhealthy lifestyle. Communities form these feelings of superiority or inferiority, and these feelings play a vital role in how our lives play out.
Work Cited
Latterell, Catherine. Remix, Rading + Composing Culture. Comp. Boston: Bedford/St.Matrin's, 2010.Print.
Berreby, David. "It Takes a Tribe." New York Times Magazine. Aug. 2004: Print.
Udovitch, Mim. "A Secret Society of the Starving." New York Times Magazine. 2002: Print.
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