“Humans evolved as social animals, and we posses a number of behaviors that motivate us towards group conformity” (Taft, Michael). The need to feel like we are valuable is a confusing aspect if you look at it as an animal behavior on the contrary to a “person’s” behavior. Abraham Maslow suggested that the need to belong was a major source of human motivation.  We do not need our friends to survive from a purely biological standpoint, but we are still programmed to need them.

Why do we need to feel like we belong? I have rolled this thought over my brain multiple times.  Many references bring forward that it is a natural drive (instinct); it is a way of surviving.  In deeper thought, I can see it.  In an animal view, if you don’t belong to a certain type of species, your rates of being hunted and killed go up. Now, transfer that idea to a modern school society. If you aren't apart of the “cool” kids, you get picked on, talked about, torn apart by words.  It’s a triangle effect. The smallest is the first to get eaten and the largest is the one that isn't hunted.

  Now if we look at it in a deeper context, those who are continuously picked on are picked on because that is the “cool” thing to do. If they aren't good enough, then it isn't cool to associate yourself with them (which I find horrifyingly wrong).  So, if you join in on this act, you are less prone to get the same treatment. It’s a jungle, really.  The more the person is picked on the more their emotional stability suffers. Just the same as if and animal is continuously chased and hurt, they become weak, and eventually end up being killed off. But in a human context, the death is by their own hand, but death by other’s words.

So, is the need to belong truly an instinct? Comparatively, very much so.  But if justified in human context, people will find this entirely humiliating. Because once again, it is “uncool” to think of people as animals. What a strange view.

So, our world does revolve around this so-called instinct. There is a drive behind everything, an instinct. An instinct to impress, to make people think that what we've done or who we are, or how we look is acceptable.  Maslow (1968) ranked “love and belonging needs” in the middle of his motivational hierarchy; that is, belonging needs do not emerge until food, hunger, safety, and other basic needs are satisfied (once conscious of these needs). But, today most of us have the gift of being able to provide these things for ourselves fairly easily. So the next step is belonging, which seems to battle against itself inside our minds.

So I will leave you with one question, a question to roll between the grooves of your brain.

If we as an individual are so desperate to belong, why don't we allow ourselves to help others to feel like they do too?