PART IV – SECURITY & SIGNIFICANCE TOGETHER

Some things we do satisfy both our need for Security *and* our need for Significance – how cool is that?

Community: we form groups – religious, social, political, whatever. This is both a Security/Survival instinct (we need the tribe), and a Significance issue.

The Group grants us protection, and in a way, even immortality: We don’t want to cease to exist. We’re desperate for a belief, a message, a philosophy that allows us to escape oblivion. That’s one of the reasons we align ourselves – identify ourselves – with things that we believe are larger and will last longer than we would on our own.

A group provides us with Identity*: we define ourselves in large part by our context, by things outside ourselves. We are Catholics, or Masons, or Dallas Cowboys fans, or Canadians, or Feminists, or Teamsters, or Conservatives, or Queer and Proud, or White Aryans, or People of Color, or Irish, or Jewish, or or or… Our group gives us a sense of belonging, it may give our lives meaning, a cause, a raison d’etre (I don’t speak French, sue me), a sense of being part of something important, something with a purpose, something bigger than ourselves.

*Try saying who you are without resorting to “I am a _____” (ie, without stating where you fall in a larger group.) It takes away a lot of what we typically use describe ourselves.