# Hunger for group membership **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 8, 2024, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971 "2024-09-08T21:28:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/81 "2024-09-29T12:13:55Z")
How frequent is the converse, joining the community as an adult? And do these new members stick? Do they miss an essential period of the molding process of becoming adult Mormons, or is it that more the “no believer like a convert” principle applies? ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/82 "2024-09-29T13:44:06Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > For many Mormons, the process of leaving the religion is traumatic, with the losses of a core belief system, a strong community and a sense of identity. That’s likely a feature, not a bug. IOW, being so invested as an entire element of a person’s life is a component that makes questioning the religion a bigger hurdle. I’ve seen some evangelical groups doing something similar, trying to integrate stores and childcare and other activities into their church to “create a community”, but sounds a bit like cult tactics of taking over a person’s whole life and cutting off outside activities. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/83 "2024-09-29T14:16:48Z")
Of course many Orthodox Jewish communities are similar, and it ties back to the original OP. This sort of encompassing identity, the belonging to your unit within the tribe that included many overlapping aspects of your sense of self, that Mormons, Orthodox Jews, and per @TokyoBayer, Japanese raised in Japan, have, it was the standard for most of human history. Our modern Western world, especially America, in which many of us have Venn diagrams of intersectional identities and do not necessarily experience that encompassing sense of belonging with any of them, is fairly recent in the broad scope of our species. And some of us, I _think_, in some inarticulate way, experience that absence, with some responding with what I was talking about in the OP, trying to glom on to _something_, including diagnoses, to fill a prime identity role, in search of that sense of belonging. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/84 "2024-09-29T14:28:57Z")
Sorry wrong thread. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/85 "2024-09-29T14:30:40Z")
N/M My mistake ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/86 "2024-09-29T15:23:00Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > I grew up Mormon in the 60s and 70s and Mormonism was the core of my personal identity until I finally left it. Interestingly, it seems pretty common and as people leave Mormonism, many peronaly strongly identify as ex-Mormon. For the most part, it’s a phase people go through, although some cling onto that for years and years. Yeah, I’ve noticed this too with a couple of friends of mine. One of them is as far as I know still in that phase, about a decade later – they moved away and I mostly lost touch with them at that time, but their facebook still talks about it. I kinda wonder if they are okay. Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints I know do have it as the core of their personal identity – I’m one of the few people I know where I’m active in the church and (to a lesser extent) in the church community, but I don’t think of it that way. There are a lot of factors there: it has a lot to do with my spectrum-ish tendencies and identifying more with an intellectual community, and largely because of those things feeling like I had much at all in common with the church kids or community I grew up with (I was never friends with them or anything), and also being encouraged by my parents NOT to be socially part of the church community (my dad in particular, although he is an active member, thought the kids we grew up with were not intellectually suitable friends), and also with my complicated feelings about faith and the lack thereof. If I left the church, I’d miss a lot about it, I’d _really_ miss the community, and I’d have a lot of guilt, etc., and i’m sure I have some identity involved in it, but just not to the degree I see with other people. (As an aside, it’s interesting the difference for me between identity and community/group membership – I value my church group membership probably the highest of any community I’m in at present, but I don’t identify with it as much as with other groups for which my community is much more lacking.) ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/87 "2024-09-29T15:32:00Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > How frequent is the converse, joining the community as an adult? And do these new members stick? > > Do they miss an essential period of the molding process of becoming adult Mormons, or is it that more the “no believer like a convert” principle applies? Joining the community as an adult is highly, highly encouraged (…that is an understatement 😉 ). Some stick, some do not. I suspect the extreme sense of community is a lot of what gets people to stay (heck, that’s why I’m still there…) You miss parts of the molding process, sure, but it’s not like @TokyoBayer described being Japanese. I would say this is a) the extreme welcoming and friendship that’s given to converts (see above) and b) because the kinds of lessons that are taught to kids are also taught to adults (we’re trying to be like Jesus, we fellowship each other, we follow the prophet, etc. ad infinitum), so as an adult you’re in essentially the same process of molding that the kids are, a recent convert may be just in a different place than the person next to them who has been a lifelong member. (Which is something else that we are taught at church.) ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2024, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/88 "2024-09-29T16:06:13Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > > [@Dinsdale](#): > > > > Interesting - but foreign to me. My being a lawyer has always been simply a job. When I retire in a couple of years, I anticipate in no way perceiving or presenting myself as a lawyer. > > Yeah, well for me there is the “engineer” part (looking at technical challenges and creating solutions) that I am now connecting to through fixing things and coming up with personal projects. Then there was the “space industry” part that was significant for being cool by furthering human space exploration, which also touched my science fiction interest. Connecting my technical interest with my space enthusiasm and childhood dream made it more than just “what I do to earn a living”. > > Now my job is just what I do for a paycheck. Yeah, that sort of sucks. A lot of industries are like that where the members feel like they are part of a strong community. Often because the work is interesting or challenging or it’s hard to get into or maybe it’s just designed to be cultlike. And professionally speaking, I think it’s important to be connected with a network and ecosystem of like-minded people and companies where you can share ideas and opportunities. In my experience, transitioning out of that to a “this is just what I do for a paycheck” jobs suck because you feel disconnected and isolated and probably work with similar-minded people who don’t give a shit about anything besides punching a clock and leaving at the end of the day. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/89 "2024-09-30T21:16:53Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I said that people prefer to live in communities that include other people like them. Like me in what fashion? Like me in being non-practicing Jews? Like me in being farmers? Like me in liking cats? Like me in what and how much I read? Like me in liking dark and quiet at night? Like me in being an introvert? Like me politically? Like me financially? Like me in talking to trees? Those things don’t line up well with each other. That is, some of them do, but some of them are nearly antithetical, and some of them are just plain not related. And I realized many, many years ago that if I was only going to be friends with people “like me”, I wasn’t going to have many, and probably not any, friends. Besides which, it’s more interesting. If I’m going to be social, I don’t want to be looking in a mirror all the time. I want to look out the window and see somebody different. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > My guess is you are mostly “normal” in your community (that post wasn’t aimed at me specifically, I’m just taking off from it) I am mostly not “normal” in any community I’ve ever run into. I gave up wanting to be “normal” somewhere between age 13 and age 22; rather gradually, though there was a moment of sudden realization in (believe it or not) a thunderstorm. The closest I’ve come is some small social groups in which it’s considered entirely normal to not be “normal”. Those people do matter a good deal to me. But those groups are made up of people who are all over the map on the list of criteria above. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I have never encountered anyone who didn’t not only prefer but actively schemed to spend most of their time with people like themselves and avoiding people who are not like themselves. You have now; at least, if encountering people on a message board counts. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Most people already need to share their workdays with a cadre of unselected people, and most people complain about work and especially about being required to attend work-related activities outside of the work day. Imagine a world in which you also would be randomly placed with groups of random others and told to spend your leisure time there. I want to spend much of my leisure time on my own. (And a lot of my work time, for that matter.) I want to spend my social time (and I do need some) with a variety of people. What they have in common is mostly that they’re willing to be social with me. (And, I suppose, that they don’t spend all their time complaining – some of the time is fine – and that they’re not overtly racist etc. And that they don’t hurt any creature for the fun of hurting something.) Yes, I expect we share something on a list of common interests – but I haven’t run into a whole lot of people who were interested in nothing at all that I’m interested in. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > My being a lawyer has always been simply a job. When I retire in a couple of years, I anticipate in no way perceiving or presenting myself as a lawyer. I DO expect to remain interested in such legal concepts as ownership, rights, duties, controlling laws - as IMO those are critical to many aspects of social interaction. And - to many lawyers - it is curious the way non-lawyers feel their beliefs, preferences, and needs ought to be as important. As important as what? I think pretty much everybody thinks their beliefs, preferences, and needs ought to be important; though a lot of people have learned not to expect them to be seen as important by others. > [@Ulfreida](#): > > if you live within the boundaries of a parish church, and do the minimum, you are a parishioner, with all the privileges of same. Just show up. You, too, will be cared for when sick, married, and buried, within a community. But the minimum needs to include “at least pretends to be a Christian”, no? I can’t join a church. > [@DSeid](#): > > This sort of encompassing identity, the belonging to your unit within the tribe that included many overlapping aspects of your sense of self, that Mormons, Orthodox Jews, and per @TokyoBayer, Japanese raised in Japan, have, it was the standard for most of human history. Our modern Western world, especially America, in which many of us have Venn diagrams of intersectional identities and do not necessarily experience that encompassing sense of belonging with any of them, is fairly recent in the broad scope of our species. That’s probably true. And an interesting thought to bring to the thread. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/90 "2024-09-30T21:31:47Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > As important as what? As established legal concepts such as ownership, rights, duties, controlling laws… Or established facts. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I am mostly not “normal” in any community I’ve ever run into. So, you live in a community where the majority of folk don’t speak your language? Have vastly different education than you? Have vastly different income/wealth? Maintain their property/homes vastly differently than you? Have much different expectations WRT such things as noise? Use different transportation than you? Sure, each of us could identify any number of ways in which we are different than our communities. And - yeah - every community, no matter how homogenous, likely contains at least a few iconoclasts. But IME, truly heterogenous communities are the exception far more than the rule. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/91 "2024-09-30T22:13:01Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > But the minimum needs to include “at least pretends to be a Christian”, no? Well, it helps, I suppose. But just in my eight-person church choir we have a stated agnostic, a practicing jew, and someone else whom I’m not really sure but is certainly not coming up for communion. Episcopalian. We all like to sing. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/92 "2024-09-30T22:17:04Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > And I realized many, many years ago that if I was only going to be friends with people “like me”, I wasn’t going to have many, and probably not any, friends. I used to need people to be weird and dark before I could be friends with them. That’s long over. What I realized is that my basic criterion for friendship is _kindness_ (this does let out a lot of people though). The rest is extra. Because I’m introverted and kinda autistic, I really prefer my friends to speak English well. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2024, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/93 "2024-09-30T22:41:12Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > > > I am mostly not “normal” in any community I’ve ever run into. > > So, you live in a community where the majority of folk don’t speak your language? Have vastly different education than you? Have vastly different income/wealth? Maintain their property/homes vastly differently than you? Have much different expectations WRT such things as noise? Use different transportation than you? I live in a community where it’s distinctly odd to be either Jewish or atheist; moderately unusual to have moved in from outside the area, at least as other than a retiree; definitely unusual to be faceblind to the degree that I am; fairly unusual to have my particular combination of education; fairly unusual to have my politics; pretty unusual to not have any guns; and in the immediate neighborhood rapidly becoming somewhat unusual to not speak Pennsylvania Deutsch as well as English, though in the wider area that’s still the minority. Buggy and bicycle transportation is also still in the minority, but there’s a whole lot of it. It’s rural America, everybody else drives some sort of motor vehicle, but how old and what style also varies widely. Income levels vary drastically in this area, as does property maintenance, as does overall amount of education. Nearly everybody does speak English. But I didn’t claim to be not normal along every possible dimension – only that I’m significantly different enough to stand out in any particular group; though not always for the same reason(s) as I stand out in some other particular group. > [@Ulfreida](#): > > What I realized is that my basic criterion for friendship is _kindness_ Come to think of it, that’s a whole lot of mine as well. I have at least one friend who doesn’t exude a lot of it on the surface; but it’s there. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2024, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/94 "2024-10-01T01:33:25Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > only that I’m significantly different enough to stand out in any particular group; You sound like you are very special. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2024, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/95 "2024-10-01T01:46:12Z")
> [@survinga](#): > > My father, God rest his soul, was a Mason and a member of the Shrine. He played in the Shrine band. He was also a member of the American Legion, and an Eagle Scout. > > I became none of the above, **although I’m starting to re-think that in my older age.** [Bolding mine] Yes. I was a bit of an iconoclast in college. I wanted no part of fledging a fraternity, for example. But now, way later in life, I can see benefits to having such a built-in network of “brothers”. The idea of being in a fraternity still bugs me though. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2024, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/96 "2024-10-12T10:28:00Z")
Also late to the discussion, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I have also noticed this: > [@raspberry\_hunter](#): > > I do think, yeah, I’ve noticed online especially that there’s a trend of closely basing one’s identity on, say, being on the spectrum, especially with younger folks. (I think I’m on the spectrum, but I don’t consider it part of my identity and I don’t hang out in spectrum-ish spaces or seek out spectrum people specifically.) I think you may have a point there. I think people want identity and a sense of belonging very strongly, and will seek it out one way or another. > > …especially if that group identity is one that can be thought of as a victim. My religion (LDS), for example, has some persecution in its past – yes, we can nitpick as to whether it was actually a reasonable response, etc., but the point is that as a community we have a communal memory of being victimized, even though that is not really very likely these days, and in places like Utah we’re the majority and likely to be the victimizers if anything. I feel like I see the same thing e.g. on autistic online spaces, where there’s definitely a group bonding around ableism, etc. I have mixed feelings about this… it’s clearly good to be able to vent about things to people who will understand. But I also find that if it gets to be too much venting, it gets to the point where it’s not productive any more and can actually make people feel worse, while still binding the group even more tightly together. And I think there’s a few things going on. People are looking for an identity and a place in a world where many traditional ones are fading, they are looking for a group to belong to, where they might find congenial company and moral support, they are looking for understanding, both of themselves and by others. And sometimes they are looking for better treatment, and even in some subcultures higher status. Because we live in a society that’s just enlightened enough (sometimes) not to mock or attack people for disabilities, but not enlightened enough not to mock or attack people for struggles that don’t have a label pinned on them. Is this good or bad? I think it can be good if it leads to greater understanding and learning better coping strategies, it’s good if it leads to people making social connections and friends if they had struggled with that. Like @BigT, I think most of the rise in people saying they have X is people who genuinely have X, or at least share some of the features, and could potentially be helped by realising it. But I do think it can be unhealthy, both by fostering ‘us against the world’ attitudes and blaming ‘normal’ people for all their problems, as @raspberry_hunter said above, and getting in the way of improvement and personal growth. Things like depression, anxiety and PTSD can be treated and even cured; internalising them as part of your identity and using them as a means to community can get in the way of that. And with disorders like autism and ADHD, there are coping techniques that can be learned, and skills can be improved with practice. It’s not helpful to ignore it, but nor should it be an excuse for not trying to improve your life. * * * > [@puzzlegal](#): > > Probably even worse, my cohort had 50 kids split into two classes. There were only 10 boys, and in the interests of “balancing the classes”, we had 20 girls and 5 boys in each class every year. The boys were always an awkward minority. It’s surprising the gender ratio was so off! When I went to university to study physics they had the opposite problem, and solved it by putting either 2 girls or none in each of the tutor groups of 5 or 6 students. I thought that was a decent way to handle it. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2024, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/97 "2024-10-14T19:34:06Z")
Yeah, I agree with everything you’ve said. It’s interesting (and validating for me!) that you’ve observed this as well (the good as well as the bad). ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2024, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/98 "2024-10-16T20:40:24Z")
I came across the below article, where it says 3% of the kids had symptoms of both autism and ADHD, but only .5% could be diagnosed with both disorders. This is what I meant by ‘share some of the features’: that almost all the people adopting these labels have genuine symptoms, which may or may not meet the diagnostic threshold. And since they do have symptoms, they can potentially be helped in the same way, and potentially need similar accommodations (in more limited areas). I know there’s a lot of sneering at people self-diagnosing, since it’s assumed to be for attention or to excuse bad behaviour. This would be much less of an issue if diagnoses were generally treated as a means to understanding rather than as excuses or as setting people apart. > **[Around 3% of children suffer from symptoms of both autism and ADHD](https://www.psypost.org/around-3-of-children-suffer-from-symptoms-of-both-autism-and-adhd/)** > > A Spanish study found that about 3% of children have symptoms of both autism and ADHD, with higher rates in boys. Early detection of co-occurring symptoms from parents and teachers could improve diagnosis and intervention, enhancing children's... ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/99 "2024-10-19T23:04:09Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Catholics like to live with other Catholics Not that I’ve ever noticed. Maybe Italians living with other Italians or Irish living with other Irish, but as someone who grew up Catholic there were no Catholic neighborhoods anywhere near where I grew up. And I grew up in a large city. Yeah, there were some clusters of _ethnic_ groupings, but not because they were specifically Catholic. My street had only one other Christian family, and they were Lutherans. All the other families were Jewish, and all the kids played together in one big gang. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2024, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971/100 "2024-10-22T18:04:11Z")
Slightly off-topic, I just discovered a documentary on Netflix about Robert Putnam’s research, called “Join or Die”. It’s very good, and hits on a lot of more recent causes and effects we’re seeing now about membership. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hunger-for-group-membership/1006971.md?page=6)