A Better Basis for Community

It is the time of the World Cup. Athletes representing their home nations compete wearing their colors, under their flags, with their mascots, and unique styles of playing Soccer, er Football, er Fútbol—to identify just three of the many names people call the World’s Game around this planet. 

As I begin this article the Brazilian and Moroccan teams are lining up for their match on TV. Our human brains have evolved to be able to recognize, to categorize, and thereby to distinguish one thing from another. Brazil’s colors are yellow, green, and blue. Morocco’s colors are red and dark green.

We use these remarkable skills subconsciously, and they have given us things like language, the laws of chemistry, literature, and the ability to tell which team wins a soccer match. We also use these skills to distinguish ourselves from other people, not the least by the labels whereby we identify ourselves and others.

Think about some of the many labels Spiritual Naturalists use to identify ourselves. Secular Buddhist, Naturalistic Paganism, Stoic, Humanist, Humanistic Jewish, Epicurean, Naturalistic Christian, and Poetic Faiths to name a few. Where do you find yourself in the SN universe of labels? What combination of philosophies, practices, and historic or newly created groupings best describe you? I currently identify as a person with a Spiritual Naturalist orientation, a Humanist lens, a Quaker Practice, and a Christian background. 

Now, I invite you to pause and notice what your brain is doing. It is very likely running down your own checklists vis-a-vis the labels I just identified. As it does that, your brain is giving a thumbs up or thumbs down as it decides which labels are resonant with you and which ones are repellent to you. There is no judgement here. The ability to make distinctions is a useful skill that has helped us to survive as a species. I only wish to point out how our brains are working in relation to the labels, and consequently in relation to ourselves, and other people. 

It is the same with any system of categorization: politics across the right/left-red/blue spectrum; careers; ethnicities; cultures; sexual orientations; and gender identities. As soon as someone self-identifies with one or more labels, that tells our brains where we stand in relation to them and vice versa. And it is tearing us apart. Literally.

We have taken our instinctive survival tools for making sense and making meaning and turned them into our primary basis for social identity. In 2018, researcher Brené Brown described it this way: “We have sorted ourselves by ideology into bunkers…. We have very little interest in people who don’t believe like us.” Her next observation is surprising: “The more sorted we are the lonelier we become…. Behind the barricades of belief is not real connection. I think we just hate the same people…. I call it ‘common enemy intimacy.’”(1) Friends, there must be a better way.

Perhaps reflecting on the legacy of his own grandfather’s bigotry as a judge at the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the following entry from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s notebook offers one such better way for us to relate to one another and form communities: 

A new classification of society is to be instituted. Instead of rich and poor, high and low, they are to be classed, — First, by their sorrows: for instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel, who are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black, whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class. Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together, as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease; and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps all through one darksome portal, — all his children.(2)

Sorrows, diseases, and sins. That’s it. That is Hawthorne’s better basis for forming and maintaining communities than how we currently do it. Do you feel some space opening up inside you? It turns upside down our usual way of categorizing and distinguishing. Instead of Atheist, Supernaturalist, or Libertarian, each person is first and foremost a person. A human being who has experienced sorrow and disease and who has behaved in ways mal-adaptive to their own flourishing and that of others.(3)

Notice the Yang and the Yin of it. Apart from our inherited containers of religion, philosophy, and meaning making, the ones we positively choose for ourselves (which for some people are the same ones they inherited) are intended to make sense, to make meaning, and to make up for our sense of loss related to the negative space opened by our sorrows, our diseases, and our mal-adaptive behaviors. We use our ideologies as technologies for comfort, for healing, and to find forgiveness. By judging or condemning another person’s choice of ideology as insufficient or wrong, we actually further contribute to their existing sense of wounding from their own griefs, pains, and mistakes. That itself is compounded mal-adaptive behavior harming other people.

Instead of meeting at the level of our ideologies and systems of meaning-making, Hawthorne invites us to acknowledge our already-existing unity down at the level of why we need those ideologies and systems in the first place.

If we identify with our fellow humans in the ways Hawthorne suggests—on the basis of our weaknesses rather than our supposed strengths—we open ourselves up to real connection with one another. From that place of common-grounded unity we can support one another in making sense, finding meaning, finding comfort, healing, and forgiveness in ways that work for each of us. Imagine a community of people united in vulnerability respectfully supporting one another in finding strength and hope each according to their own understanding of what works for them. 

This is precisely the genius of the Grief-Support (sorrow), Hospice (disease), and 12 Step Recovery (mal-adaptive behavior) movements. Each offers a non-dogmatic spiritual basis for helping people find comfort, healing, and forgiveness… together.

On the other hand, the various churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and secular discussion groups reinforce putting the cart of ideology and dogma before the horse of what people actually need. So much so that it is easy for adherents to become distracted from the reason they walked through the doors in the first place. Grief does not go away by itself. Wounds need healing. Guilt gnaws at peace of mind. 

Distracted by dogma, ideology, ritual, and pageantry, our real needs get swept under the rug. We tell ourselves that “going to church” and “saying our prayers” will help. And we are surprised over the years to discover the ways in which our pain, loss, and misdeeds continue to work their way unhelpfully to the surface of our lives and relationships. Like-mindedness is a poor substitute for comfort, healing, and forgiveness. 

What I am proposing is easier said than done. The reason we feel threatened by other ideologies and others feel threatened by ours is because, as Kwasi Wiredu said, “a philosophical thesis is a fundamental claim on the entire universe. It says what reality, whether social, physical, or spiritual is like.”(4) That’s true. This is why we utilize them, to make sense of as much of the universe as possible so that we can survive—and even thrive—in it. After experiencing the wounds of life, the mainstream consensus-based ideological containers may no longer work for us, and we find our way to new ideas and practices—new ways of making sense and meaning. This is the experience of many of us who have left our childhood religions and philosophies and find ourselves in places like the Spiritual Naturalist Society. I, for one, am so glad SNS is here for us!

I am writing this article during Pride Month. From early on, LGBTQIA+ movement pioneers like Harvey Milk, knew that it makes a difference to know a person instead of just a label. And it is working. At the 2026 Pride Parade in Dallas, Texas the message of the Dallas Police Department to the Queer community is: “You belong here. You are safe with us.” That is the kind of openness that arises when we welcome one another on the basis of need and common humanity rather than on the basis of solutions and differing ideologies. 

Let’s let that truth echo and reverberate through our own sorrows, diseases, and the ways we treat ourselves and others harmfully. Let it reverberate through our spiritual practices and our ideologies, whether chosen or inherited. Let it reverberate into the way we see ourselves and other people. Let it invite us to reach out with courage to people who might not share our ideologies, but who are guaranteed to have their own share of sorrows, diseases, and unhelpful behaviors. 

I shared with you my current ideological orientation, above. The reasons those philosophies and practices are helpful to me is because of the losses and diseases I have actually experienced and my own mal-adaptive behaviors that have harmed me and others in my life. Get to know me and I’ll tell you more about them, even if we have different ideologies and ways of making meaning. Then, I’ll invite you to share yours with me. At that place, we are already united. That is our basis for community.

We are more alike than we know. And by far, most people are doing the best that we can to come to terms with our sorrows, to cope with our diseases, and to align our behavior with what we all know, deep-down, that we want to be like. The ideologies, philosophies, beliefs, and practices we inherit, adopt, and make use of support us in this effort. Let’s cut each other a lot more slack and celebrate our freedom to experiment with what works! As someone said, “Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

 

Notes:

1. Brené Brown, sermon at Washington National Cathedral (January 21, 2018), online at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndP1XDskXHY (The quoted portion above begins at 7:55. The whole 18 minute video is worth watching as it relates to the themes discussed in this article).
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebook, available at, https://a.co/d/075zDbWQ,  quoted with thoughtful elaborations by Maria Popova inspiring me to write the present article in, The Only Three Distinctions Between People, online at, https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/06/01/nathaniel-hawthorne-classification/?mc_cid=a4677486ec&mc_eid=3e7470c179. 
3. Because of the various connotations that go along with the word “sin,” a friend offered the more helpful term: mal-adaptive behavior, which I have been using since with gratitude. 
4. Kwasi Wiredu, Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion, African Studies Quarterly, Vol. 1, Issue 4, (1998), p. 26.

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Bio: James Jarrett lives with his spouse Katie in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They have six mostly-grown children. A licensed attorney and former church planter, James is endorsed by The Humanist Society as a Chaplain and Celebrant supporting people full-time in Hospice care. He posts poetry and articles like this one on his blog Becoming Human.

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