BELONGING – IDEAS FOR THESIS STATEMENTS –OR ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT BELONGING The Prescription’s rubric requires you to: Consider aspects of belonging in terms of experiences and notions of identity, relationships, acceptance and understanding. You could use these notions to begin developing your theses or lines of argument. Exercise 1: Developing and Sustaining a Thesis Select one of the lines of argument and create a mind map that includes a number of points or ideas that further the thesis.Examples of Theses or Lines of Arguments Experience: • Our life experiences teach us that when you stop trying to belong you realise that you have always belonged.
• We search for a place to belong, not realising that it is our perceptions and attitudes and not the place that allow us to belong. Notions of Identity: • When your cultural identity is marginalised you can feel dislocated and displaced, and believe that you do not belong to your culture or the dominant culture. Our search for who we are is fuelled by a need to find a place in the world where we belong.
Relationships: • The need to belong to a group or a community shapes our behaviour, attitudes and actions. • An individual has the potential to damage relationships and ensure that others do not belong. • When humanity experiences a strong (spiritual) connection to a place the notion of belonging is strengthened and enriched. • When our relationship with a place is shaped by a narrow and biased view of the world, our notion ofBelonging can be questionable. Acceptance: • The basic human need to be accepted and belong can cloud our judgments and direct our actions. ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
.. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’ John Donne. Understanding • When we begin to understand the forces that drive us to belong we develop empathy for others and personal insight.
