Slaves belong to other people.
I have no need to be a slave, or to own others.
I question the veracity of your premise.

I think he meant the feeling of belonging, as in belonging to a nation, to a family, to a company, etc.

I think its because we humans have the instinct of grouping togheder to survive. I wonder why we cant just feel we "belong to the world" or "belong to the race" and instead prefer to place more importance in smaller groups, such as the nation or family. Maybe because people from other countries and cultures are different, and the different often scares.

I dont think that all people in particular have a need to belong to something. Some people do and some people don't have that need. If you apply basic principles of existentialism, people feel the need to belong to something because they need to identify with central normative frameworks which satiate fear, anxiety, and dread. If you apply politcal philosophy, you could think along the lines of social contract theory where we neeed to assmeble into collectives in order to ensure greater protection, moral assurity, etc.

So, I think we have "the need to belong" because it is in many ways primal and innate. In many ways, it is something that comes naturally to humans as a means of survival. That being said, I think existential issues are also a primary factor in the "need to belong."

I was just extending the notion into some flesh... Hyperbole.


I do not belong anywhere as i am everywhere, as I, like you, with all artificial boundaries dissolved, am existence and nothing less.
That does not, however, provide the deeply comforting and commonly necessary feelings of stability and security found in whatever 'group' we find them (church, al qaida, your family, etc...).

Fromm suggested, following many of Marx's concepts, that there is a "fear of freedom" (also the title of the relevant book) and isolation which then leads to people sado-masochistically or symbiotically attaching themselves to some person, something or somewhere. Although he does concede in his later book that we are ultimately social creatures, but need to break our (immediate) bonds to society and recognise our "membership" of the human race first and foremost. It's all a bit idealist and uptopian.