Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

In Chapter 3, Brown introduces Bill Monroe’s high lonesome holler—a sound originating in the bluegrass music tradition that captures a “shared experience” of despair that lets us “immediately know we’re not the only ones in pain” (44). While this music has the potential to liberate us from pain, without “connection or collective engagement,” it remains a song of “sorrow and despair” (45). What we find today, Brown argues, is a “high lonesome and heartbroken” world inhabited by people who have self-sorted into factions based on “politics and ideology” (45). Consequently, Brown views the populace as protecting their beliefs from the sidelines, thus, paradoxically, leaving individuals more “disconnected, afraid, and lonely” (46).

Brown notes that, at best, this sorting is “unintentional and reflexive”; however, when taken to extremes, the separation can lead to “stereotyping that dehumanizes” (48). At the same time, sorting into like-minded groups has not led to a deeper feeling of connection to our neighbors; rather, it has resulted in a heightened sense of loneliness. Citing Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort, Brown notes that less than 25% of US counties were won in a presidential landslide in 1976, whereas by 2016, 80% of US counties were won in landslide elections. Inexplicably, the number of Americans who report feeling lonely has more than doubled. To explain this finding, Brown traces the relationship between loneliness and feelings of social disconnection.

According to neuroscience researcher John Cacioppo, as a social species, we “derive strength” from “our collective ability to plan, communicate, and work together” (53). Brown posits that our collective national sorting and subsequent “unchecked loneliness” are driven by fear and the lack of an outlet to openly express emotion, offer comfort, or seek justice and accountability (55). In this vacuum, blame and rage seep in the “fault lines […of] race, gender, and class” (58). This instinct to attack also takes advantage of “our lack of tolerance for vulnerable, tough conversations” (45, 58). Speaking from ideological bunkers protects our beliefs, but it keeps us isolated, disconnected, and lonely. Moreover, when the connection that unifies is actually fear expressed as blame, what “feels like a rallying movement” becomes “more of a solidifying division” (57).

In the remainder of the book, Brown examines strategies for regaining true belonging and taking steps towards reclaiming human connection. In the face of fear, she argues that we must choose vulnerability and courage over the comfort of the status quo to “find our way back to one another” (59).