Matthew Kaufman, author of The Campfire Effect: How to Engineer Belonging in a Disconnected World
Every summer, there’s a moment that makes me pause.
This is what happened on the first day of camp. When the bus arrives at the front gate, hundreds of children get off, clutching duffel bags and with the wide-eyed expressions of people entering a foreign country. They don’t know anyone. They don’t know where to sit. Some people struggle with tears. Some people pretend they’re not scared at all, but that’s a kind of heartbreak in itself.
A few weeks later, the same children are finishing each other’s sentences. They protect each other in Capture the Flag. They sing songs that I didn’t even know existed a week ago, so beautifully and with all their might. And when the bus home comes, they cry. Not because camping is over, but because you have tasted something unusual and know that it is not so freely provided in the outside world.
As a camp leader, I’ve seen this change happen thousands of times over the decades. And for most of those years, I thought of it as the magic of summer. Lakes, campfires, freedom from screens.
But it’s not magic. It’s biology. And understanding the biology of it changed my whole perspective.
pain that can’t be named
In 2023, the US Surgeon General declared loneliness a public health crisis, noting that the health impact of social disconnection is equivalent to 15 cigarettes a day. While this statistic is alarming, it doesn’t represent what loneliness really feels like. It doesn’t feel like a diagnosis. It feels like a dull pain. It’s like sitting in a room full of people and wondering why you still feel so alone.
We’ve built a world optimized for speed, convenience, and efficiency. We can order groceries without talking to a human. We can work our entire careers without ever having to meet our colleagues in person. We can live next door to someone for 10 years and never know their name.
We have optimized everything except one thing: our brains are made for each other.
For 200,000 years, humans lived in small groups of 30 to 50 people. We woke up together, worked together, ate together, and told stories around the fire at night. Our nervous systems evolved for such proximity. We are wired to seek visual cues of a nod, the warmth of a laugh, and subtle cues that say, “You’re safe here. This is your place.”
When those signals disappear, your brain doesn’t just feel sad; It will go into alarm mode. For the ancient nervous system, isolation is not an inconvenience. It is a threat to survival. Because if you were alone on the savannah, you would die.
That’s the pain. That’s not weakness. It’s your biology telling you what’s important.
What the campfire taught me
After decades of watching strangers become family in less than a week, I started asking different questions. Instead of asking, “Why does camping feel so good?” I asked, “What’s actually going on in your brain?”
The answer turns out to be a continuum of five neurochemicals, each building on the last.
It starts with safety. All of us need to feel safe before we take risks, share our vulnerabilities, and open up to others. That feeling has a name: oxytocin. At camp, we trigger that through rituals, shared meals, and small daily gestures. A counselor who remembers your name. A hut where we sing songs together every night before going to bed. These are not decorations. They are the biological basis of trust.
Once safety is established, the brain begins to aim for progress. We need to feel like we’re moving towards something. Dopamine, the motivation chemical, is released when you see a goal and believe you can achieve it. Lake buoy at camp. There are always moments in life when you can see the path you should take.
Now comes the hard part. Growth requires friction. Cortisol, our stress hormone, gets a bad rap, but it’s not our enemy. Unmanageable stress is your enemy. A child standing at the top of a climbing wall is scared, while a counselor is belaying him below. Stress is real. The support is also real. This combination builds resilience. Stress and support lead to growth. Stress alone is damaging.
After the battle comes the evaluation. When we feel noticed, valued, and important to a group, our brains flood with serotonin. Not because we won the competition, but because someone stopped long enough to say, “We noticed what you did. It was important.” That is the chemistry of dignity.
And finally, joy. Endorphins are released through laughter, singing, movement, and shared absurdity. They recharge the brain and prepare it to start the whole cycle again. Joy is not a luxury. It is the fuel that makes the whole system spin.
I call this cycle the campfire effect. It works like a flywheel. When it starts rotating, it generates its own momentum. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
campfire is portable
This is the point that took me the longest to understand. This cycle is not about camping. Camping is one of the few places on earth where conditions happen to be just right.
The same chemical reaction that turns strangers into family in a cabin can turn a disconnected neighborhood into a village. You can turn a quiet dinner table into an evening ritual that kids really look forward to. Doing so can turn an unmotivated team into a group of people who genuinely want to show up for each other.
Fires do not belong to a specific location. It belongs to those who want to ignite it.
Most of us wait for a connection to happen to us. We are waiting for the right community to find us. Waiting for the right moment when the right friends will come along and you will feel like you belong. But belonging is not something you find on your own. It’s what you build.
Most communities happen by chance. The best ones are intentional. And the difference between the two is not luck or location. It is a decision to create a situation where trust is inevitable.
No lake needed. No ropes course required. I don’t need a campfire, but I never turn down a campfire.
You just need to understand the chemistry. Then you must choose to start.
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Matt Kaufman has been attending summer camps for over 40 years, first as a camper, then as a counselor, and now as the director of Camp Ramaquoi in New York. He trained as an engineer and has spent his career applying it to the most complex systems imaginable: human belonging. his book, The campfire effect: How to engineer belonging in a disconnected worldreveals the neuroscience behind what makes people feel a sense of belonging and provides practical tools for building intentional communities at work, in the classroom, and in your family.
Source: Spiritual Media Blog – www.spiritualmediablog.com
