My little brother, or rather, one of them, starred in his school’s production of “Sessical: The Musical,” performed this past weekend. It was a great performance – quite professionally done, considering everyone in the cast was a 7th or 8th grader.

One theme evident in Seussical was alienation in one’s world; indeed, one of the songs, sung twice and echoed back to many other time, was “Alone in the Universe” -

I’m alone in the universe.
So alone in the universe.
I’ve found magic but they don’t see it

Horton sings this after being mocked for believing a person is living on the dust speck he found, referring back to the story Horton Hears a Who.

It’ quite poignant, really. Horton had good reason to feel that way; he was being emotionally and physically cut off from his social group (the other creatures in the Jungle Of Nool). But one can feel that way even if they aren’t being publically derided and excluded.

I was considering this idea, being so alone. I believe everyone feels this way sometimes; perhaps some more than others, but I believe it is shared unanimously; after all, how else could it be so common a theme, found in literature, art, and yes, Broadway musicals.(PS: Is this a theme that is universal in human existence or has appeared and increased in the modern era?)

This is quite complicated, I discovered. Humans are super-social beings; we don’t do so well in isolation, and you notice we aggregate in the same places and buildings, tending to cluster together rather then spread apart (which goes against nature as it increases the entropy of the system, but oh well there goes Tonia on a nerdy tangent).

Yet, we are all unique – thanks to random gamete selection, crossing over, and mutation, most of us have different genomes; even twins, who share the same genetic material, express it differently as they interact with their environment. We all look different, have our own thoughts, and our own unique little characteristics. In The Incredibles, the young super-hero child complains that when everyone is “super”, then “no one is.” So, we are all uniform in our unique-ness. Yet we feel alone.

—So, funny story. I began this draft early this morning. Just an hour later, in Cell Bio, our professor explained to us that the genetic differences between people are so small they are statistically negligible. How about that! It boggles my mind. Basically what that means is that a tiny, tiny, fraction of our genetic material dictates differences between us, and those differences are magnified or smoothed over by our relative experiences – and I don’t just mean experiences that you are aware of and become memory. For example, the chemical composition of your surroundings in utero can have a big effect on you later – I believe this fact explains to a certain extent the differences between identical twins.

So, anyways, we are these members of a species who are pretty much identical at a molecular level, yet each rather unique in our feelings and activities, roving around in big packs, and feeling alienated all the while. Phew. There’s some pretty deep psychology and philosophy that goes into that one, which I do not understand (yet)/won’t go into now. Just revel in the facts, without asking why.

Speaking of reveling in the facts, consider, as I said before, that some people feel more “alone” than others – and this doesn’t necessarily mean they are a social outcast or are that different. Hmmm… meaning the first-person experience can be in quite independent of third-person reality.

So, ponder that.

And thus concludes today’s rambling about human nature.