I had an interesting intuition the other day that humans are not just ’social animals’ but instead actually become new symbiotic selves when they interact -that the identity of a single person in isolation is not a true picture of their underlying self. It is similar to the Uncertainty Principle - people are really only who they are when they are with others. Others make the self what it is. You cannot study the self without taking into account the influence of others upon it.

I think this helps explain the joy I feel when in the presence of a huge singing crowd. I feel a sense of elation. It is as if the entire crowd is morphing into one being, a being with an expanded sense that allows it to experience the music at a higher plane. The abandon that crowd members feel, the release of autonomy into the all-self, or rather the larger self is indicative of this symbiosis. We are actually being assimilated, reconstituting our selves into cells.

Anyway - the crowd example is fairly obvious, but I think the same kind of dynamic is at work in almost every level of human interactions. I have a group of friends from college and when we get together, wherever that get together happens to be, it feels like a home coming. It is as if a friendly spirit has been summoned, our interactions blending together in a fine gestalt. Everyone has old friends that no matter how much time has passed since you last saw them no awkwardness has ever intruded into your relationship. It is as if the bond itself exists in some physical realm. As if the social sense is detecting and transmitting these feelings of love and brotherhood, discomfort and disdain the same way our skin relays the sun’s warmth or winter’s chill.