Questions that have most fascinated me in my life are often connected to how our current human state of affairs has been derived from previous states. I will not deny that the concept of evolution and its implications has had a more profound impact on my understanding of human life than any other one idea.

If you find such an idea uncomfortable or abhorrent, let me save you some time (and myself from some angry letters to the editor) by saying don’t bother reading this because it is undoubtedly this piece’s strongest under-current.

I will start simply with an anecdote from my own experience. When I came back on Sunday and began to settle into my new apartment, I felt anxious, not particularly because of school or other worries. After all, once you’ve come back to campus four times now, most such things cease to faze a person. And yet it was still there; I couldn’t shake it.

Then I realized it was because of the apartment itself. I paced around like a caged animal in an unfamiliar environment. I didn’t see much reason to go anywhere else but found myself searching for an excuse to do so. Why? It made no rational sense to me as I analyzed my own feelings. and yet no level of rationalizing could make me feel different. Then I began to think that maybe it was something deeper beyond my conscious control: the territory was not yet mine.

We decorate our rooms with our possessions because we would feel uncomfortable without them, not just for practical reasons but emotional as well. I’m somewhat reminded of the George Clooney movie Up in the Air. Whenever they showed him back in his apartment in Omaha, Neb. it was very clearly not a space for living, merely sleeping and eating. When we want to make a place our own the first thing we need to do is justify to ourselves that the place we inhabit is indeed ours. The human way to do this is through possessions.

For other animals it seems different. We evolved as tool users whose tools became a staple in survival, and because of this we instinctively associate possessions with safety. A cat doesn’t need to decorate in our sense of the word; it simply makes sure its scent is everywhere and that it has explored everything. Why does the cat circle its bed before sleeping? Because that cat is making the space its own. The activity may be different than our own, but the reason and rhyme of it are the same.

Another example of this kind of parallel is the way we have divided up our land. The person buying ten acres and the tiger patrolling its mountain are the same basic principle and just as the tiger owns it’s territory through power, the same is true of us. Social and economic power yes, but they boil down to the same thing as the tiger; they are simply more consciously organized.

In many ways these can be rather uncomfortable thoughts, as they have a tendency to destroy our illusions of superiority. But I have little patience reserved for too much squeamishness. If you lack the maturity to handle the answers, then don’t trouble yourself with asking the questions.

Now I realize that by speaking so frankly I expose myself to whatever criticism this place is capable of delivering to my cantankerous column. But before that happens, let me at least say that if your righteous refutation involves the Bible as a counter-example of evolution, I will just dismiss it out of hand. Remarkable though the Bible may be as a spiritual and historical document, I don’t approve subscribing to it blindly.

I also realize that the paltry two examples I used don’t begin to address the insane minutia of human activity, but since I’m not writing a treatise on human behavior you’ll have to excuse my impertinence.