I am human: nothing human is alien to me.

I've been intrigued by this statement for a long time. I can't remember where I first saw it or in what context, but I think it's fascinating and certainly worth thinking about.

To put things in perspective, this comes from Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor), a play by the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer, or Terence. It occurs early on in the first scene,

Menedemus. Chreme, tantumne ab re tuast oti tibi aliena ut cures ea quae nil ad te attinent?
Chremes. Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. [*]

ME. Chremes, have you so much leisure from your own affairs that you can attend to those of others – those which don't concern you?
CH. I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me. [*]

The two characters ME and CH are neighbours having a conversation; CH notes that ME is quite old (sixty years or more, he reckons), and asks why he still toils in his fields all day. ME then replies "Chreme, tantumne..." and so on. At first glance it looks as if CH is being nosey; but if we interpret it that way, his words seem far too elevated and lofty for that. (He could've just said something along the lines of "Well, I'm your neighbour and I think you're weird" but that would have made for a horrible play.)

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The effectiveness of this line, I think, is twofold. It clearly links the particular (I) to the universal (human), and it alludes to a common, universal quality that we all share, which might be termed "humanity".

The first half goes straight to the point – Homo sum; I am human. It taps into a pool of feelings, experiences, desires – whatever – that all people hold in common, and stakes a claim on it.

The second half – humani nil a me alienum puto – is a bit harder to interpret. I'm not a student of Latin, and all the declension and conjugation makes things really quite confusing for me; I use Wiktionary to untangle it all. The customary "nothing human is alien to me" translation has the advantage of being both accurate and succinct (except it loses the sense of the word "puto" – I judge / regard / deem).

So "nothing human is alien to me" – alien as in "foreign" or "unfamiliar", not as in E.T. I like to think that this is an embracement of everything human. In a way, it's rather like an inverse of the first part – phrasing it in the positive "all" rather than the negative "nothing", it might read like this: "I am human: all things human are familiar to me". In this way it elegantly proceeds from particular to universal, then universal to particular, symmetrical just like "three in one, and one in three" or Dumas's "all for one, and one for all".

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Now that I've dissected it, time to put it together and figure out what it means as a whole. There is a problem in translation, in that the Latin "alienus" had a broader meaning than the English "alien" – and nowadays, the English "alien" is hardly used in any context than little green men. "Alien" can mean extra-terrestrial, or foreign (as in "alien species" i.e. non-native), or simply distant and unfamiliar (as in "alienated", to have become estranged). Latin "alienus" simply means "of/belonging to someone or something else". [1] and [2]

An easier rendering is probably "nothing human is strange to me". This is quite a tall order; this means that one is familiar with all the joy and suffering that is the human condition. In a sense this is almost superhuman. It is probably something to be aimed at, a culmination of a lifetime of experience, not something you could pull off in an afternoon.

I think it's a worthy goal. It does not pass moral judgement – it does not disown the darker elements of human nature (sex, crime, drugs), nor does it unduly glorify the "good bits" (love, God, chocolate). Yet I feel it is a lofty sentiment because it encompasses all that is human; like I said earlier, it is an embracement.

This is why I'm more sympathetic towards people who swear and sin and make gritty movies and write difficult literature, than moralising self-righteous pulpit-preachers. The latter tend to lose sight of – or worse, disown – the uglier bits of humanity. They repress the humanity in them in the pursuit of a false goodness, or even a false Godliness.

I've written previously about George Lim, the guy who wrote to the ST Forum railing against movies that "focused on violence, crime, death and sex", arguing that "A movie that is worthwhile watching would give hope to the viewer about the meaning of life and its purpose... should result in stirring a person’s mind and heart to do good for society... should focus on wholesome family values of love and care, and respect for the elders and the government" and asking for the censorship board to do something about the films that are shown here.

He's an extreme example, but you get my point – by disowning the ugly bits of humanity, he creates a warped image of what people should be like. The crude reality is that people are human. Like I wrote in that same blog post, "The world is meaningless and hopeless and ugly and filthy and corrupt and depraved and rich and beautiful and wonderous and human in its depravity, deal with it!"

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"I am human: nothing human is alien to me." I'd like that to be inscribed on my headstone, when the time comes.