As life evolved on this planet there were many forms and functions of forms which evolved and then disappeared. Evolutionary biologists and psychologists argue that those forms and functions which persist did so because they were useful. The psychologist Nicholas Humphrey suggested that we developed consciousness in order to work out what other people were thinking, and so be able to predict what they were going to do. Consciousness allows us to know what we are thinking, and so we can use our own experiences to guess what is going on in other people’s heads. But it is always a guess. We can never be sure. Consciousness is always private.
Susan Greenfield argues that consciousness in a baby comes on slowly like a dimmer switch on a light being turned on. However, the process of consciousness lighting up is also the process of being involved with other people.
Babies are born being interested in faces, human voices and what people do. The psychologist Dr D. Premack argues from his research that a baby is born with what he calls two ‘innately specified causal predicates’, one which allows the perception of ‘non-self-propelled objects’ (something has to happens to an object for it to move) and one which allows the perception of ‘self-propelled motion of biological beings’ (humans and animals choosing to move). Babies find the movements of human beings much more interesting than the movements of objects.45 They would rather be propped up in their basket watching Mum get dinner than be lying in their cot looking at a mobile.
The ability to distinguish people from objects quickly develops into the ability to project on to objects and on to animals the characteristics of humans. For young children toys become people, and these people can comfort and support the child. They become immensely important when adults around the child fail to do so.
I watched a television programme about dolls in which one woman, Catherine, now sixty-four years old, talked about her doll Sailor Boy. She had been born into a family which did not want her. She was the youngest and her siblings all rejected her. Her mother was a distant figure and her father an authoritarian whom she feared. She was looked after by nannies and servants. The only person she could talk to was Sailor Boy. He understood her feelings. One evening she had Sailor Boy close to her while she was being given supper in the kitchen. The room was hot from the range oven and she wasn’t feeling well. Her father came into the room, and in her sudden fear she vomited over Sailor Boy. Her father, a fastidious man, immediately ordered the nanny to put Sailor Boy in the fire. The nanny took the poker, lifted the lid above the fire and thrust Sailor Boy in. He blazed up and was gone. As she told her story Catherine showed that she was still mourning Sailor Boy, but she finished her story by saying that some time later she was able to get another Sailor Boy and she has him with her to this day.
Toys and pets can listen and appear to understand, but, alas, they cannot talk. We can imagine them talking, but, because what they say is what we have imagined, they cannot surprise us as real people do. We can imagine our toys and pets saying things which support, comfort and confirm us, but only other human beings can show that our wish to be supported, comforted and confirmed has been fulfilled in reality and not just in fantasy.
Language is a social activity. Indeed, according to the psychologist Robin Dunbar, we evolved language because we wanted to gossip.46
When we evolved language we were already communicating in the way animals do by touch and gesture. Robin Dunbar has made a special study of how primates communicate. He wrote,
A light touch, a gentle caress, can convey all the meanings in the world: one moment it can be a word of consolation, an apology, a request to be groomed, an invitation to play, on another, an assertion of privilege, a demand you move elsewhere; on yet another, a calming influence, a declaration that intentions are friendly. Knowing which meaning to infer is the basis of social being, depending as it does on a close reading of another’s mind. In that brief moment of mutual understanding in a fast-moving, frenzied world, all social life is distilled in a single gesture.47
This reminded me of an incident that occurred when I was in Hanoi in Vietnam. I had just left a shop when I felt on my right shoulder blade a touch which was as soft as silk yet with the power to draw my immediate attention. I looked round, and there was a little old woman dressed in black, her hand cupped in supplication. A soft touch for someone she hoped was a soft touch.
Primates spend much of their time touching one another in mutual grooming. Being groomed is very pleasant because it stimulates the body’s natural endorphins. In a group of primates grooming is one of the chief means whereby alliances are formed and hierarchies within the group established.
However, grooming takes time. Human groups were much bigger than primate groups so required a more efficient means of grooming. Through language we can groom more people and be groomed by more people. Language makes social interaction more efficient. Hence its evolution.
Psychologists have always unwisely divided their subject into individual psychology and social psychology, but now they are coming to understand what sociologists and anthropologists have always understood – that, as my friend and colleague David Canter said, ‘the essence of humanity is in interactions between people in groups.’ The profession of psychology virtually came into existence with society’s need to understand why some people think more quickly, accurately and creatively than most other people. Psychologists invented the notion of intelligence and claimed it was a measurable thing lodged inside each person and genetically inherited. In 1999 Ken Richardson, a psychologist who had studied intelligence for many years, demonstrated in his book The Making of Intelligence48 that human organizations require what he calls ‘sensitivity to hyper-structural information’ – that is, knowledge of how knowledge is organized, of how knowledge of knowledge organization is organized, and so on. Professor David Canter, reviewing Richardson’s book, concluded that ‘Intelligence is a sophisticated creation of social interactions embedded in particular cultures, not the genetic endowment of any individual.’49 Knowledge of how knowledge is organized and so on is a matter of interpreting interpretations and so on. The more quickly, accurately and creatively we can interpret other people’s interpretations the more intelligent we are.
What are we usually doing when we are interpreting other people’s interpretations? We are gossiping. We tell one another stories. Such stories are not just for entertainment or for imparting information. They are for managing reputation, for determining the place each of us occupies in society. What better story than one which besmirches your enemy’s reputation and enhances your own? No wonder that the media thrive on gossip. No wonder the activity which combines both gossip and grooming – hairdressing – is so popular.
However, while we use language to communicate with others, our communications are never completely accurate and unambiguous. While we might all speak the language of the society we live in, no two of us use that language in exactly the same way. We use the same language but the meanings we hold for those words are different. Two people might agree that the word ‘Christmas’ refers to 25 December, but for one person the connotations of Christmas are entirely religious while for the other person Christmas means fun and family. To discover the similarities and differences in our meaning structure we have to talk to one another.
We are indeed peculiar people, with a language which simultaneously brings us together and pushes us apart. This is but one facet of