Homo Loquitur
Why do we rely so heavily on visual gesture, facial expression, spoken and written language?
How do you escape your own blindspots?
How do you escape your own prejudices and preconceptions when your mind itself, by definition, has trouble seeing them?
As humans we are constantly plunged into a crucible of fire. We face moments that are existential, where we’re forced to decide which part of ourselves to cherish which parts to let go. If we sacrifice ideas that perhaps seem precious, but which no longer serve us, we may thrive, but in so doing we become something alien. If we’re unable to let go, or if we let go of the best parts of ourselves, we may be comfortable until we perish. We take a risk in letting go, and inevitably emerge from the fires differently from when we entered, not always even certain of what we once were.
But how do you decide what to hold onto and what to let go of?
I’d argue that the main technique we use is to simply ask other people “what do you see?”
In a very real sense we all plunge into the same fire together, all emerging differently. From this crucible a tenacious will seems to emerge; one determined to find new ways to thrive, to see further, to understand more.
Over hundreds of thousands of years our capacity to see the world as others see it has been amplified. We have an instinctive hunger to share information, to constantly take advantage of other viewpoints to solve hard problems.
This runs counter to a conceit of rugged individualism, especially in the west. True, we are embodied as single points of view, and it often feels like our single consciousness is equal to being a single human. But does a single person fully express what it means to be human? It may very well be that the minimum unit of “human” is two or three people at least; and possibly a chunk of ecosystem as well.
We appear to be becoming an organism that sees the world through many eyes, with language as a glue and with absurdly over-developed communication skills. We share elaborate plans, in effect using each other to accomplish precise goals at a distance. We share knowledge with people who aren’t there, separated by space and time; passing what we know from generation to generation. We even talk to our own future selves - scratching down todo lists, diary entries and self-counsel; creating a kind of cognitive parallax - an ability to see an issue from multiple points of view even within one mind.
The term Homo Sapiens arises from a latin word meaning “one who knows” or “the clever human” - based on an observation that the human cognitive process is unlike that of other animals. But I would argue that the discriminating trait isn’t our intelligence; many other animals are also able to accomplish complex plans. Our discriminating trait is instead our incessant chatter.
From these thoughts it feels like the classification Homo Loquitur better captures the bulk of what we are; a species that talks endlessly, that holds space for a group existence in the interstices between individuals. This feels like a more useful starting point for our subsequent conversations about our motivations and our tools.