A B52 bomber during the US war in Indochina. Wikicommons/USAF. Some rights reserved.If we want to understand the human potential for radical change – change that genuinely transcends the out-of-control capitalism now threatening the environment and even the future of our species – we need to understand language and its origins. This is because language could not have evolved without extraordinary levels of cooperation, while cooperation is, of course, the key thing we need if we’re ever to overcome the class conflicts, social fragmentation and environmental degradation now afflicting us all.
Language may not always appear to be especially cooperative, particularly when we are involved in a heated argument. But as long as we remain on speaking terms, we are still demonstrating our commitment to cooperate in this most challenging and distinctively human of tasks – striving to make sure that, despite all difficulties, language continues to work.
Successful linguistic communication depends on previous shared understandings, trust in communicative intentions and an ongoing willingness to consider our words from the other person’s perspective instead of just our own. Monkeys and apes are highly intelligent creatures, but in the wild, their social dynamics are just too despotic and competitive for language-like communication to evolve.
