Tony Soprano's recurring line was, "You got something to say to me?" Usually the listener replied with silence; it is not smart to tell a sociopath what's on your mind.
From its origins on, speech has demanded more saints than sociopaths.
Sociopaths are frequently defined as people who are completely lacking in a conscience, but, as consciences are a little hard to observe, in this post I’m going to call them people whose behavior, including speech, is utterly devoid of generosity. According to Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door most of them are not murderers or con artists. They can be capable and hardworking. They can also be sociable, in the sense of being charmers, good networkers, active leaders. But in the words of Don Vito Corleone, they “refuse to be a fool.” Meaning they are not interested in the acts of generosity. As for speech, their attitude was also summed up by Vito Corleone, “Never tell anyone outside the family what you are thinking.”
That advise is good for gangsters, less valuable for dramatists and there is a scene in the original Godfather in which Marlon Brando does explain himself to his youngest son, Michael, who is taking over the role of head mobster in the Corleone gang, “I never wanted this for you. For my own life I don't apologize. I refuse to be a fool, dancing on a string for all the big shots, but you...I wanted you to be one of the big shots. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone. . .” It’s not so much kill-or-be-killed in that world as it is manipulate-or-be-manipulated. Vito Corleone’s hope for his son had not been that he become an honest upright man, but that he become one of the bigger manipulators.
So what’s the reply to that world view; In a way, it’s simple: love, not passionate or romantic love necessarily, but the kind of love that supports generosity and the making of a community. Such behavior has no place in the models of action that are held up repeatedly today as rational. Economic theory often refers to “economic man” who is self-interested and acts accordingly. The notion has such a strong grip on political economy that many thinkers describe all acts of generosity, either in the form of government policy or private philanthropy, as harmful impediments to efficient economic distribution. The same view dominates Darwinian rationality and the notion of the “selfish gene.” Generosity toward others carries a personal cost and, therefore, over the generations, individuals who avoid that cost will be selected. So generosity has no way to become a biological trait. Actions that appear generous or altruistic turn out, upon closer examination, to promote the survival of a particular gene by favoring the survival of relatives who are also likely to carry the gene. Thus, mother hens tend to their own chicks, but not to the chicks hatched by some other hen.
In this view, the behavior of the sociopath is rational and should endure. Generous behavior is irrational and should disappear.That notion explains nicely why all other species lack language. Speaking requires generosity. Ordinary speech does not require much altruism, but sharing information is never without some willingness to give just to be giving.
This position can be countered by the overview of community benefits. By sharing information for thousands of years all humans have benefited, gaining enormous knowledge that permits us to thrive in great numbers. That’s why we have prospered so far beyond the apes. But genetic competition does not care about the big picture. On the level of the here-and-now, it costs to talk; listening is free. So nobody should talk. The code of omerta that calls informers “rats” has no rational limit. Don’t tell the police who did what. Don’t tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking. Don’t tell anyone inside the family something that may give you a leg up in the organization. Keep those lips zipped.
The biggest mystery of language origins that this blog has found is precisely that one: how did we get over the code of omerta that natural selection imposes on us all? How did the human species become exempt from the rule?
One way evolution has found many times to bypass the limits of natural selection is through preadaptation, the evolution of a new trait that turns old traits to new uses. The classic example is the evolution of terrestrial walking. A fish finds that it can lever its way around on dry land using its fin. The limb did not evolve for that use, but provided entrée into a new environment. Once the new use was found, evolution could then sculpt the fin into a terrestrial limb.
Something similar may lie behind the generosity required for sharing information. An article now available online in the current issue of PLoS Biology (“Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children,” available here) by Felix Warneken et al. reports experimental and observational evidence that “altruistic behaviors are within the behavioral repertoire of chimpanzees” (p. 0005).
Warneken’s team performed a series of experiments that tested the willingness of chimpanzees and infants to help others. The results were not very strong but did show that chimpanzees will provide undemanding assistance to humans. It is unclear whether they will do the same for unrelated chimpanzees. Observations of wild chimpanzees have reported that they will sometimes share food or provide consolation (in the form of touches) when a dominant chimpanzee abuses a lower ranking one. These are not impressive examples of generosity, but we cannot look for impressive examples in cases of preadaptation. The fins of preterrestrial fish were not impressive dry-land limbs. They provided a toe hold for the marvels that followed.
Some might object that this notion just pushes the question back. If Darwin does not allow for unselfishness, we cannot explain human generosity and speech by saying that chimpanzees already had the potential for such things. How did chimpanzees come by them? But this complaint assumes that chimpanzee altruism is the result of selection. It is more likely to be a side-effect of other properties. Chimpanzees are emotional enough and perceptive enough that trivial forms of unprogrammed altruism are likely to occur and be tolerated by selection. In evolutionary thought things that emerge as a part of the evolution of something else are commonly called spandrels, a term introduced by Stephen J. Gould.
The Warneken team concludes:
Human cultural groups might have created unique social mechanisms to preserve and foster altruism, such as sactioning selfish behavior and internalizing social norms. But they cultivated rather than implanted the propensity to act altruistically in the human psyche. [p. 0005]
Preadaptations become useful when circumstances change and an undiscovered capacity is suddenly put to use. It appears that something happened environmentally that suddenly repaid a trivial tendency toward generosity with bounty rather than loss. Once past that hump the rest of the story follows. Shared attention leads to shared speech leads to shared culture leads to shared prosperity. But crossing the hump toward serious generosity … ahh, that is a mystery.
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