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In the first two parts of this article, I have been pleased to present to the reader first the most optimistic and then the most pessimistic view of the communication processes from the middle of the last century until the present day. I wanted to show that it is possible to have both versions.
The existence of communication that unites us and another that separates us is a human constant, it seems to me. I think it has always been this way. Since time immemorial, human beings have trusted that we can understand each other, and at the same time, we are doubtful about it. The Greek sage Gorgias, who claimed that the movement of things was an illusion, also denied that communication was possible. His argument was blunt: words are tools of consciousness (i.e., subjective), so they cannot describe facts that occur objectively. They do not even manage to describe our emotions, which are partially alien to reason. Finally, he added that to top it off, if we could express our thoughts, we would never be entirely sure that our interlocutor would understand them, and we, not being within his consciousness, could not confirm them.
Recently, Byung Chul-Han, a Korean philosopher, fiercely criticized the type of communication that occurs through social networks and the supposed human exchange. He says this communication is empty, without communion, a flow of messages without a receiver, without a good receiver. In contrast, he points out the cultures where people do not need to communicate to build strong communities; for example, the Japanese frequent rituals that are purely form, that is, gestures and attitudes that say nothing to anyone but unite everyone unfailingly. Communities without communication, he calls them (versus communication without community, as we have said).
Francoise Doltó talks about communication being the human mission par excellence. According to her, the unifying miracle arises from the mother’s womb. She mentions that, for example, the tam-tam of the maternal heart is the origin of our attraction and charm for the noise of drums, in which we perceive an ancestral call to action, awakening to life (as we all know, percussions are the first musical instrument in history).
Thus, we proceed to talk about the communicative power of art. I know poets who claim that their texts “communicate” (they do not mean simply “express”), which makes us wonder whether it is possible to exchange communication over time, i.e., with future readers (“I write today for you who read me tomorrow”) and writers in the past (“I thank you for your writings, you, who are no longer here”). With these thoughts, we question the scientific certainty that the arrow of time always travels forward. (This could be what the philosophers of science want, but when I read Animal de Fondo by Juan Ramón Jiménez, I have the certainty that the author is writing his poems at that very moment and perceiving my shock!).
Thus, the concept of communication has many vertices. To specify the importance of what I have been calling the school ritual, I choose to begin with the simplest, first forms of communication according to the science of History.
Gossip and credulity
In his book Sapiens: From Animals to Gods, Yuval Noah Harari describes three communication phases crucial for our non-human ancestors to become who we are. The first, which we share with our ape ancestors, is a merely informative language that serves to communicate immediate circumstances and promote the group’s subsistence: “The lion is nearby,” or “There is much fruit on the other side of the stream.” Some human and non-human individuals know how to use these signs deceptively to take advantage, for example, to warn a fellow human being of the presence of a danger with the sole intention to distract him and steal something (for example, his food). Such forms of language can only accommodate up to a hundred individuals; beyond that, chaos occurs, and coexistence collapses. After one hundred, another band must form, with which the first will not identify in any way and will most likely come into conflict.
Sustaining larger groups requires that something more properly human appears. The second phase, Harari says, is the kind of communication we call “gossip.” Through it, human beings learn (or are deceived) about things that happen beyond their group and other important things within it. Now messages that speak of the companions themselves intersect: “He is a liar,” “She shared her food with me.” Thus the band refines and increases its control over favorable and unfavorable situations, both internal and external, and can bring together more individuals. The members identify with each other (they are similar) and share recommendations and warnings, find out who in the group is reliable and who is not, and direct their actions toward coexistence and staying safe.
However, Harari explains, this second phase of communication (gossip) sustains human groups up to 150 members. However, it is not enough to support those great masses where thousands and even millions of human beings respond to the mandate of a single leader. For this to happen, people must follow and believe in invisible entities as reliable as the ones they see, and even more. These entities deploy among the masses, allowing a person to identify with others whom he has never seen or will see, and whom he considers his fellowmen only by the fact of believing in something in common, that is, in fictions created by thought and collectively agreed upon, thanks to language. Thus, a god can make all his faithful consider themselves part of the same multitudinous family. A country can group millions even though its boundaries are entirely artificial, based on ideas, words, desires, i.e., acts of communication that the wind can carry.
We sapiens become similar only because we are sheltered within the same religion, family, school, nationality, corporation, or other invisible entities that we care about and preserve as if they were ours, or rather, as if we were theirs.
The Reality of the Invisible
The scientific versions, such as Harari’s, are not the only ones. According to others, the invisible is not fiction but a forceful fact. In favor of these, I venture now into one of those dissertations that I once called philosophical fantasies.
I can imagine that, as they proceeded to acquire consciousness, each of those first humans realized that he was a separate unity, a being, a whole; however, simultaneously, another truth dawned: those around him also were. If we think about it, the experience of being a whole does not combine with that of having similars: a whole, by definition, encompasses everything that exists, so that two wholes are nonsense; and many wholes, a delirium. That there might be many wholes like me was unhinging.
Fortunately, those first humans would also have lived the opposite experience, that is, recognizing themselves as part of a higher whole, in which other humans were also a part (becoming, now, their peers). By letting go of at least a little of their wholeness and participating with the community in
a more profound Being, they would have felt like they were restored from that first delirium. However, in the detachment, they would find significant risks. The feeling of getting lost in the whole would not be comforting but a source of much anguish. The only alternative would be to try to detach themselves without losing the self, and from there return, little more than spare parts.
Unfortunately, on the return journey, they would inevitably have been reunited with that temptation of completeness that overwhelmed them from the beginning. Now aware of the existence of others, they will have found a strategy to deal with danger: “I am not everything, only I am only the center.” Fortunately, this egocentric certainty (a source of conflict with the other egos) would sooner or later throw them back into a paradox: “Each one of us is a center, each one wants to be recognized as such.” Only humility remains to recognize that there is a place for many centers in this strange world.
Metaphorical ending
The yo-yo game is (from its name) a good metaphor for all this that I am saying. Wound up in my center (from which I glimpse, with terror, becoming a complete and isolated me), I try to detach myself from my immense burden and throw myself into a flight that I desire to be free and eternal. However, once I reach a certain limit (in which my self begins to fade), I return to that center I left behind. My whole life unfolds, then, between one extreme and the other; I do not want to stay forever in any of them. Indeed, returning to the center helps me gain momentum; and staying for a while skating at the other end allows me to experience numerous “fates” (as the experts call them), as long as I do not try to stay there too long.
In essence, I am a human being, and, like the yo-yos, I am in an ever-continuing game, a permanent promise and a permanent challenge.
(To be continued)
Translation by Daniel Wetta.
Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of Tecnológico de Monterrey.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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