Noted

From a book I finished this morning and which I highly recommend:

Even in our many representations of human affairs, from Oedipus to Hamlet to Ronald Reagan, we can find no correlation between reflective self-awareness and effective action. Still less is there any reason to link the rise of self-awareness to the rise of language; although the latter might enhance the former, the former doesn't compel the latter. Finally, though we may have evolved, by whatever chance, that sequence of biochemical reactions which Steven Pinker calls a "language instinct," there's nothing to suggest that a language instinct should also carry with it a reciprocity instinct. Our languages may all have an internal grammar for which we are hard-wired, but we were using our many languages for quite a long time before we conceived of societies founded on the idea of "egalitarian reciprocity" or "justice as fairness." All we know about this idea is that it's here, it's queer, and we ought to get used to it.

Michael Bérubé, Life As We Know It