Pointing
Pointing is such an effective way of communicating the inner universe of our thoughts that we master it before we are able to speak. Even animals like dogs understand it when they spend enough time around humans. It's not hard to imagine natural selection rewarding the animal species whose individuals are, for example, able to warn each other about danger over others species that aren't. When we point, or when we look in the direction that someone else is pointing towards, we acknowledge that there's another mind that works roughly like our own, but which is also different enough to busy itself with other issues. Pointing implies both the realization of a gap between two individuals and the intention of bridging it. That's why pointing is almost irresistible, from both the position of the person doing the pointing and the person doing the looking. It's so effectively revealing of our thoughts that we have collectively created ways of refraining from doing it. Over...
