Language

Mark Pagel says that we thrive in a way that no other species does, this because of our ability to produce language. According to the author, this is the most valuable feature we have and it is a wonderful irony that our languages exist to prevent us from communicating. In this sense, I agree with Pagel when he talks about the subversive power of language, language has the potential to change reality. As humans we have an amazing power, language acting as a container of culture, allows us to create realities, creating distinctions between people, between men and women, often excluding other diversities. However, today we have the perfect tool to convert that reality.

Mr. Page's saying "social learning is a visual theft" means that we can learn from other people by watching, coping and imitating, in this process, we steal the best ideas for other people. For me, this discussion is not necessarily a negative thing because it is something that we currently have in the academy, specifically in the social sciences. In our work as an anthropologist, we steal recurrently the ideas or theories of other people and we have a continuous improvement of these theories.

About the dilemma of modernity posed by Pagel or rather the idea of "a world with only one language" seems a bit violent, since it is a way to homogenize the cultures and the different visions that exist in the world.

In this sense, I believe that our identity and thought as Chilean people is strongly molded by our language, it's something that identifies us as a unique cultural group. However, I believe that nowadays we can superimpose diverse worldviews together with their different languages, for me they aren't  mutually exclusive.