We are the only species with language sophisticated enough to describe our inner lives, and yet many of us find it genuinely difficult to say the simplest things: I am scared. I feel alone. This is not a personal failure. It is architecture, millions of years in the making.
We have words for love and friendship, but almost none for the bond in between. Science suggests that gap in our language reflects a gap in our understanding of something ancient, biological, and fundamental.
Most of us have felt it, the sense that people are ruder, more self-absorbed, less willing to help a stranger. But is this feeling grounded in reality, or is it something else entirely? The Perception…