The Universal Smile

If you smile at me I will understand, cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.

"Wooden Ships" by David Crosby, Paul Kantner and Stephen Stills

As I travel the world, I am often reassured to discover human universals, things that are the same for all people regardless of their nationality or ethnic origin or where on earth they live. The most obvious example is a smile. It is the same no matter where you go and its meaning is clear. That the smile is a universal language is undeniable. But I believe that is just the tip of the iceberg of many things that we all have in common as human beings.

The idea that facial expressions and gestures can be understood independently of language impressed itself upon me vividly once at the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in China. I was wandering around the tourist area overlooking the dam when I noticed a Chinese couple that was gesturing to their little girl about 11 years old to stand close to me so they could take a picture of her with a Westerner. I was an oddity at that place and time and it wasn't unusual for people to ask to take a picture with me.

Though I didn't speak their language, I could see clearly what was going on. The mother was gesturing for the young girl to move closer to me, and the girl's face told how she felt about it. She was doing as she was told, but reluctantly. She was shy and embarrassed that her mother was pushing her to do this thing. The expression on her face said, "Aw come on, don't make me do this. This is embarrassing."

She was obeying, but her expression said, "Okay, but if you're going to insist on doing this, just snap the picture quickly and get it over with."

I was with a group with a bilingual guide who was able to introduce me to the people and translate. We had an amazing conversation and for that moment we bridged two worlds. We ended up exchanging addresses and the little girl, who was learning English in school, wrote letters to me in English.

What struck me was that this little girl from such a different culture from mine did not seem the slightest bit different from young girls in my own home town. I could see exactly what she was expressing just as if she had been an American girl.

While the smile is the most obvious example of a universal facial expression, a broad range of emotion can be communicated through facial expressions. We speak of "a look of concern" or fear or flirtation, or any number of possible feelings that are communicated by a facial expression.

I don't know if anyone has compiled a dictionary of facial expressions, but there is now a language of emoticons that use cartoons of facial expressions to express a range of feelings in online communications.

Putting it to the Test
Researchers at Ohio State University performed an experiment to try to discover which facial expressions, if any, can be understood across language and culture barriers.

They compiled a list of every human emotion they could think of, eventually coming up with 821 English words for those emotions. They translated the words into Farsi, Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish and used them as search terms to find pictures online of the corresponding facial expressions. They analyzed more than 7 million pictures of facial expressions across many cultures in 31 countries.

Using computer algorithms they condensed the pictures down to 16,384 possible facial configurations. They finally narrowed it down to 35 facial expressions that were standard across all those countries and cultures.

It's one of those times when science confirms something I felt that I already knew from common sense. Smiles and other facial expressions and gestures are forms of communication that can be used anywhere in the world.

When I travel this is confirmed over and over in my dealings with people. I find that it is possible to find common ground with almost anyone anywhere, regardless of the degree of separation of your respective cultures.

Human Nature
Noam Chomsky discovered a universal grammar that underlies all languages. He showed that human beings demonstrate tremendous capacities to improvise and create highly complex language structures without having any conscious understanding of the rules of the system they use so brilliantly and naturally.

The fact that we are all born with an innate universal grammar points to a basic foundation that is shared by all human beings.

Language is one of many things that are innate in human beings, behaviors that blossom at certain stages of development. It is what we call instinct when we observe it in animals. No one teaches birds how to sing, or baby giraffes how to walk or graze.

Our parents help us learn things, but no one has to teach us how to breathe, chew, walk or talk. These are behaviors that are inborn and unfold naturally, like love, sex and keeping danger from a child.

In our DNA
Science confirms this broad affinity in the fact that all human beings share 99.9 percent of the same DNA. All of our individuality is in that one tenth of one percent of difference. I cherish that 0.1 percent, but I also cherish the large part of us that is universal, and the fact that we share most of human experience with every other person.

The belief in a broad human commonality is comforting to me because since electronic technology and modern transportation have pushed us all up close to each other, we are going to have to learn to live together. There is no going back. So it's nice to know that there is a biological affinity that connects us all, regardless of culture, language, ethnicity or ideology.

We all experience fear, sorrow, pain, love and joy. We are all mortal. We have much more in common than what separates us.

Bill Nye of the Emmy award-winning TV show "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" wrote that what we call "races" are artificial categories, similarly to dog breeds, which differentiate dogs though they all are the same species from a common ancestor, and without the efforts of dog breeders would evolve back to a common form with a broad range of individual characteristics.

"Along with the evidence of common sense, researchers have proven scientifically that humans are all one people… The color of our ancestors' skin and ultimately my skin and your skin is a consequence of ultraviolet light, of latitude and climate. Despite our recent sad conflicts here in the U.S., there really is no such thing as race. We are one species — each of us much, much more alike than different. We all come from Africa. We all are of the same stardust. We are all going to live and die on the same planet, a Pale Blue Dot in the vastness of space. We have to work together."

I suppose in our time the ideas of love and peace must seem like quaint old-fashioned sentiments, but regardless of that I feel solidarity with all human beings. And this feeling is confirmed and solidified whenever I travel, which is one of my favorite things about traveling.

I hope you are able to experience the same pleasure.

Your humble reporter,

A. Colin Treadwell