When we nowadays talk, as we so frequently do, about 'communication', we often are referring to techniques to facilitate primarily verbal communication between physically distant individuals: the (nearly obsolete) letter, the telephone, the email, 'social media' - even blogging, though now we are getting more into the territory of publication rather than inter-personal communication.
It must have been very different in the days of settled societies, when personal mobility was heavily circumscribed. People of course talked to each other, but personal social interaction was not necessarily verbal. It consisted to a considerable extent in simple physical presence in the course of quotidian lives, in the interchange of goods and services. That was not necessarily stimulating, but the unexamined assumption that stimulation is always beneficial is a product of our own times.
It is significant that we do now talk about communication so much - its success or failure, its techniques; despite its unprecedented quantity in our time, it is always thought there is not enough of it, that the solution to all problems lies in 'more' or 'more effective' communicaton. There is far less consideration of what we might be communicating or of whether it is desirable that we should seek to develop new realms within ourselves for communication. With it of course goes the whole modern fixation with the virtues of 'self-expression'. In modern times the unexpressed life is the life not worth living.
