competent gestures 1

Jeff Wall, an artist whose work I like very much, has written about the gradual mechanisation of gestural language in pictures. The classical and even romantic ages developed a comprehensive lexicon corresponding to emotional and spiritual states. Today we see gesture as either symptomatic of some interior state, and with all the negative connotations that something symptomatic implies, or the outward sign or material after-effect of work competently performed or accomplished. Both relate to mechanisation, the first relates to the body and mind literally as a mechanical device which may malfunction, the second to the ability of a mind and body to accomplish tasks through the mastery of some type of machine.
At the moment I'm reading David Hume's 'An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals' which he wrote during the 1740s. So far his argument seems to be that morality derives from considering what behaviours are generally useful for society and what behaviours aren't. In a footnote he explains that although much human behaviour is valued because of it's usefulness we should never consider inanimate objects that are useful in the same way as human beings. He doesn't say, I think, that we should never, only that we can't, which is consistent with his generally belief that there just are some feelings we have about our fellows humans, that are naturally given, that we can rely on to be always part of our make-up.