December 29:
mxhuhklserPoemmfeii;
hlserfmmmofmmmoanocean breeze;
mmmmmPoemmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mmmmm
The above is not in code. I'm trying for something using asemic text. I think a poem with both asemic and text and words has lyrico-metaphorical possibilities but I haven't been able to realize any of them yet. I'll keep trying.
Now for the first piece of intelligent prose I've written during my holiday time-off, which started over a week ago:
The Biological Value of Poetry
The biological value (i.e., value for survival) of language as a form of enhanced
communication is too obvious to go into. Poetry is a form of language whose biological
value should also be obvious, yet to many people it is not. I have found several ways that it contributes to the survival, and world-dominance, of our species.
1. Nature has given an ability to make it to some of us, and an ability to appreciate it (as
poetry) to many of us, because of its unique ability to communicate the emotional affect of
existence. Consider, for example, what it can and does do for sexual reproduction. It
allows potential mates better to reveal themselves and how they feel about each other--and
the fitness to reproduce that their skill with and appreciation of words, and general
intelligence, their use of their own and/or others' poetry reveals. At the same time, it adds
value to courtship and the sex act through its lexical decoration of them. It has the same
value for friendship and like alliances. It even contributes toward effective international
relationships by revealing nations to each other as potential mates. I am much more likely,
for example, to help my nation productively trade with Japan than go to war with it
because of its poetry (however little I may understand it the way the Japanese do).
Finally, poetry can add to our knowledge of existence in a way not other form of
communiction can, thus helping us make maximally effective use of it. Science can better
tell us certain things about the value of swamps, say, than any other form of
communication, but we may not fully accept it because of what it can't tell us about that
value that poetry, and only poetry, can. Either science or poetry alone may not be
enough; both together can be (or will be once man has advanced a bit more
evolutionarily).
I have much more to say about the biological value of poetry. I hope I can say some of it in tomorrow's entry.
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