Today I offer you selected passages from Walt
Whitman’s Song of Myself. I am
intrigued by his worldview and how similar it is to my own. Whitman’s words have prompted me to reflect
on my own “song” and I posit that his words
contain universal truths for all of us.
I
celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what
I assume you shall assume,
For every
atom belonging to me as good belongs to
you.
Consider this statement from American physicist
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) "If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific
knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next
generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in
the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or
whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little articles
that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a
little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that
sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the
world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied."
Feynman
went on to offer a powerful series of illustrations concerning the size of
atoms relative to more familiar objects: if an apple were magnified to the size
of Earth, for instance, the atoms in it would each be about the size of a
regular apple. Clearly atoms and other atomic particles are far too small to be glimpsed by even the most highly
powered optical microscope. Yet, it is the behavior of particles at the atomic
level that defines the shape of the entire physical world.
Stop this
day and night with me and you shall possess
the origin of all poems,
You shall
possess the good of the earth and sun, (there
are millions of suns left,)
You shall
no longer take things at second or third hand,
nor look through the eyes of the
dead, nor feed on
the specters in books,
You shall
not look through my eyes either, nor take
things from me,
You shall
listen to all sides and filter them from your
self.
Perspective-taking is the
process by which an individual views a situation from another's point-of-view. Within the scientific
literature, perspective-taking has been defined along two dimensions:
perceptual and conceptual. Perceptual perspective-taking is
defined as the ability to understand how another person experiences things
through their senses (i.e. visually or auditorily). Most of this literature has
focused on visual perspective-taking: the ability to understand the way another
person sees things in physical space. Conceptual perspective-taking is
defined as the ability to comprehend and take on the viewpoint of another
person's psychological experience (i.e. thoughts, feelings and attitudes). For instance, one can visualize
the viewpoint of a taller individual (perceptual/visual) or reflect upon
another's point of view on a particular concept (conceptual).
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective-taking#Brain_regions
Give me
the splendid silent sun with all his beams
full-dazzling,
Give me
juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the
orchard,
Give me a
field where unmow’d grass grows
Give me
odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful
flowers
Where I
can walk undisturb’d[.]
Give me for
marriage a sweet-breath’d woman of whom I should never tire[.]
I tramp a
perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
Not words
of routine this song of mine,
But
abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer
bring[.]
During my “mature” years, I have been called a
skeptic, a label of which I am proud. In
this age of “fake news”, I believe that one should first listen, then stop to
ponder what one has just heard. The resulting
song may then be one tuned closer to truth.
I,
chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking
all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond
them,
A
reminiscence sing.
Singing has been an essential part of my life
for sixty plus years. I ask us, “Why do we sing?” The answer: “To be expressive
and thus to share the inner feelings of our souls.”
In conclusion, Whitman has much more to offer
us, but for now, we can perhaps step forward singing
of ourselves universal truths.
CPW
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