Sunday, August 30, 2009
Grey Matter
In one of Emily Dickinson's poems, #598 , she starts talking about the human brain. This poem is a bit different in some of the others I have read from her. I believe she is trying to point out to people that the power of the brain is much larger than people believe. Science tells us that we use only about ten percent of our brain potential. Maybe this is because most people don’t regularly exercise their brains enough on a daily basis. "The Brain - is wider than the sky...", she explains, and "The Brain is deeper than the sea...", she laments. ".Emily Dickinson was a very smart woman, as you can see in her writing. Perhaps Emily knew how to tap in to her full brain potential. She certainly seemed to be able to imagine how certain things played out around the world, without actually experiencing any of the situations. Maybe the fact that she wrote many poems, which definitely takes imagination and the ability to control those, helped her to use more of her brain potential.
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The 10% quote is not scientific fact; personally I think that it is a hint towards the fact that we do not understand the inner workings of the brain and its links to consciousness.
ReplyDeleteFor such a reclusive woman to describe what she has about the brain in her era is incredible, and I feel that her final words to do with the brain differing from God like Syllable from Sound is that a brain without consciousness is an organ without meaning. A syllable can mean such a lot of things, it can become a part of so many words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, books, volumes. Far removed from the three words Syllable from Sound is the idea that a brain, given function and purpose, is a most formidable tool.