Reuben Chavira
The Paw Print
Throughout human history, societies have frequently undergone tumultuous transformations. From revolutions to conscious evolutions, people inherently yearn for greener pastures, even if they have to pave them themselves. This prosocial behavior that has pushed us onward toward social justice – toward more efficient and economic ways of interacting with each other – is a tribute to the human condition.
We are social beings, filled with social emotions that become the values and beliefs that are the frameworks to our social constructs. Human civilization, and humanity as a species, would not have reached its current day sentience had it not been for the empathy we feel for one another, evident in our behavioral tendencies to group together for strength and survival. We are born sharing knowledge and attaining knowledge, both a receiver and transmitter of energy and information, and are at once connected to the human network that our current society is composed of.
A recent article in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization described humanity’s ability to cooperate in large numbers of unrelated individuals as perhaps our most important survival strategy. As humans continued to survive and thrive in the world, becoming increasingly dependent upon the social connectivity of the culture of the human species, methods of communications also became increasingly complex and intricate. Once, primitive gestures and perhaps even grunts of expression could suffice in conveying understanding. However, today’s advanced state of human evolution demands equally advanced methods of ensuring that communications will lead to understandings.
As humanity evolved from isolated individuals toward the highly interconnected social groups of today, language too underwent a metamorphosis as a result of the need to understand. It is a very human thing to feel compelled to express oneself. This is the root of human behavior – behavior being physical expressions of thought. And as humanity evolved physically, our thoughts evolved as well, yielding new perspectives of the world and thus perceptions of our reality. We began to wield these tools of expressions in ways that established a level of species productivity never before seen.
In a similar way that Self-Regulation is a prosocial behavior, and Dance is a prosocial acitivity, so too is Poetry an expression of prosocial language. Poetry is the result of the evolution of language, which in turn is a result of the evolution of humanity. The human struggle toward more efficient and economic ways of interacting with each other yielded a form of communication that beautifies the way we perceive and filter the world around us. Poetic perspectives lead to visions of a brighter tomorrow, and have been a catalyst for many modern social movements that drove us closer toward reaching the ever elusive conditions of social justice.
Dr. King, though not known for his poetry, was passionate nonetheless about a world of equality regardless of color or creed. Dr. Seuss dreamed of a multitude of worlds in which children could explore and expand their minds. And Shakespeare, of course, taught us through his poems the beauty of tragedy.
Despite the form, style or content, Poetry documents the human experience. It is a narrative history of the human condition. Its use of metaphor and simile, imagery and hyperbole is a testament to our expressive compulsions to be understood. It is an echo of our past, where social groups were a necessity to survive, and empathy was essential to solidify social bonds. Let us embrace the cohesive qualities inherent in poetry, and live our lives in a way that inspires others. It speaks to the nobility of the human spirit, to be able to convey the human experience in a way that evokes emotion in another.
Be kind with your words and poetic with your actions. It’s the human thing to do.
What’s Been Said…