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Failure of Imagination

The Failure of Imagination

Everything you can imagine is real.

- Pablo Picasso

Nothing imagined is real.

- John C. Hatt

The least palatable components of the Human condition have changed little over the recorded centuries. Members of societies still fight wars, oppress minorities, lie, cheat, steal, and rabidly pursue short-term governmental policies that have disastrous long-term consequences. The fact that Humans have yet to create equitable and peaceful collectives is often framed in a philosophical context in which the nature of Humanity is deduced to be inherently evil or inherently good and sometimes corrupted. The paradox is that while we are able to discern our faults, we are seemingly powerless to correct them. In stark contrast to our technical prowess, our social advances have been minimal during recorded history. It is the power of imagination that has created this dichotomy. Humans are able to discern, process, create and act on our perception of the environment within the context of imagination. This internal world view is dependent on both our senses and our imagination. Our senses are limited and our imagination is plastic. While we daily realize the inventions and benefits of imagination; Humanity is also saddled with the failure of imagination.

 

All of the promotion, politics and pervasive persuasion that permeate American society exploit the most important distinction of the Human species: Imagination. Our ability to think of things that are not has been the driving force behind our ability to alter the material world to meet our needs. Our inclination to confuse imagination with reality is at the heart of our ability to be persuaded by pleasant internal images, pontificated or viewed. It does not matter if a message is true or not, if we can imagine that it is, it becomes our reality. A false reality, fervently believed, becomes a collective or internal reality as real as the physical one. Contradictions between the internal world view and the physical world are easily dismissed by most people. Our internal construct of reality can vary widely from being in concert with physical reality to the delusions of schizophrenia. The physical reality is indifferent to our imagination. With so many false interpretations of reality guiding our actions, one can hardly be surprised at the ludicrous machinations of individuals and collectives. The failure of Human imagination is our failure to distinguish imagination from reality.

 

The failure of imagination is that Human beings are able to construct a world view, however erroneous, and act upon that construct as though it were a physical reality. The success of imagination is our ability to construct a world view not yet in existence and use that construct to create a commensurate physical reality. The successful use of imagination is to imagine what the physical world would look like from the point of view of a photon of light. The failure of imagination is to believe that Jewish people are responsible economic and social degradation. Both scenarios can provide powerful constructs in the mind which are interpreted and acted on as reality. The physical universe is the ultimate arbiter in matters of technology. We can imagine flying cars, but the technological obstacles put them beyond our means. The construct is relegated to the mental scrapheap.

 

This is not the case with sociological constructs. Our social conventions, politics, and laws have no physical tests in reality. There is no way to quantify whether Republican or Democratic control of government is better. There is no way to quantify a Republican or Democrat. There is no agreement on what is best for society. The rhetoric on both sides is so ethereal and obtuse as to defy definition. This is not to say that our future prosperity is dependent on quantifying social parameters.

 

Why is it that the world exists as it does today when it is possible to discern a different world view?