The Great and Terrible Imagination
There are several suggestions about what separates man from animal: opposable thumbs, written history, the ability to reason… However, what truly separates man from animal is the ability to imagine something different than what exists. It is man’s imagination that is truly great and terrible. It is responsible for every advancement in war, science, art and every other subject that makes the world better or worse.
Imagination allows people to tell stories about how the world was created. It allows people to ask “what if?” It allowed the Wright Brothers to invent the airplane, even though they were not the first to imagine man flying – Icarus and his father had a set of wings that allowed them to fly. Leonardo DaVinci imagined a flying machine.
When correctly harnessed, imagination can lift a society out of its problems, or it can make a country forget that it has problems if only for 7.5 minutes as Walt Disney’s “The Three Little Pigs” did during the depression. Imagination can lift spirits and is responsible for feats that would otherwise be unattainable. “If you can dream it, you can do it,” said Disney.
The dark side of imagination is that it can be harnessed by fear and anger to create a world where people are out to get each other, where freeloaders take advantage of the system, and where that person that just cutoff another driver did so as a personal affront. People can imagine the motivations of others, and when tainted with fear, hate and anger, those motivations become the results of demonic intent. Those demons, however, lie solely in the mind of the one that is perceiving the intent.
Mankind has been very good at imagining new ways to kill one another. The development of the death machine known as the military industrial complex has come as a result of hate and fear. Yet, as FDR said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Like so many things in life, imagination is neither wholly good nor wholly evil. It takes on the characteristics that individuals allow it to have. What a person puts into his or her brain comes out in the imagination. It makes his or her world more beautiful or scarier, happier or sadder, angrier or more forgiving. Imagination is responsible for the monsters under a child’s bed and his or her imaginary friends at the Teddy Bear picnic.
The simple act of changing, in the imagination, the perceived motivations of others can make this world a better place. That change will only be in the mind at first, but because people live up or down to expectations, the more good that is expected from individuals, the more good there will be in the world.
What will you use your imagination for?
Imagination allows people to tell stories about how the world was created. It allows people to ask “what if?” It allowed the Wright Brothers to invent the airplane, even though they were not the first to imagine man flying – Icarus and his father had a set of wings that allowed them to fly. Leonardo DaVinci imagined a flying machine.
When correctly harnessed, imagination can lift a society out of its problems, or it can make a country forget that it has problems if only for 7.5 minutes as Walt Disney’s “The Three Little Pigs” did during the depression. Imagination can lift spirits and is responsible for feats that would otherwise be unattainable. “If you can dream it, you can do it,” said Disney.
The dark side of imagination is that it can be harnessed by fear and anger to create a world where people are out to get each other, where freeloaders take advantage of the system, and where that person that just cutoff another driver did so as a personal affront. People can imagine the motivations of others, and when tainted with fear, hate and anger, those motivations become the results of demonic intent. Those demons, however, lie solely in the mind of the one that is perceiving the intent.
Mankind has been very good at imagining new ways to kill one another. The development of the death machine known as the military industrial complex has come as a result of hate and fear. Yet, as FDR said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Like so many things in life, imagination is neither wholly good nor wholly evil. It takes on the characteristics that individuals allow it to have. What a person puts into his or her brain comes out in the imagination. It makes his or her world more beautiful or scarier, happier or sadder, angrier or more forgiving. Imagination is responsible for the monsters under a child’s bed and his or her imaginary friends at the Teddy Bear picnic.
The simple act of changing, in the imagination, the perceived motivations of others can make this world a better place. That change will only be in the mind at first, but because people live up or down to expectations, the more good that is expected from individuals, the more good there will be in the world.
What will you use your imagination for?