Imagination has no boundary.
Imagination separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Imagination can create anything.
Imagination is a window into other places and lives.
Imagination gives us the ability to arrange our own inner life.
Imagination contains multiple Universes and their contents.
Imagination has no limits.
Imagination gives us the ability to arrange our own inner landscape without external forces acting to steer us in any direction, provoke a mental and physical reaction or influence us. We’re in control, if we excercise it. Trouble is, since people began to understand this process, they have monetised it by manipulating populations towards profitable destinations. Edward Bernays, father of public relations and subtle propaganda, began this process in the 1920’s, by manipulating public opinion. The majority of modern mental illnesses can be traced to disatisfactions caused by unfullfilled expectations created by advertising.
Active imagination can create anything and can, therefore, create whatever future we desire. But when our imagination is entrained by an education system to serve the people operating the system, for their benefit, it no longer serves the person to whom it belongs. If we use logic to determine every outcome and decision, logic becomes a hammer, beating out analysis without the benefit of imagination, the only possible outcome being a logical construct.
Logic is a maintenance device, system or safety mechanism, enabling us to continue doing what has always been done. The mechanism will only allow a new assemblage, using parts already in existence, in use, same parts in a different order. Creating the illusion of change, but delivering outcomes and decisions unchanged from the original structure. Using global warming as an example, the population of planet Earth is causing climate change. In order for the population to reverse climate change, they must alter their behaviours; use less energy, create less pollution, adopt ‘green’ solutions, do as they are told by the experts. But the businesses supplying the populations can continue to do what they do and increase production for the sake of profit. Because of the legal status businesses have sought and attained, businesses will destroy this planet long before humans do. Can Artificial Intelligence Imagine?
To control any imaginative species, it is imperative that species are trained to use their imaginations in a limited way, part of a destructive cycle to prevent growth and awakening. Achieved by showing your population dystopian futures in their entertainment media; films/movies, books, magazines and regular television. Gorging or binge consuming processed foods until all are uncomfortably ill; the discomfort of low frequency emotions. To this end, show the population of Earth negative imagery to make them see that the other future presented to them, by the media you own via your corporations, is better than the one you’re convincing them is inevitable if they don’t act to change it. Lead, nudge and drive populations slowly, incrementally and inexorably, not always gently. They cannot be trusted with their own undirected, untrained imaginations. Those who resist, lead into a passive, non-conflict cul-de-sac, isolated and quarantined. Resistance is a threat, label such people as weak-minded, wishy-washy, limp-wristed tree-huggers and make sure everyone else, all humanity, has this template to overlay on anyone with the same propensity to resist. Call them conspiracy theorists – it’s a good term, it trips off the tongue, is memorable, it demolishes personal credibility, reinforces any official story and ensures there can be no credible alternative – no matter how well the imagination can reassemble known facts into a different shape.
When we say that the behaviour of a person has sunk below a certain level of morality, or social acceptability, we say he or she is an animal. But what we can’t accept, can’t come to terms with, is that our fellow man, another human being, has directed his or her imagination to the continued suffering of fellow man. This is something few animals are capable of. They lack the imagination.
Imagination is key.
How we deal with life and death, how we deal with depravity and happiness, is part of our imaginative process. How we deal with challenges and morality is part of the same process. Decency, fairness in our dealings with each other, and ritual social practices are still part of the same imaginative process.
Terry Pratchett (before he was made a Sir) said, “There is no justice. There is just us.” He knew that human imagination created the cultures of humanity just as surely as any cataclysm or life changing event.
How many of us can imagine living a life shackled to the concept of making as much money as possible, at any cost, to live the life of our expectation? Is this the definition of happiness? Take a holiday, have a day off. Break away from the normal and boring. A life spent at home, doing nothing out of the ordinary. Being safe. Predictable, controllable, away from risk and adventure, doing what we’ve always done, day after day. Watching weeks and months go by, believing the unremarkable to be spectacular just because it doesn’t happen every day. Growing old and set in our ways, waiting for death – is no life at all and an affront to our original Creator. Look into the future and wonder if what you see is more of the same for as far as the controlled imagination can see. All the way to the Metaverse we are being led to believe is inevitable?
We created this paradigm. Maybe it’s time for a few boundaries to come down.
How do we resist the downhill drive into atrophy, stasis and entropy? It is so easy to follow the path of least resistance. Onwards and upwards could be the manta of humanity, away from the current spiral down into entropic death.
If there’s something not right in your world, there’s something not right in your head. A conflict in your mind, cognitive dissonance to be reconciled. Only you can alter this state. Those worlds where peace and empathy prevail are the ones you see in your imagination and fervently wish you could be there. But if you were there, you’d still have the same mind. The same conflicts, and you’d create them in that world.
You have the power to make your life what it could be, if you don’t give that power away.
When we allow others to create our world, through us, we are creating that world and it will never be ours. All it will ever be is a world in which we embrace compromise. It will always be someone else’s world and we will always be dissatisfied with it in some way, unhappy with elements of it because it is not the world we see in our imagination. We need to take control of our lives and the future we dream about. This means making decisions and taking responsibility for them. Being responsible for changing to suit our growing, developing self. When we achieve this in groups of friends, family, colleagues, then together we grow, incrementally creating the world we only see in our collective imagination until we get there. The panacea we seek, is us.
There are a lot of intelligent, quite vocal people who lack any imaginative capacity. They produce eloquent arguments ridiculing the notion of imagination and its visions. They don’t experience imagination in the same way as other people, so why should they believe anything about the product of what they see as a derided, childish illusion? They would have us ‘Grow Up!’
Imagination is a function of Universal Consciousness, and some people are disconnected from it.
Gifts we come into this life with, innate when we arrive, are not really ours. We are simply a conduit. We develop and use the ability to create; paint, draw, write, sculpt, perform skilfully, adeptly and focussed in our endeavours for other people to enjoy. To enrich their lives. For mutual benefit.
I am reminded of the old proverb of a man being shown heaven and hell. He is led to an infinity room where a long table is laid with a sumptious feast. Foods of all kinds are heaped in the middle of the table. Along each edge people are seated, but they are famished, gaunt and starving. Deep, dark eyes set in sallow faces stare hungrily at the person seated opposite. In front of each person is a spoon and fork, each with a handle six feet long. The man asks his guide, ‘Why do they not eat? Why the silly cutlery they cannot reach their mouths with?’ The man smiles, ‘It’s what you might call hell.’ He beckons the man to follow. Leaving the room through a high, wide door, they enter another infinity room where exactly the same groaning table is heaped with the same foods, similar people and their six feet cutlery. Yet people around the table are happy, well fed and comfortable. The man is puzzled, telling his guide, ‘This must be heaven. But why are these people happy and well fed? They have the same in the last room.’ His guide tells him, ‘We all make choices. These people have learnt to feed each other.’
Food for thought.
We have a tendency to think we’re at the top of the food chain. But what if… we are inadvertantly providing sustenance for another form of life? We might have to define what life actually is and how many forms we decide to recognise, by adopting a simple formula. Nothing is ever wasted in the world of nature. To sustain life, energy is transmuted from one form to another. Life is the transfer of one energy from one state to another.
Emotions are frequencies of released energy.
