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Harnessing The Imagination
by Paul Balles
One of the most dismal futuristic images I’ve seen was recently painted by Chris Hedges in the opening of an article he entitled A Time for “Sublime Madness”. Here it is:
“The planet we have assaulted will convulse with fury. The senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion will implode the global economy. The decimation of civil liberties, carried out in the name of fighting terror, will shackle us to an interconnected security and surveillance state that stretches from Moscow to Istanbul to New York.”
Echoing a theme portrayed by William Faulkner in “The Sound and the Fury”, Hedges posits that the only solution to allow us to endure these futuristic images will be “to harness the human imagination.”
Glenn Greenwald, in an article on “Martin Luther King’s vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever” also painted a bleak image of America’s militarism in these powerful words:
“But a citizenry whose “soul becomes totally poisoned” by endless war is incapable of considering nonviolence as an alternative. It loses its capacity for empathy (to understand what motivates others’ actions), for self-assessment (to acknowledge the role one’s own actions play in perpetuating this violence), for rationality (to consider whether those being killed are actually implacable foes), and for communion (to see “the enemy” as anything more than dehumanized Others who must be extinguished).”
I like to think of Greenwald’s implicit solutions to its problems as positive ways to utilize the imagination.
In these words one might find solutions akin to Hedges’ imagination for Greenwald in empathy, self-assessment, rationality and communion.
In a previous column, I wrote: “From early childhood until our teeth, sight and strength disappear; we are the products and the sources of our imaginations.”
William Shakespeare wrote, in The Tempest, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”. Carl Sagan, astronomy professor and populariser of space sciences, said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
The “worlds that never were” often cause parents to discourage children from giving full vent to their imaginations. Just as elders have been known to stifle children’s curiosity, grown-ups have also been known to inhibit youthful imagination.
“Imagination is the beginning of creation,” wrote Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. “You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”
Philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character.”
Every problem that a human has successfully solved has at some point required the use of imagination; and yet, this tool–constantly available to us–is often neglected. The creative mental faculty (which we all have) generates endless ideas and stimulates the potential for a successful conclusion to any situation.
The imagination is the source of creativity, problem-solving, planning, and of setting our course in this world if we use it correctly.
Let’s use our imaginations to address the problems identified by Hedges and Greenwald.
1. End assaults on the planet’s resources.
2. Regulate limits to capitalist expansion.
3. Restore civil liberties lost in “fights against terror”.
4. Teach empathy with others who differ from you.
5. Understand your role in perpetuating others’ violence.
6. See your enemies as humans.
7. Concentrate on these visionary images in William Blake’s words:
To see the world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=238573
Posted by Paul J. Balles on Feb 5 2013, With 0 Reads, Filed under Book Reviews, Causes, Editor, Education, Environment, Living, Peace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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All good ideas. The problem will be the upcoming Hagelian dialect to be presented after the killers have run up the debt to claim US citizens are slaves, then propose communism to ‘stop the evil of capitalism’. This will be convenient since the corporatists that corrupted what was supposed to be a capitalist system will be holding all the goods, then claiming the middle class should become penniless while selling it as ‘equality’.
Imaginative ideas must include that corporations such as war contractors, bankers and global profiteers be stripped of their holdings and the weapons put back into the right hands. Furthermore deadbeats must pay back their mortgages, welfare checks, no more welfare for immigrants, no more ‘free’ healthcare scams that kill real health so pharma can profit and deadbeats get a ride. Putting an end to the scum at top and bottom, the entitlement mentality, the idea you can reproduce and steal other’s wages to pay for it, these aren’t really imaginative so much as obvious justice, BEFORE the corruption that has polluted our existence and now threatens our lives. Demanding cease of corruption and collusion, demanding personal responsibility and respect for the planet, these are what we need.
“They always gravitate to positions of power and influence”, by
Harnessing The Imagination
of those fully capable of destroying their illusion of control.
Great observation. It’s all ‘Magick’.
“Resist the devil and he will flee from thee” (James 4:7)
“Free your mind…and your ass will follow” (Funkadelic 1970)
Insightful article: ) Thanks!
“And this world is held together by mental abilities or processes associated with what I will call the imagination – the divine imagination and … the human imagination – especially the poetic and contemplative imagination… and whether divine or human, it is precisely the imagination that fashions and recognizes the universe as meaningful, abiding and valuable, that is to say real.”
Meditations through the Rg Véda, by Anthonio T. de Nicholas, 1999.
Because humans have free will, some choose to imagine and create domination systems attempting to entrap others. Each person still has agency over their own response to that construct.
There is a positive side and a negative side – at each moment you decide.