How We Make Use Of Our Imagination, And How Our Imagination Can Be Made Use Of To Get To Us

Even without considering the great men, even we normal people would have been using our imagination from even before we learned to speak all the way to the end of our life, and will live with it through the god-know-how-long between those 2 points of time. So, this so-called greatest gift granted to mankind ever since the Awareness Revolution, what exactly has it been giving us?

“You can say that I’m an artist, in the sense that I can freely dish out anything that’s there in my imagination. Imagination is even more important than knowledge. Knowledge has its limits. Imagination, on the other hand, goes beyond the world”

Einstein said in an interview in 1929 [1] .

Contrary to the idea of the father of the Theory of Relativity, the philosopher Descartes instead ridiculed imagination as “hinder more than help”. In this book “Meditations on First Philosophy”, he wrote that relying on imagination as a pathway toward metaphysical truth is something about as dumb as taking a longer nap hoping that the dreams would bring you an enlightenment on the ultimate truth of the world.

But while having sharp contradiction toward each other, both of these great minds seemed to agree on this one certain thing — Imagination could be useful. Einstein made use of it to discover one of the most revolutionizing physics formulae in the history of mankind, while Descartes also said to have employed it for some of his essays on mathematics.

Even without considering the great men, even we normal people would have been using our imagination from even before we learned to speak all the way to the end of our life, and will live with it through the god-know-how-long between those 2 points of time. So, this so-called greatest gift granted to mankind ever since the Awareness Revolution, what exactly has it been giving us?

And, just as importantly, what has it been taking from us?

1. What have we been building using our imagination?

Throughout the history, it seems that the philosophers were never too interested in duking it out over imagination, while scientists, on the other hand, had never really been able to gain a firm grasp of it. Most of the realm of imagination is still shrouded in mystery. Sometimes the cold shoulder of the intellectual world toward imagination almost seems visible, especially from the scientific community, most likely because they afraid if they venture too far exploring this undiscovered realm of the mind, they would slide straight into the old path of the metaphysical schools of thought; or get themselves completely obsessed with the mystery and ambiguity.

So instead the praises on the wonder of imagination, or a lesson on how to efficiently utilize it, this is what we will repeatedly hear from the scientists: “Imagination has no place in science”; and this is even more true in this age where experimentalism and logics rule; along with the countless complaints on how the education system is murdering imagination.

Imagination and creativity seems to be better regarded in the fields of artistry than those of science. The artists sometimes even give most credits on their masterpieces to their imagination (instead of skills or things like that).

But even when almost never explicitly giving any credits to imagination, most scientists do agree with Einstein at least to some extent, because taking on the leftover of “the greats” can only get you so far, and sometimes may even box you in. Development sometimes require more ideas out-of-the-box but, of course, still with their roots grounded on the basis laid by the existing frameworks (meaning that experiment and the basis laid by existing knowledge is always needed, but in the lifetime that one dedicates in scientific work, sparks of imagination are still needed as an irreplaceable fuel, and sometimes could by themselves become the fruit of those years of work).

Let’s take this article for example, it would be so tasteless if we just came out and stated the fact that “science never really understood imagination”, and then close it out by saying “Thank you for wasting your time reading this meaningless fact”. And so I thought that imagination is obviously needed in this article on imagination, as we use it to ascend a little from the ground founded by existing knowledge, just like how scientists and artists do.

Imagination, as it has never so discovered that there’s nothing left to be surprised at, is getting utilized for the introduction of some rather intriguing ideas. A good example is Yuval Noah Harari’s giving birth to the idea of “imagined realities” — the backbone idea in his hit science book Homo Sapiens. He believes that it is imagination that helps humans to create the world as we know today. From existence human’s cooperation, companies, nations to the way society operates, all depends a lot on imagination. The idea that imagination plays an important role in the formation of certain social phenomena has also reportedly been used by many other scholars. You can read our initial articles on this matter in the reference link [2] provided in the comment section.

But apart from those overly theoretical and complicated matters, imagination can also be used in ways that are a lot more practical and familiar to our daily life.

For example, it can serve as a means for us modern humans to connect with our ancestors, not only by imagining them based on the story we’re told, but also by experiencing the sophisticated emotions that have been embedded in our gene. The melancholy commonly felt by people feel when viewing landscape pictures, according to hypotheses, were thought to be our brain’s successfully creating the feeling that our ancestors used to feel when they make their way through vast, empty savannahs [3] .

Another example is our learning, which would be incredibly difficult or even impossible without our imagination. The inability to picture a scenario where a piece of knowledge could be useful would cause the brain to have a much harder time to take in that knowledge, and this is precisely the issue with the alien knowledge (the knowledge in fields like quantum physics, philosophy, etc.) [4] . In addition, even the process of learning by itself depends heavily on the ability to visualize, like how to imagine a scenario, a world of physics built from assumptions so that everything can make sense.

Imagination also serves as a sandbox for us to integrate different types of knowledge together in order to build up experience and to better apply the knowledge in future problem solving. For example, imagining a scenario where you may find the knowledge in this article useful can, by itself, be a preparation of experience for the future [5] .

Each one of us is born with imagination, and thus, we will certainly have a hard time to live as a social human without it. The people with the Aphantasia disorder (the inability to visualize mental image) are reportedly incapable of major social behaviors as well [6] .

Basically, this is due to the fact that human society has become very complex, with a large chunk of it being built on imagination. And as a result, a person with limited or no imagination whatsoever definitely will have a very hard time cohabiting with others, or even just surviving there. For example, even just within the legal system alone, everything is already heavily reliant on imagination.

Maksymilian Del Mar, a Professor of Legal Theory at the School of Law of Queen Mary University of London, once wrote an essay on Aeon titled “The legal imagination” in order to explain the importance of imagination within the legal world [7] . The title overlapped that of a book by James Boyd White, which discussed pretty much the same thing, and was largely popular among legal academics all over the world.

In his essay, Maksymilian patiently broke down for his readers the uses of imagination in a profession where almost literally every smallest step requires a great deal of caution. Sound counterintuitive as it might be, but even in midst of a system like the legal system bases every of its aspects on evidence and things like that, imagination still keep some absolutely crucial roles.

If we take a look through all legal libraries around the world, we will get completely flabbergasted and completely overwhelmed by the plethora of cases being extremely tricky and full of twists and entanglement, and by the fact that there always seemed to be vast grey zones in between the iron bars that were the clearly defined provisions of the law. The good question would be how could we even begin to believe that all of these did happen, but wait, no… How could anyone even imagine that they would happen?

So, anyway, the process started with the lawmakers, who are responsible to create a Constitution that is universal enough to cover the most basic and necessary provision, and also is armed with the precautionary measures to ensure that it won’t be blindsided in any cases that may actually happen in reality (except in cases of revolutions or other changes of similar magnitude that may influence the Constitution).

Next, these people will also take charge to create the more specific codes of law which are made sufficient to cover all the complicated cases that could practically happen in reality. But of course, these codes of law must stay within the universal spectrum preexisting Constitution.

In order to do so, in addition to relying on some basic and specialized principles of the law studies, the lawmakers would also have to constantly employ their imagination to think up different scenarios that could happen to ensure that none of them would be odd enough to slip through the cover of the Constitution and the codes of law.

After that, imagination would then again constantly be required from the judicial professionals (judges, lawyers, etc.), as it helps them to recreate a complete story from the evidence and testimonies collected. But even when these processes are “legal” and “reliable” in theory, an undeniable fact is that whatever happened in the past could only be recreated by imagination, and could never actually be witnessed again.

The framework provided by the law to ensure the universal coverage also has to be not so overly specific that it would be only be usable for a handful of extreme cases; and thus, the judicial professionals, once having recreated the story, would have to debate with each other on where should we put that story within the framework of the existing codes of law. Imagination acts as a means for the lawyers and the judges to create multiple similar fiction scenarios to challenge their opponents as well as themselves, , to ensure that the everything still clicks together and functions smoothly logically without any self-contradiction.

2. What exactly did imagination create within us?

So, generally speaking, without imagination, it is simply impossible for us to be. People of artistic trades such as painters, performers, … also rely on imagination so that after a long period of adhering to principles, “that something” would finally come into shape, a spark of light that is quirky, or even revolutionizing. The same is true for scientists, as no one would award a PhD degree to someone whose thesis brings nothing but previously discovered knowledge. Even in their desperate pursuit for systematic principles, the scientists need imagination in order to create something novel and ground-breaking [8] .

And it’s also true for you, imagination is exactly the thing that would plug you out from your existing circumstance to then toss you in another more unfamiliar and unpredictable. Like how a poor student from the countryside believed in a life-changing opportunity behind the university’s gate, a young couple of husband and wives believe in a wholesome family life in the future, or how the young children yearn to become independent in the future … These imaginary scenarios help people to accept living their days in a run-down dorm without really getting roped into that reality, to ensure that an individual can strive for a lot more than their current condition.

But then, everything in this world must unavoidably have its downside. So the question is, what is that of imagination?

Truth to be told, 10/10 judicial professionals when asked would agree that each of them should be very careful not to run away with his own imagination. Us humans do seem overly zealous and proficient at pairing up two events that logically should not have any connection with others just to then believe that there is in fact a connection between them. And what’s more, we are also extremely good at persuading the people around us to believe so.

Imagination sometimes can be so powerful that it turns groundless ideas into beliefs, creates unreasonable desires or even seeds in people the delusion over things that are so utterly unreal [9] . You may think of yourself as an exception, but the truth is, it is very likely that all of us are being led by the nose by our own imagination, one way or another.

The danger of having unreal things in mind stem from the 2 main factors: (1) these things initially do not exist in reality, and (2) we often get misled that they were born from our own rationalization.

In another essay on Aoen by Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience Felipe De Brigard, he revealed that neuroscience had managed to discover something that propagators had probably known since forever: humans don’t need actual memory to experience nostalgia [10] .

For example, even a person who loathed the guts out of his school life, would sometimes find himself nostalging for the high school days with the images of hallways, classrooms, peers and some other common patterns.

Nostalgia, defined as a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition (most commonly the days in home town), can characteristically be found in soldiers and sailors. It sometimes could be considered a psychological/mental condition. As ever so commonly believed, nostalgia is a natural and common feeling of longing for the family, hometown, old friends, memories … things that we actually had in the past and thus preserved in our mind. But as it turns out, the objects for our nostalgia often go much further beyond what we really did experience.

For example, there is actually a feeling called “the nostalgia toward a period of time we had never experience”, like how the dude Gil from the movie Midnight in Paris nostaged for the 1920s’ Paris even though he never actually lived it. This feeling in fact can be found very commonly in lots of us, as a desire to live an age that’s even ours.

Some people also tend to long for scenarios that they are actually hardly connected to at all, like a sundown on the beach, sundown on a horizonless meadow with the smell of freshly mowed grass and gentle breezes, or the feeling of standing on one of the mighty peaks of Midwestern United States to watch the sunset … these scenarios sometimes appear in their mind so vividly it simply takes their breath away imagining.

These desired images sometimes can appear so real they override even reality. Because these experiences of waiting for sunset on the beach, the meadow, the mountain or whatever else could very likely be much less fascinating in reality than in our imagination. Some people developed for themselves such powerful longing for their hometown with some very specific drives, such as the scenery, their parents, the peacefulness and the way of life in the countryside, just to then found their trip to their hometown an utterly disappointing experience or at least not nearly as novel as they have always imagined. This feeling was noted down by Plato in his book Gorgias in 380 B.C., as he discussed the paradox that a person could develop a powerful desire for something just to then find himself unsatisfied when he had that something in his hands.

Sometimes we desire for something just for the sake of desiring, not for the object itself.

But then why are a few certain things that are so popularly desired for? Such as the hometown, the glorious past or the days back in school?

They were the handiwork of the media, answered Felipe De Brigard.

He proposed in the essay a slightly psychoanalytic hypothesis, namely: The desire for some unreal place and a period of time was not exactly because we wanted to be there, but mostly because we wanted to escape our own reality.

For example, a person who felt nostalgic for his hometown might probably be longing for an escape from the life of the city, or felt nostalgic for the past simply because they were so largely disappointed at their current situation. Or, for a person who desired to see his old friends from its past, that probably a sign of him wishing for a better relationship with the people he currently had. In that way, these people’s true desires was hidden away by more surficial desires, and as a result they still feel unsatisfied even when they already obtained the scene of hometown, the old friends or whatever else they thought they were desiring for.

As a result, the cited survey had shown that the Polish’s opinion about the Soviet period would be more positive among those who had good experience of that time period, while being negative for those who had bad experience. The same might be true for the remnants of the Republic of Vietnam who are still looking to restore their past glory.

With the same logic applies, Felipe De Brigard was convinced to believe that the slogans “Make American Great Again” would be greatly appealing to the conservative people of America, who had a much easier life in the past, and thus a heated desire to store things back to those time.

But the power of the propagandistic system does not stop driving senior citizens’ desires toward things the good time they had in the past, it was also capable of generating nostalgia toward the past among even the younger generations — the people who had never lived those age at all, but was convinced that they wanted to return there anyway. The general strategy, as suggested by Felipe, was that the propagandistic system would use any means in their disposal to make the youths see their current time worse than it really was, to sell the idea that “they could have had a better reality to live in”.

The successful implantation of this idea would thus divide the society into two groups: (1) Those who tried their best to convince the youths that they should fight to brought the country back to how it used to be, and (2) those who tried their best to convince the youths that they should fight to reform the country into a never-before-seen utopia. Both of these scenarios were, of course, purely imaginary, and thus there was absolutely nothing there to ensure that they were any better than the current situation. But the dissatisfaction toward reality, even when irrational, could still act as the key persuader to convince people that they had to pick a side.

This was the true great battle between the Left and the Right.

The interesting thing here is, people often think that what the Left and the Right are trying to do is to convince that what they are doing is right. But in reality, the goal of both sides lies beyond even that: What they actually want to do is reshape the sense of rightness and wrongness in the minds of the public.

For example, if you are a proponent of globalization, racial diversity or gender equality because you think those things are the right things, it is more likely because those things are good according to your emotions and way of thinking that it actually is in reality. And the goal of the Left is actually to actually influence the way how people’s emotions and thinking react to the activity, and not the short-term, single goals such as attracting support for racial diversity or gender equality. The opposite is true for the Right, as they look to make people feel bad about the said developments.

It would be so difficult to thoroughly distinguish and assess either of these sides. As no one can know for sure whether the world would in reality work better by the old way or the new, the moral is that the winner is the one to win the majority over to their side. If there were more people believing that a society with equality would be a better place, the society would lean toward an equal society, and vice versa.

Back to our discussion on the legal system, the judicial professionals would also try their best to avoid the inconsistencies of opinion, and thus always had to keep in mind a similar scenario to ensure that all of their judgments are consistent and correct for virtually all cases. But of course, the judgment in any of such cases must not contradict the existing legal system.

So, the same is true for any political sides, as they ideally want their members to have a certain level of consistency in their feeling and emotion so that a large united front can be generated to compete for greater wins, instead of just a few specific movements.

In order to do that, the imagination of a promised land is absolutely crucial. They need to create unreal feelings, to create a predetermined, reasonable flow of development for their own people. For example, a person who advocates gender equality is expected to do so due to hatred toward injustice, and would support other ethnicities also to combat injustice. The people on the other side, on the other hand, believe a the hierarchical structure is important, and thus is expected to advocate favorable treatment for those with higher status in all cases.

So, in truth, it is really difficult to know for sure whether the desires we have are truly ours, and even more so difficult to know if those desires could lead us to a better reality.

The world, whether in the past or in the future, is always never anything more than an illusion of imagination. But even then, we seem always more willing to live them than to live the present.

And this would still might be the case for our descendants of 500 years in the future, as their governments would again convince them to feel dissatisfied with their present, and feed them with all types of way of thought and living that is shaped all according to their plan

But hey, even our said prediction could also be just another handiwork of imagination.

— — — — — — —

References:

[1] “A quote by Albert Einstein,” Goodreads.com, 2021. https://www.goodreads.com/.../2177-i-am-enough-of-an... (accessed Jan. 30, 2021).‌

[2] https://www.facebook.com/teammonsterbox/photos/2845630375717710

[3] S. T. Asma, “Imagination is ancient,” Aeon, Sep. 11, 2017. https://aeon.co/.../imagination-is-such-an-ancient... (accessed Jan. 30, 2021).‌

[4] https://www.facebook.com/teammonsterbox/photos/2692036571077092

[5] Archibald MacLeish 1970, p. 887 / Brian Sutton-Smith 1988, p. 22

[6] A. Clemens, “When the Mind’s Eye Is Blind,” Scientific American, Aug. 2018. https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../when-the-minds.../ (accessed Jan. 30, 2021).‌

[7] Maksymilian Del Mar, “The legal imagination,” Aeon, Mar. 28, 2017. https://aeon.co/.../why-judges-and-lawyers-need... (accessed Jan. 30, 2021).‌

[8] T. McLeish, “Science is deeply imaginative: why is this treated as a secret?,” Aeon, Sep. 13, 2019. https://aeon.co/.../science-is-deeply-imaginative-why-is... (accessed Jan. 30, 2021).‌

[9] https://www.facebook.com/teammonsterbox/photos/2818844605062954

[10] Felipe De Brigard, “Nostalgia reimagined,” Aeon, Jul. 20, 2020. https://aeon.co/.../nostalgia-doesnt-need-real-memories... (accessed Jan. 30, 2021).

‌Further Readings:

https://aeon.co/.../nostalgia-doesnt-need-real-memories...

https://aeon.co/.../science-is-deeply-imaginative-why-is...

https://aeon.co/.../imagination-is-a-powerful-tool-why-is...

https://aeon.co/.../imagination-is-such-an-ancient...

https://aeon.co/.../why-judges-and-lawyers-need...

https://aeon.co/.../technology-starts-with-imagination...

https://archive.org/.../rationalimaginat.../page/n3/mode/2up

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-016-9358-x

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/imagination/

https://www.theatlantic.com/.../why-did-we-evolve.../340279/