Semantics (Imagination, Part I)
A response to the intriguing thought process began by Mr. Azure over on dreamupagain.blogspot.com:
What is imagination? My friend puts it well when he says it's the force that brings two things together - molding, shaping, to create something new and better. But I'd like to dig a little deeper. It might only be semantics, but imagination can be applied in different modes.
The first, which I think is what most people think of when given the term 'imagine,' is imagining the future. We dream dreams, have ideas about where we would like to be in a few years, a couple weeks, tomorrow - or an imagining for the next few minutes. This is the kind of imagining you do in class when your teacher would rather have you imagining how inductors function in a circuit. (But it's also the kind of imagining you do whenever they ask you 'what do you want to be when you grow up?')
The second mode could be seen as an outgrowth of the first kind. It's imagining not a state in the future, but the process by which the future state could be obtained. This kind of imagining is essential to make dreams become reality. You can daydream about the future all you like - but you can't get there without a plan.
A third kind of imaginings might be considered delusion - using your imagination to think about your present or past state from a different perspective or frame of mind. I say delusion because I see this kind being used to be more optimistic about being in a bad situation in a way that some might see as absurd, but the exact same thing could be said for the imagining that pessimists do about an okay situation. Our observations of our worlds are always affected by the biases of our heart-minds - and in this, we're always using at least a little imagination, even if we don't realize it. There's a reason no two people see the world in the same way.
So what's really being asked when we ask ourselves if or how our imagination is stunted?
More to come.
Imagination can drive us, individuals or groups, to do things that are wonderful delightful, wicked, grotesque, or any other adjective one would like to tack on. One's perspective defines their imagination of the past, present, and future. Perspective can define a person's state of being; what their experiences are, what they experience today, or think they'll experience tomorrow. Imagination is a culmination of the human spirit incarnate, and an inevitable force that everyone of us applies everyday; whether we like it or not. Objectively speaking, imagination physically boils down to neurons communicating rapidly with one another in a person's heads at varying speeds. However, subjectively speaking, a stunted imagination for one individual could be a growth in a different realm of the imaginative for another. Can it really ever be said that an imagination has been stunted without a clear fixed point for reference? This also begs the question of whether or not a point of imagination can ever be fixed by an individual or those surrounding an individual. Does the imagination cause perspective to shift or vice versa? All these questions can be answered in different ways depending on one's imagination and perspective. So, without answers do these questions prove fruitless? On the contrary, these questions and many more continue to fill every generation with hope for a better tomorrow via self reflection and self-related inquiries.
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