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 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
16. The
Absence of Imagination
We
notice it when we say 'Kids don't know how to play anymore.' Gone
are the games of dress-up and make-believe. The more specific and
recognizable the toy, the more popular; least favourite are the
ambiguous toys, the ones with so many possibilities.
Later,
we observe and lament the fact that the students don't know how
to amuse themselves. They can't sit quietly. Discipline problems
abound. They are bored, school is boring, everything is boring.
Their style becomes, necessarily, one of passivity. Or perhaps reactivity.
But not proactivity--it takes imagination to initiate.
Why
is this so? Why is there this absence of imagination? Well, human
beings are like most objects: we choose the path of least resistance.
It takes less energy to watch tv than to read a book. It's easier
to put on a prepared costume, use prepared props, and follow a prepared
storyline than to make your own costume, props, and storyline. Sure,
the latter is probably more satisfying. But how is the kid to know
that if s/he hasn't experienced it? (And precisely because
she hasn't experienced it, hasn't experienced the imagining, she
can't imagine it.)
What
to do? Well, anyone will tell you that forcing someone to do something
is the quickest way to make them hate it. But given the contemporary
context, it's unlikely the kid will voluntarily choose the seemingly
less attractive and certainly less popular option.
And
yet we'd better find a solution soon. As Celine says in Journey
to the End of the Night, "Everything's allowed inside oneself".
(He obviously wasn't a Roman Catholic--the sick doctrine of sinful
thoughts.) Using one's imagination is the perfect escape: anything
goes and no one gets hurt. People denied that escape route may be
pushed to find another, less perfect one.
But
not only might the unimaginative become the dangerous, the unimaginative
becomes the deadweight: the unimaginative preschooler who becomes
the bored (and boring) teenager becomes the useless adult. To improve,
to change, requires that one imagine an alternative; in a
thousand and one ways, our world is desperate for improvement, for
change. But if we can't even imagine it, we sure as hell won't be
able to make it happen.
My
response to the current ozone depletion, as one who read the biochemical
facts and then gave up aerosols in the 70s, is 'You can't say we
didn't see it coming.' But I'm realizing, with more horror than
accompanied my first conclusion (that 'we' were selfish, irresponsible,
and just didn't give a damn), that 'we' didn't see it coming. We
couldn't. People couldn't extrapolate from A to B: to anticipate
the effect of a cause, the consequence of an action, requires imagination.
In
the same way, I'm appalled to hear teenagers say what a good program
it is that gives them a tour of jail or takes them into the operating
room to see a gunshot wound. They 'didn't know', they say. What?
What did you think happened? Well, they didn't. They didn't think.
They're not used to doing that. It requires a sort of 'let's pretend'
mental activity that's simply not within their repertoire.
Ditto
for the 'carrying the egg or bag of flour around for a week' exercise.
I certainly didn't need to do that to understand what's involved
in being a parent. And I'm the youngest child, so it's not like
I saw it. I imagined it. I thought about what my life would
be like if I had a child--and on that basis decided not to have
one. Simple. Apparently not.
Imagination
is necessary for the consideration of options, of alternatives;
it's the prerequisite for choice, for exerting one's will, for having
control over one's life. Without it, we are doomed, as individuals
and as a species. It's what separates us (well, some of us) from
lower life forms: if a horse could imagine life as a deer, my guess
is it would jump the fence in a second. And while I'd like to say
'See ya', we're all in this together.
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated late-April 2002
Previous
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