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Date Posted: 10:46:52 07/18/00 Tue
Author: SwimmingUpstream
Subject: IMAGINATION AND TYRANNIES

In the Ideas Precede Language thread Jonathan Gulson posted the following:

Incidentally, I checked out an Ayn Rand website for information on her. One of her tenets is that metaphor is a
free standing reality, and that nothing can be invented. Only realised, I suppose. If ideas preceded any linguistic
quality, then this world would inflate to bursting point.

(Ayn Rand seemed to have great difficulty discerning the distinction between perceptual thought and conceptual
thought, another of her philosophical failings.)

This world does in fact inflate to bursting point, for the imaginative among us. If anyone doubts this, have them
watch a child who has not had his imagination squelched yet. Which brings me to the point of this new thread.

There are several forms of suppression of imagination. Or put another way, the imagination is likely a tender
shoot, needing cultivation, needing a flower bed somewhat free of sunlight blocking weeds. It tends to atrophy
when its job is taken from it, much like other parts of the human being.

With regard to knowledge, Jonathan has challenged the value of institutions, and I think institutions can also be a
threat to imagination. But I think a greater threat to the imagination today is our tendency to leave NOTHING to the
imagination.

Reading leaves the visualizing and the aural canvas to the imagination. Storytelling leaves the visualizing; a
book-on-tape likewise. A silent black-and-white movie leaves a little less of the visualizing, and all of the aural
canvas to the imagination. A black-and-white talkie leaves more to the imagination than a color talkie. And then
there is the imagery actually presented on the screen -- becoming more and more graphic, leaving less and less
to the imagination.

I contend that this tendency to leave less and less to the imagination is probably doing more to debilitate the
imaginations of those to whom we look for true leadership, leaving us with fewer true leaders (true leaders
possessing Authority, an endogenous force, one granted by the consent of the led) and more and more seekers of
power (power being an exogenous force), promiscuous force being the resort of the man who has run out of
ideas.

Taken together, the forces debilitating imagination today are an almost overwhelmingly toxic environment, and I
doubt an environment we can long endure.

I think a primary task for us today is to detoxify the environment, for if we do not we shall have few resources with
which to solve the social challenges we face. As is the case in most human affairs, there is a tension between
what we can do and what we ought to do -- and sometimes this tension must be allowed to pull us "back" on the
track of progress when we have strayed from it through ignorance. A step "back" is not always regression.

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