imagination deficit
We inhabit, in ordinary daylight, a future that was unimaginably dark a few decades ago, when people found the end of the world easier to envision than the impending changes in everyday roles, thoughts, practices that not even the wildest science fiction anticipated. Perhaps we should not have adjusted to it so easily. It would be better if we were
... See moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
Imagination, in other words, is the ground on which we fight against determinism, fatalism, the dead hand of hindsight and the unavoidable tendency of our brains, always hungry to find meanings and patterns, to conclude that whatever did happen was the only thing that could have happened.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
One thing I’ve also noticed is the gradual loss of the understanding of “imagination” as a category; it can sound a little Reading Rainbow to talk about, but wouldn’t you know imagination is actually an essential part of the human condition. In so far as the words “spirit” or “spirituality” mean anything beyond woo-woo or cliché they must include t... See more
John Ganz • Why Culture Sucks
Her imagination, she knew, was a means to escape this cul-de-sac of despair.
Lynell George • The Visions of Octavia Butler
Powerful actors must keep us convinced that it’s the people around us—everyday folks whose struggles overlap with our own—who pose the greatest threat to our safety, well-being, and happiness. It is the grandest illusion ever created: in a world where corporations and governments worldwide are poised to annihilate most life on Earth, we are made to
... See moreKelly Hayes • Let This Radicalize You
Confessional art can be beautiful, and it can be terrible; either way, to love it only as a representation of what we already know is to deny it, and ourselves, a much richer complexity. Pop music is where fantasies are played out, turned into mansions and lived in, where five hundred people can tumble out of a clown car and every dream comes true.
... See moreDirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
Where we struggle to imagine a future beyond the contemporary shitshow, nihilism leads the retreat inwards; in art as in politics. “What good is a flourishing poetry market,” Watts asked, “If what we read in poetry books renders us more confused, less appreciative of nuance, less able to engage with ideas, more indignant about the things that annoy
... See moreDirt • Dirt: The Decay of Lying...
If we lose faith in the future, we are likely to do less to make a better future happen. In this way, fatalism can, indeed, become fate.