There is a peculiar attitude, here at the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, we agree things aren’t fine. On the other hand, there’s a widespread feeling that there’s nothing to be done .
The distinctive feature of imagination, therefore, rests on its capacity of creating new mental images by combining and modifying stored perceptual information in novel ways and by inserting this information in a subjective view of the world: hence it is related to his self-awareness. In other words, imagination is not simply the organization,... See more
In recent years, neuroimaging has provided evidence to suggest that imagining the future relies on much of the same neural machinery as remembering the past. One hypothesis that such findings motivate is that memories must be reactivated in order to extract the information needed to “flesh out” detailed simulations. Indeed, if simulations involve... See more
If you can get everybody just to go, what if this assumption isn’t true? We need to imagine a different reality… If you can get just a proportion of people to do that...
The brain evaluates the images it is processing against a “reality threshold.” If the signal passes the threshold, the brain thinks it’s real; if it doesn’t, the brain thinks it’s imagined.
It took me a while, but I eventually figured out what he meant. Sometimes the task of rebuilding—of accepting what has been broken and making things anew—is so daunting that it can almost feel easier to believe it can’t be done.