More on Imagination

Several decades ago when I finally finished my dissertation and completed my PhD, I found that the process of writing my dissertation had severely and negatively impacted my imagination. When writing scholarly work you must insure that each small step in your reasoning rests solidly on previous steps and that any claims made are supported by references to other scholarly work. If someone on your dissertation committee says "I think you have gotten a little creative on a few points", it is not a compliment. It means you have to fix something. Since I have always been imaginative and creative, I actually felt the loss of these abilities after the rigors of my dissertation. It was as though the bright colors of life had dimmed to a barely tinted black and white. I didn't like it and pondered ways in which I might fix it and return to being imaginative again.

I was reading a lot of Stephen King at the time and decided that I would try to convince myself that one of his books (I don't recall which one, at the moment) was actually non-fiction and that the government didn't want the truth to come out so they covered it up and allowed the book to be published as fiction. Yes, I know, this sounds preposterous! But, what is even more preposterous is that I managed to do it. I managed to convince myself that the book was true. This is not as remarkable as it first seems. You can convince yourself of almost anything and people often do.

But, the experience of thinking something is true when you know it is not was very enlightening. I realized how people who believe in conspiracy theories can be so confident about things which otherwise seem ridiculous. It also helps explain why people with polar political views can be so intractable. And, it also made me wonder how many other things that I believe are true might just be things that I have convinced myself of. I actually went through several of King's books and found that it became easier to convinced myself the more I worked at it. And, I found that the exercise restored my imagination and creativity along with some humility about the truth. Shortly after embarking on this exercise, I started writing fiction.

I talk about imagination more extensively in my upcoming book on Predicting the Future as this is a quintessential exercise of the imagination. The construction of reality is also a product of the imagination. In Yuval Noah Harari's wonderful books Sapiens and Homo Deus he observes that humans are the only species who's reality is a product of their imaginations and attributes this in large part, although not exclusively, to our dominance of the planet. This takes some explaining and I would encourage you to read these well written and fascinating books in which Harari attempts to explain how we got to where we are and where we might be going.

How healthy is your imagination? Are your creative muscles flabby and useless or pumped and ready to take on challenges. Here is a way to tell. If you think there is an objective reality and an absolute truth you are probably suffering from a calcified imagination. You might be OK with this and it is not up to me to judge whether or not this is OK. However, if you want to write some interesting fiction or even creative non-fiction, you may want to exercise your imagination a bit more so you will be up to the task.

I would also point out that an under explored benefit of the imagination is that it can help you deal with chaos and change.  If you can anticipate something (which is an act of imagination) you can brace yourself. Alvin Toffler gave a name to the psychological stress that occurs when the future comes at you too fast. He called it Future Shock. A healthy imagination can be something of an immunity to Future Shock.