A World without Imagination
Doctor Who shows why it’s important to imagine
“The Stealers of Dreams” in the “Doctor Who” book series has Rose, Captain Jack and the Doctor materializing on a planet where fiction and imagination are outlawed. Dreams are suppressed with drugs. Lies are illegal — even if they are supposed to preserve the feelings of others. (Yes, that dress does make your butt look fat. Or, your butt is fat; it’s not the dress.) The only things on TV are documentaries and news, unvarnished, uncolored, and undramatic. (Steve got a parking spot with his promotion today.) Anything that requires the imagination is punishable by a trip to the Big White House where doctors can do whatever they like to patients.
Fiction is derived from the imagination, so all flights of fancy are suspect and punishable by law if voiced. Things as simple as imagining the route ahead of you while in a vehicle (let the computer choose the route), thinking abut what you might’ve been or could be, and even putting yourself in the place of the human pioneers who came through the vast reaches of space before you to colonize the planet are problems because they take imagination. Therein lies the point that gets to the heart of the matter. Imagination is important to the advancement of humankind.
Imagination Drives Compassion
In order to feel compassion for someone else, you have to be able to imagine the feelings that they are having in their situation. If you can’t imagine their situation and what they must be going through emotional, you can’t feel compassionate about. Even worse, if you can’t use your imagination to have an idea of what it would be like for you to go through the situation, there is no way you can experience compassion for another person. You might be able to pity them for the position they are in now, but that’s it.
The understanding and sympathy that imagination, and the compassion that comes with it, generate leads to greater selflessness. It allows you understand how the person in the plane seat in front of you feels when you pull on the seat, or the person behind you feels when you lean back. IT allows you to sympathize with starving children in your community, in Africa and in the world.
Imagination Drives Problem Solving
If you’ve tried the old solutions to a problem and they don’t work, you need to come up with something new. That takes imagination. If you want to solve a continuing problem more efficiently, you need to be able to draw upon your imagination to do so. Imagination allows us to access the part of our brain that creates something out of nothing. That includes creating new solutions. Without imagination, people stagnate — both as individuals and as a society.
Imagination Drives Success
If you’re not allowed to imagine what life would be like you will never dream of something better. You won’t strive for a better job or a better home because you won’t be able to understand what the point of it would be. Of course, that also means you won’t imagine something worse. This also means that you won’t be able to prepare for disasters or feel anxious about the motives of the stranger in an alley. Without imagination the world becomes gray and dull, and we lose a part of our humanity.
