{"id":624,"date":"2004-06-04T21:44:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-04T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/06\/04\/624\/"},"modified":"2004-06-04T21:44:00","modified_gmt":"2004-06-04T21:44:00","slug":"624","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

There was an article in the December, 2002 Atlantic Magazine about imagination<\/strong>. A lot of research is going on about how the human mind works, and how the chemistry, structure and dynamics of the human brain supports it. Imagination is turning out to be a very important thing in determining people’s actions. Imagination is not just for kids<\/strong>. It’s basically the process by which all personal decisions are made. Whenever we face the future, be it what channel we watch on the tube, or what we do tonight for dinner, or whether we have another child, or whether we apply for a particular job, our imagination sets up a picture<\/strong> of the future, to allow us to evaluate the consequences. Sure, for the important decisions, we do some pondering and analysis. We evaluate the facts, look at the pros and cons, maybe even write up a list of things to consider. But in the end, most decisions aren’t made according to a mathematical outcome from some abstract formula. We make our decisions based upon a picture in our heads<\/strong>. At bottom we ask the following: do we like this picture better than the other possible picture (e.g., we might take a job, even if it’s boring, because it’s better than sitting home on unemployment).<\/p>\n

The article points out that in evaluating our “imagination pictures” when making a big choice, sometimes our imagination runs a bit faster than reality<\/strong>. One good example is in the spending of disposible income. Say we have enough cash<\/strong> for basic food and shelter, and then have some extra money. We see an advertisement for something, say a new coat, a new computer, a trip to Europe, whatever. The imagination now has two pictures to compare: in one picture, we sit there as we are, with the money in our wallets or in our bank account, waiting for some future opportunity to purchase something. In the other picture, we have the thing in question, and it’s great<\/strong>. For some reason, our imagination seems to favor doing something versus doing nothing. So, we go ahead and buy the thing, and guess what? Even if it is of reasonable quality and does what it’s supposed to do, we feel a bit disappointed<\/strong>. The glow wares off rather quickly. I’m a sucker myself for books (as an eternal student should be!). I walk thru a bookstore and see something interesting, and immediately I imagine what a great read this book is going to be, what a warm glow I’m going to feel by having it. Then I buy it, take it home, peck through the first chapter, find out that it isn’t all that inspiring after all, and throw it into the growing pile<\/strong> of books waiting for me to get to one day.<\/p>\n

The article concludes with an interesting point, which is this: perhaps it is best that our imagination is biased toward action, even if that causes problems with our $budget$ sometimes. If our imaginations presented things as they will most likely turn out, then we would become much lazier creatures, and a lot of personal and social progress would never have happened. Imagination turns us into a world of proactive doers<\/strong>, versus solely reactive survivors. But let’s never forget that imagination, like everything, has its dark side<\/strong>. For example, various terrorist groups looking for suicide volunteers seem to have had success in inspiring potential candidates to imagine the spiritual paradise that awaits them in exchange for their lives (also to imagine the good that will accrue to their own tribe, while disregarding the pain that will be felt by the other tribe). Like yin and yang, perhaps both<\/strong> imagination and cynicism are needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was an article in the December, 2002 Atlantic Magazine about imagination. A lot of research is going on about how the human mind works, and how the chemistry, structure and dynamics of the human brain supports it. Imagination is turning out to be a very important thing in determining people’s actions. Imagination is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}