I’ve said this quite a few times here, but it is worth repeating – almost all of us are doing what we truly believe to be the best for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our future. There aren’t many of us that are actively trying to tear down society. Almost everyone is doing the best they can and trying to make the world a place where future generations can prosper.
What that future is and what it will look like is what is up for debate. That isn’t novel. That is the way that society has been moving along for a few thousand years now. New ideas are born that challenge old ideas and old structures of power. Those new ideas are met with varying degrees of resistance, but ultimately the old ideas eventually fade away with the death of the generation/s that couldn’t understand the new ideas. That new idea becomes the norm. Then that new idea is challenged by an even newer idea, and the process repeats. That is the history of the human species and will be our history moving forward until there is no-one left to record human history.
We are indeed at a moment now where the ideas of the past and the ideas for the future are at odds with one another. There are those holding onto the ideas of the past because they want the opportunities they enjoyed to be ensured for their kids. These folks aren’t wrong in what they want, but they seem incapable of believing in anything other than what they’ve already experienced.
There seems to be an element of their logic that believes we are at the pinnacle of society. That there isn’t anything that we could do to make any of this any better. At least that is what I logically deduce from the sect of people that want to keep everything just like it is. If one is fighting like hell to hold onto an idea then I assume that means they believe it to be the one and only way to operate or structure society.
A lack of imagination seems to be the main reason that we aren’t able to move towards a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable society. Those holding onto the old systems and structures are ignoring the damage those systems have done to society and our ecology. They are willfully remaining blind to the fact that they’ve always been on the benefiting end of the current structures. They are ignoring all those that have been excluded from the benefits that they’ve enjoyed because of where and to whom they were born.
Necessity is the mother of invention is an old proverb. Those that haven’t been fully included in society and have lived on the fringe were forced to innovate. Those social innovators didn’t have the luxury of benefiting from the current society or its institutions so they began to imagine. They felt the plight of their ancestors, their families, and their communities, and that is what fueled their innovation. That necessity for something better – to enjoy the type of freedom and opportunities others were enjoying was something that they felt was worth fighting for.
They could imagine a better system. A system in which they would also benefit. A system in which future generations would have opportunities that were not available to them personally. Almost everyone can understand that necessity. Those that have been the beneficiaries of society don’t have that drive for something new. Society has been structured in their favor so they don’t have the necessity for imagination that the marginalized have.
We are not at the pinnacle of society. We are very far from the pinnacle of society, which means there is a lot of change coming. Perhaps we are feeling the sting of change a lot more now than in the past because we are more hyper-engaged now than we have been in the past. We are consumed by our devices, by the general pace of life, and by the manufactured need to always be connected or ‘on’.
We don’t have a respite from the chaos. Rather we actively immerse ourselves in the chaos because it has become so familiar that silence and calm has become scary. Most of us know that this hyper-engagement isn’t great for us, but it is also very comfortable and curated to keep us engaged. Even though it draws on some of our species’ worst aspects we are still captured by it.
In this environment there are also powerful companies, people, and algorithms that are controlling the conversation. Their motives aren’t altruistic. They are all there to monetarily benefit from our engagement and see no other responsibility to truth, justice, or civility. Not everyone in the entertainment and information sphere is operating from that perspective, but enough are to frame conversations and disseminate misinformation or disinformation.
It seems to me that we all have a need to exercise our imaginations a bit. I suppose that starts by taking inventory of what is framing our current reality. There are many social media critics that use food as a metaphor for our online habits. We need good nutritious food to survive and we also need reliable and truthful information to maintain a healthy society. When we allow social media algorithms to frame our reality we are basically trying to live on Doritos and Mt. Dew.
When we have a poor information diet we are giving up our ability to imagine. That poor media diet is making us susceptible to manipulation and a false reality. Enough of that diet will result in an inability to make one’s own decisions. Living in a curated echo-chamber will likely result in a worldview that was not of our choosing.
Imagination is very important. The reason that we have anything – from democracy to toilet paper – is because someone imagined a better way of doing something. Again, we are not at the pinnacle of society so we need those innovators to keep imagining. If we can do anything to help those innovators it is to remain open to new ideas.
Seems to me we should try to keep our imaginations sharp and open so that when those new ideas come down the pike we have the tools necessary to examine them. And if the idea is good enough then it will be implemented into society. That is hard to do if we’ve lost the ability to imagine anything other than what currently is.
I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this.
Thanks for reading and take care of each other.
Billy's Briefs 