Imagine Imagination

Imagination, too, is the source of creativity. I remember my grade school teacher asking us to undertake an activity regarding imagination before creating an artwork. Yes, artworks. What are artworks and masterpieces without imagination? The most prominent novels, paintings, songs, etc. up to the least prominent ones are blunt without imagination and creativity. J.K Rowling’s Hogwarts is a product of imagination. The Shire in “The Lord of the Rings” is another product. Shakespeare’s Othello is another product. Newton’s laws are also products. Oh, tell me what the worlds of music, film, arts and literature and any other field would be without imagination and creativity. They would be incomplete, dull, absurd, and worst, dead.

We create a concept of the future through our imagination. This, I thought, is when goals, dreams, and ideologies enter. We pattern our goals and dreams through the ideologies that the society has. Say, we dream of owning a Ferrari car if we live in a society that regards bicycles as common and luxury cars as status symbols. But where do ideologies come from, in the first place? According to Louis Althusser, ideologies represent the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence. From the definition, imagination is obviously at work because ideologies are ways by which we “create” our own realities. We are already born into ideologies, and we are continuously shaping and being shaped by these. If ideologies are inevitable, the more imagination is. It continuously allows us to create ideologies, and from these ideologies, we can construct what we want to be (goals and dreams), what we want the world to be, and what the world should be to be better and more conducive for life. Thus, imagination, if properly used, will lead to goals that will further promote development and humans’ sustainable living.

But the puzzle of life isn’t just completed by ideologies and imagination because the world needs people who act and utilize these tools properly. We, people, are the users and beneficiaries of imagination, for we have the power to use it according to our needs and equities. Life without imagination deprives us a significant part of our human purpose. Now, I’ll ask you to imagine people’s life without imagination. Imagine YOUR life without imagination. Oh, with that “life without imagination,” you can’t even do or follow what I have just asked you to do. That’s how imagination takes its part even with our most basic activities.