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Imagination
3/23/2008 10:36 pm |
"Imagination collects from the senses the sensory effects of natural phenomena and combines and magnifies them to the point of exaggeration, turning them into luminous images to suddenly dazzle the mind with their lightning and stir up human passions in the thunder and roar of their wonder." --Giambattista Vico My wife just commented to me that the modern world has contributed to the death of human imagination by turning it into a cheap, meaningless thrill ride. As evidence for this, she cites our addiction to technology, computers especially. But she could also point to movies and television, video games, drugs, cell phones, politics, and many other modern "ills," as the Luddite in me characterizes them. Vico, a 17th-century Italian Humanist thinker, was referring to the importance of human imagination in the fundamental creation of history when he wrote the above. He wasn't specifically talking about someone sitting back and daydreaming on a lazy afternoon. I'm trying to reconcile these two things: imagination in the individual's life, and imagination in the life of humanity writ large. And, despite my wife's cynicism (which she wears mainly to cover a passionate, hopeful heart), I think that the human imagination is pretty well indestructible. It can be colonized and suppressed, and twisted, as it has been in the modern world to some extent. It can be captured and used for the ends of the powerful, be they political or religious, or corporate, or what have you. This has always been a danger, and is not specifically a modern trait; though the modern mechanisms of control have certainly improved with advances in technology. But Vico is right, when he draws attention to the power of the imagination to take the raw stuff of sense experience and build it into something to "dazzle the mind" and "stir up human passions." The imagination is fundamental to what we are as human beings, individually and as a race. And it is evergreen, retaining the capacity to burst into radiant life even in the midst of the most egregious crimes committed against it, the most powerful social controls arrayed in opposition. The German verb for "to imagine" is something I've always loved to contemplate. It is vorstellen, which broken down means roughly "to put in front of." The imagination has the incredible power to create something in the world that wasn't there before, maybe never has been or never could be. (A unicorn, for instance--I'm thinking of one now, and so are you. So, does it exist? The thought of it does...) What's more, the thing "put in front of" one by the imagination can move a person to monumental acts of courage and sacrifice, or callous brutality and evil, or the creation of beauty unparalleled. We are so unimaginably powerful, we human creatures. Use your imagination well. |
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3/24/2008 12:42 am |
Oh n0ice post!!! From wikipedia: "... Vico gooeyfruitbat . . . I rather be cute than tuff (but it doesn't hurt...) /|\_^..^_/|\ THE BATTY !!!!
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3/24/2008 3:17 pm |
Howard - Once again, you have truly challenged my mind. That is NOT a compliment that I hand out lightly. Thank you, Lady J
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3/24/2008 5:32 pm |
Gooey, Thanks for adding some context. Never read much Joyce or McLuhan myself, but Harold Bloom and Robert Anton Wilson are both pretty high up there in my personal pantheon of writers. I came across Vico's quote in an essay in an old college rhetoric text about Ernesto Grassi, whose big thing was metaphor--Grassi's work has resonated with me ever since I read the essay first as an undergrad, back in "the day" that they all talk about. I haven't picked the book up in a decade, so I'm slowly working into the essay and trying to see where my thinking lands after so many years. And I love the Wittgenstein quote. German can be so mindblowingly pithy sometimes, it just leaves me breathless. English seems somewhat clunky to me in comparison. Thanks for stopping by.
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3/24/2008 5:38 pm |
Lady J, Such a kind comment from a distinguished lady is an unexpected gem. I must endeavor to earn more... 
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3/24/2008 8:38 pm |
Lady J, Such a kind comment from a distinguished lady is an unexpected gem. I must endeavor to earn more... 
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3/25/2008 11:30 am |
Gooey, Thanks for adding some context. Never read much Joyce or McLuhan myself, but Harold Bloom and Robert Anton Wilson are both pretty high up there in my personal pantheon of writers. I came across Vico's quote in an essay in an old college rhetoric text about Ernesto Grassi, whose big thing was metaphor--Grassi's work has resonated with me ever since I read the essay first as an undergrad, back in "the day" that they all talk about. I haven't picked the book up in a decade, so I'm slowly working into the essay and trying to see where my thinking lands after so many years. And I love the Wittgenstein quote. German can be so mindblowingly pithy sometimes, it just leaves me breathless. English seems somewhat clunky to me in comparison. Thanks for stopping by. w00t?! Have ya tried readin' Hegel in the original German? I had to learn to read German for sociology/crimnology courses and believe me you me that German sociology and cultural anthropology texts out do even the French Poststructuralists in erudite, knotty sentences (and word-play). gooeyfruitbat . . . I rather be cute than tuff (but it doesn't hurt...) /|\_^..^_/|\ THE BATTY !!!!
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