Soul Boat, 2019
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
— Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia
I wasn’t planning on writing anything today. Work has been going well and I wanted to get at it. But I woke up at well before 5 AM with my mind whirling thinking about the power of the imagination. This stemmed from a passage from author Lawrence Durrell that I will share at a later date.
This passage got me thinking, as I lay there in the dark, how our ability to imagine is that trait which defines us as a species, allowing us to create and visualize a future. It solves problems and has been responsible for every inch of progress we have made as humans.
But, as it is with all things, there is a polarity of opposition. A flipside of the coin.
While we might imagine better things for ourselves and others, we can also imagine the worst. Our imaginations are often affected by forces outside our own minds, leading us to feelings of fear and loathing. Our fear is more often than not an act of imagination than it is a fear any true threat.
Authoritarian movements are built on their ability to manipulate the mob’s imagination, fostering and growing fears among its followers. For as effective as fear is as a motivating force, there is a fault in this method in that it dwindles in effectiveness over time.
Every authoritarian movement eventually fails and this comes about for one reason: It robs the imagination of a future.
While the imagination of the mob can be controlled for a short period of time, the imagination ultimately seeks the future.
The imagination is always forward looking and adaptable and ever-changing. It continuously seeks improvement and understanding.
And it is always with us, everywhere. As Albert Einstein pointed out in a 1929 interview:
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Imagination encircles the world.
It remains elusively independent, as hard as authoritarians may try to control it. They may divert imaginations with their manipulations but eventually the instilled fear held by the mob turns inward towards the force trying to control it. The controlling force which they once saw as the answer to their fears now becomes source of new fears.
The remedy becomes the disease.
And the imagination of the mob begins working overtime in order to solve this newly recognized problem.
The imagination of the mob seeks a new future.
Okay. That’s my thought for the morning. I am sure there are flaws of logic and contradiction in my thinking and I have spent too much valuable time away from my work. Nonetheless, I felt like I had to write this just to get my thoughts on paper. Unfortunately, while we have imaginations, we also easily forget things much too soon. I would have forgotten this by this afternoon.
This forgetfulness is also the same with the mob, the reason why we are always faced with the same patterns of behavior. Same fears and manipulations and so on.
Thankfully, the imagination remains eternal.
Redtree Times 