What I’ve Learned About Imagination
(So Far)
Over the past six months, I’ve been studying imagination.
It quickly became a topic that fascinated me, as I’ve always considered myself a curious person who enjoys exercising creativity and imagination. However, until six months ago, imagination was something I associated with “play”, something we use when thinking about unreal or absurd things. Everything related to what seemed irrational, intangible, or untrue. I realized my interpretation of imagination had been narrow, unfair, and even negative.
In my epistemology class, Professor Camila Braga changed my perspective. How could imagination be a field of study within organizations?, I wondered. That question instantly captivated me. I realized I wanted to study imagination, to understand how it could be applied intentionally, consciously and intelligently to help us design new urban models that lead to better cities in the future.
So far, here are two points that I’ve learned about imagination:
1. Imagination is a central condition for human freedom.
Without imagination, humans would simply respond to stimuli; mechanical beings, enslaved by what is, unable to think or act upon what could be or what we wish to be.
Think about the last time you imagined a place you’ve always wanted to visit.
Maybe you were scrolling through social media and saw a video or photo that made you think how much you’d love to be there. You imagined yourself in that place, and without realizing it, that very act of imagination began to move you: now you started saving money, planning the trip and eventually you’ll be there, enjoying.
That’s basically the story of humanity. Without imagination, there would be no cars, airplanes, personal computers, smartphones, or medicine.
This freedom also lies in how imagination allows us to move mentally through time.
We’re not prisoners of the present. We can think about the future, through anticipation, planning and utopian thinking, and we can also revisit the past through memory.
2. Imagination is our ability to produce and reproduce images, sounds, smells, emotions and textures in our mind (and body).
To do this, imagination relies on perception and memory.
On one hand, perception happens through our senses: sight, smell, hearing, touch. Something interesting to consider is how important it is to develop all our senses equally, becoming more aware of each one. That way, when we imagine, we can recall more vividly the things that entered through our eyes, ears, nose, or hands. Usually, people tend to trust one sense more than others: some are more visual, others more auditory, and so on.
On the other hand, memory, both conscious and unconscious, stores all our experiences. Imagination draws from that reservoir to create images, sounds and emotions.
Some people dream of places they claim they’ve never been to. Yet what often happens is that they simply don’t remember; the memory lies hidden in their unconscious.
I hope this post helped you shift your perception of imagination, just like it happened to me.
In recent months, I’ve been trying to learn more about it, mainly to understand how we can use imagination better when planning cities. But this applies to many other fields as well. In one of the articles I read, the author argued that we’re living through an imagination crisis; we struggle to picture a world that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels, for example.
I think this also applies to plastic, meat and so many other things we consume on a massive scale that deeply affect our societies. It’s hard, almost impossible, to picture a world without them.
But is it possible? Can we recover our imaginative capacity to think of new realities? I keep thinking about that...