I imagine, by now, that many of you are familiar with the game Krillion. For those of you that are not, it is a daily game where you are given seven prompts and must respond to each prompt with the most obscure answer possible. It recently occurred to me that this is a way in which, every morning before school, I attempt to engage with the theme of imagination, by having to rack my brains to pull out a ‘deep cut’ answer. But I immediately challenged this thought. Is this truly imagining or just depending upon what you may or may not know?
Imagination is instead the act of pursuing curiosity. It is a first step to discovery, invention, innovation through the creative development of thought. It is to devise something altogether different, by building on what you already know or have been told. This takes me back to the Krillion example; here there is no development of thought: it is a static, binary process, rather than the birth of a thought that you attempt to build upon.
So how do we engage with imagination, and why is it important that we do? Reading fiction is a pure example of imagination. You are given a reference by the author, and then it is up to you to devise your own visualisations of the product of their imagination. This stimulates unique, original thought, as it allows for the interaction of different people’s life experiences and interpretations of the world. It is this exchange that then allows for the construction of new thoughts, thanks to the new perspectives that reading gives us. These thoughts become ideas and ideas become realised. This progression, although not always instigated by reading, was the source of every foundational aspect of modern society. Imagination provoked a thought, which created an idea, which ultimately created something new altogether.
In that case, where would we be without imagination? In my view, we would still be following our survival instincts in a world still struggling to leave the Stone Age. It is imagination and lateral thinking that differentiates humans from other animals. Had our early ancestors not taken the initiative to pursue curiosity, we would have no distinguishing features from the same animals that we evolved from.
The astronomer, Carl Sagan, put this idea poignantly, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” We must therefore continue to engage with imagination if we are to continue to see our society progress, whether that be in the fields of medicine, politics, or technology, or in terms of cultural acceptance, and empathy.
Alexander
Senior Prefect