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Title  BACK TO THE FUTURE OF IMAGINATION 
Release Date  2005-11-23 
Time  08:24:00 
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JULY 30, 2005. There are two kinds of people: those who know they are making up stories, and those who believe stories are making them up.

In the latter group (which of course is much larger), all sorts of interesting paradoxes play out. The most important one is, "I'm created by a story, and I keep inventing that story over and over, to make sure I'm still here."

Just as the painter has his medium and the musician has his medium and the writer has his medium---paint, sound, words---the imgination itself has its medium---ANYTHING.

Any material, any sound, any color, any word, any shape, any thought, any assumption, any story, any symbol, any archetype, any object, any memory, any energy.

It's all grist for the mill, and it feeds into the living transformer.

Imagination could be briefly defined as the immortal capacity to create.

Over time, in any civilization, there comes to be a general consensus about the greatest products of imagination, the most compelling productions, and these are adopted as the ruling myths. They are given special status, not as creations, but as sources that made us.

We made them, and now they make us.

It's quite a shell game.

This evolves into: "X made us, and those people over there think that Y made them, so let's go to war."

I'd liken this to two artists who have studios next door to each other. They visit each other, look at the canvases on the walls, and promptly buy weapons for a duel to the death.

Civilization and culture adamantly believe in certain eternal verities, and you must never point out that these "verities" were imagined and invented by individuals.

It's thought that such an insight would somehow weaken the convincing power of the "verities."

I think it's just the opposite. The more you know you're imagining something, the stronger it gets and the stronger you get.

In this context, stronger does not mean enslaving.

A belief could be defined as an invention of the imagination which has been hardened into a statement about What Is.

An insane devotion to What Is results in a situation where two or more parties can try to kill each other over the question of What Really Is.

The space-time continuum is an invention of imagination which has gained some very heavy support from its inventors.

Despair is a state of mind in which the person no longer wants to recognize the power of his own imagination.

Having fallen into this primary despair, the person then must invent all sorts of distractions and diversions to keep from admitting the simple way in which the despair actually came about.

A person in a state of despair usually hunts around for a system to which he can attach himself. Having barnacled himself to this system (which is itself a product of imagination), he becomes very devoted and hardened and loyal and zealous about the one and only system. He becomes a soldier of the system.

Imagination is free. It illustrates and expands freedom in action.

Earth culture, for the most part, ignores imagination. That's why, in the long run (so far), Earth culture is a loser.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com