Hunger of Imagination (Samuel Johnson)

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Solitude makes it possible for us to gain access to our most inner reality. Through solitude we find the ability to sort out the structure of our thoughts, to gain access to the meaning of our ideas and attitudes. Solitude provides access to our imagination.

Imagination and reason are the faculties of mind that sets our species off from our nearest non-human species. It is imagination that provides man with the flexibility to adjust to a changing environment but it is imagination that also robs man of contentment.

Our non-human ancestors are guided by instinct alone. Instinct is the impulse that determines the behavior in a pre-programmed response. But our species has added to this survival response system the faculty of reason, which allows us to fit into a changing environment for survival. Reason and imagination determines the destiny of the species. Discontentment bred by imagination and motivates man to seek a different way and reason facilitates the change by offering the options for change. The discontent of imagination is the catalyst for adaptation.

The product of imagination is fantasy. Fantasy can provide an escape from reality or as is evident in our accomplishments of science and the arts it provides the ingredients for new ideas, which like the theories of Newton and Einstein establish the paradigms for technology.

Freud wrote, in his paper “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” “We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of an unsatisfied reality.”

Freud considered fantasize was a \n escapist practice, a turning away from reality rather than a confrontation with reality in attempted change. He considered fantasy as a derivative of play and that the child as growing older turned from fantasy focused upon an object was able to replace the object with castles in the air, with daydreams. Freud theorized that the pleasure principle was replaced by the reality principle.

Present day psychology considers that fantasy is part of our biological endowment and that the discrepancy between our innerworld and our outer world compels man to become inventive thereby leading to imagination. Imagination is the attempt to bridge the inner world and the outer world of man.

Goya wrote “Phantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”

There are two kind of fantasies those that reach out to the world and are found non congruent and those congruent it is the difference between the tqo that leads to imagination.

Creative apperception demands the conjunction of the subjective and the objective. “It is creative apperception more than anything else that makes the individual feel that life is worth living.” Page 71 Solitude

When play is deserted because so much importance is placed upon the endeavor joy goes with it. There is an element of play in innovation. If we consider the outer world as something that we can only adapt to then we lose a sense of possible fulfillment individuality disappears and one despairs of a life that seems to be meaningless and futile.

Fantasy leads to imagination, which leads to a meaningful life.

Hobbies are ways in which many individuals express their individuality. Those matters that excite an individual interest and curiosity are those very things that allow the individual him or her to self-understanding and also for others to understand them. Interests define individuality and help to provide meaning to life. We all look for some ideology, philosophy or religion to provide meaning to life.

When examining psychosis the psychiatrist advises either the establishment of an interpersonal evolvement or for finding interests and perhaps new patterns of thought. Many of us find that our work provides that means for identity and personal fulfillment.

None of us have discovered our full potentialities or have fully explored in depth those we have discovered. Self-development and self-expression are relatively new ideas in human history. The arts are one means for this self-expression. The artist may find drawing or constructing sculptures as a means for self-discovery. The self-learner may find essay writing of equal importance. Consciousness of individuality was first become a possibility in the Middle Ages. The renaissance and further the Reformation enhanced the development of individual identification.

As technology developed there grew a further enhancement of the perception of the individual. It was in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1674 that the word “self” took on the present modern meaning of “a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness”. “Self” as an instance of compounds with other words appeared over this period of time. Self-knowledge (1613), self-examination (1647). Self-interest (1649).

The word “individual” moved from the indivisible and collective to the divisible and distinctive. In this we see the development of an understanding of self-consciousness thus illustrating the dramatic change taking place in our developing understanding of the self as a distinct subject not just a cipher in a community. This was part of the Renaissance.

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IMO how a person values imagination is related to their goal. If your goal is a happy pleasant life imagination can play a useful part.

Imagination may cause discontent but it also can lead to contentment as written for example where fantasy replaces harsh realities.

Rose colored glasses can do wonders including supplying meaning.

However, suppose living a happy pleasant life created through imagination is found insufficient to answer the nagging question of meaning? Then imagination must be sacrificed in favor of reality. Imagination is the opposite or at least a distortion of reality so it must be sacrificed.

Some people for some reason are driven to experience meaning through reality at the cost of a happy and pleasant existence. The ancient religions refer to this in one way or another as awakening. Awakening from what? Imagination. Imagination while offering contentment denies our individuality that develops from the intentional experience of reality. It may have its place at play time but it cannot be allowed to replace the active experience of reality. If we use our imagination it is one thing but if imagination uses us then it is another and we lose our individuality to it.

She is right. Societal influences deny our real needs and compulsions replacing it with its artificially created ones taking advantage of our need to belong.

What may be sacrificed from this is another thread but the few that became aware of this need for meaning through reality were in the past considered “black sheep.” They sensed in some way that their captivation through imagination was depriving them of something important that could only be known through the intentional experience of reality. I’ll close this post with a favorite old tale about this situation. Take from it what you will.

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Nick

I think I agree with the author about imagination. Imagination helps us fantasize and a process of reasoning must then discipline our fantasies. Reasoning compares our fantasies with reality. Those fantasies congruent with reality can be worked with and those that are non-congruent must be deleted.

My goal is to assist others to develop an understanding of self-actualized learning. This form of learning has become very important to me especially as I become older and retired. I find that understanding is a creative process whereby the individual creates meaning. Such a creative process requires a generous complement of both curiosity and imagination.

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Chuck

This assumes though that a person is able to experience reality. If the old masters are right and we are unawakened, then we live in a dream. If this is so, what we consider congruent with reality is just a desirable fantasy replacing an undesirable fantasy. If ones goal is meaning achieved through happiness and contentment, it can serve that purpose.

The choice then seems to me to be either in creating meaning or allowing it to be revealed. It can be created through imagination or revealed from impartial attention.

Simone Weil was extraordinary at remaining open through attention.

For objective meaning to be revealed and if that is the goal, we have to be open to it at the expense of reliance on created meaning from pleasure which is selective in its openness.

Also from “Gravity and Grace:”

A very deep conception. Real learning and purification (freedom) results from remaing open to the experience through the power of conscious impartial attention.

And meaning is revealed.

The inability to cope with the experience of meaninglessness is tragic IMO. It is better to create meaning. However, For those capable of becoming open to it, I believe it is still better to allow it to be revealed.

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Nick

Well if a person cannot judge reality from non-reality I guess we do have a problem. Such individuals live with delusions and hallucinations. But you are correct in that while most people can judge mundane reality with ease they seldom can ‘see’ what is real when going beyond the mundane. This is where self-actuated learning comes into play.

I will copy an essay on this matter at the end of this post. I think your quotation by Simone Weil makes a great deal of sense. Understanding comes with struggle but when it arrives there is a moment of ecstasy. You make a good point about being open to truth. I think that we need also to search with a question. We are educated to memorize answers but for the self-learner the most important element for understanding is finding the right question.

You speak of revealed truth. I think that nothing is revealed if that word means ‘without effort’. I think that we must struggle for understanding.

September Scholar

I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ‘see’ and then to ‘grasp’ through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.

We often use the metaphors of ‘seeing’ for knowing and ‘grasping’ for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.

The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ‘truth’, is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ‘truth’ discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.

The experience the September Scholar seeks is solely determined by his or her own internal ‘voice’. The curiosity and imagination of the learner drive the voice. Our formal education system has left most of us with little appreciation or understanding of our own curiosity and imagination. That characteristic so obvious in children has been subdued and, I suspect, stilled to the point that each one attempting this journey of discovery must make a conscious effort to reinvigorate the ‘inner voice’. We must search to ‘hear’ the voice, which is perhaps only a whisper that has become a stranger in our life. But, let me assure you, once freed again that voice will drive the self-learner with the excitement and satisfaction commensurate to any other experience.

I seek disinterested knowledge because I wish to understand. The object of understanding is determined by questions guiding my quest. These guiding questions originate as a result of the force inherent in my curiosity and imagination.

The self-learner must develop the ability to create the questions. We have never before given any thought to questions but now, if we wish to take a journey of discover, we must learn the most important aspect of any educational process. We must create questions that will guide our travels. We can no longer depend upon education by coercion to guide us; we have the opportunity to develop education driven by the “ecstasy to understand”.

I suspect that most parents attempt to motivate their children to make good grades in school so that their child might go to college and live the American Dream. The college degree is a ticket to the land of dreams (where one produces and consumes more than his or her neighbor). I do not wish to praise or to bury this dream. I think there is great value resulting from this mode of education but it is earned at great sacrifice.

The point I wish to pivot on is the fact that higher education in America has become a commodity. To commodify means: to turn (as an intrinsic value or a work of art) into a commodity (an economic good). I would say that the intrinsic value of education is wisdom. It is wisdom that is sacrificed by our comodified higher education system. Our universities produce individuals capable of developing a great technology but lacking the wisdom to manage the world modified by that technology.

I think that there is much to applaud in our higher educational system. It produces graduates that have proven their ability to significantly guide our society into a cornucopia of material wealth. Perhaps, however, like the Midas touch, this gold has a down side. The down side is a paucity of collective wisdom within the society. I consider wisdom to be a sensitive synthesis of broad knowledge, deep understanding and solid judgement. I suggest that if one individual in a thousand, who has passed the age of forty would become a September Scholar, we could significantly replace the wisdom lost by our comodified higher education.

In the United States our culture compels us to have a purpose. Our culture defines that purpose to be ‘maximize production and consumption’. As a result all good children feel compelled to become a successful producer and consumer. All good children, both consciously and unconsciously, organize their life for this journey.

At mid-life many citizens begin to analyze their life and often discover a need to reconstitute their purpose. I suggest, for your consideration, that at mid-life you consider becoming a self-learner. Some of the advantageous of this self-learning experience is that it is virtually free, undeterred by age, not a zero sum game, surprising, exciting and makes each discovery a new eureka moment. The self-learning experience I am suggesting is similar to any other hobby one might undertake; interest will ebb and flow. In my case this was a hobby that I continually came back to after other hobbies lost appeal.

I suggest for your consideration that if we “Get a life—Get an intellectual life” we very well might gain substantially in self-worth and, perhaps, community-worth. As a popular saying goes ‘there is a season for all things’. We might consider that spring and summer are times for gathering knowledge, maximizing production and consumption, and increasing net-worth; while fall and winter are seasons for gathering understanding, creating wisdom and increasing self-worth.

I have been trying to encourage adults, who in general consider education as a matter only for young people, to give this idea of self-learning a try. It seems to be human nature to do a turtle (close the mind) when encountering a new and unorthodox idea. Generally we seem to need for an idea to face us many times before we can consider it seriously. A common method for brushing aside this idea is to think ‘I’ve been there and done that’, i.e. ‘ I have read and been a self-learner all my life’.

It is unlikely that you will encounter this unorthodox suggestion ever again. You must act on this occasion or never act. The first thing is to make a change in attitude about just what is the nature of education. Then one must face the world with a critical outlook. A number of attitude changes are required as a first step. All parents, I guess, recognize the problems inherent in attitude adjustment. We just have to focus that knowledge upon our self as the object needing an attitude adjustment rather than our child.

I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ‘Lewis and Clark Expedition’. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.

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Chuck

I see you have an interest in education and have become suspicious of it. You may appreciate the following article. When I read these things I see more clearly what is lost through modern education. It also explains the value of attention in more detail.

dur.ac.uk/r.d.smith/weil.html