Imagine That There's No

 Imagine That There’s No

Imagine that people have no imagination. Their minds are devoid of thinking abstractly. Their thoughts were only able to deal with concrete ideas that they could hold in their hands, to see with their eyes, or to taste with their tongue. Our ancestors had no televisions, no computers, no movies, and no cameras, and no mimeographs or Xerox copiers. When mankind was first established on earth, the passing on information was done by story telling. Oral tradition was the only way to pass on knowledge and tales. A person’s imagination was needed to shape and bring to life the words that were shared by another person. Slowly words were transferred by marks of charcoal, divots pressed into clay tablets, or carvings into stone. Some used the charcoal to outline beasts and beings onto cave walls to tell stories. Others took it a step farther to make pigments to paint the story onto the walls. It took only the imagination of the viewer to retell what the scene portrayed and to bring the story to life.

When the written languages proliferated, so did the expansion of information. Each idea became a shared foundation upon which another generation of ideas could be used as stepping stones or as a ladder to reach the next level of ideas. Having the written word was an improvement, but it still took imagination to fully understand what the author intended. Then it took more imagination to see beyond the writer’s plateau and to create something more.

Inventions created electricity and the telephone farther extending man’s imaginative reach. The reach cut the cord and radios were invented. Families huddled around the radio in the home to listen to the news, music, comedy, drama, and sports. It was no longer necessary to wait for word of mouth or to attend an event to be in-the-know, but the listener still needed imagination to understand what was happening. They used their mind’s eye to “each the games unfold. It took imagination for the news of the battlefront and the fighting armies of the war to be understood. Many used maps, but it didn’t relay the carnage and the struggle of the soldiers.

Today we are being spoon-fed from televisions, computers, and even our cell phones. The once necessary imagination is being starved or being overfed by the inundation of information. Whether starved or choked, today’s youth are losing their ability to use their imagination.