Unimaginativeness

1761:

Consider, if you will, that disease, illness and pessimism are symptoms of a deep-seated unimaginativeness. Imagination may be thriving amongst small children but it's either lost altogether or it's only deemed useful for the arts and entertainment industries; as the held-hand, guiding us into our future, imagination is thought to have little relevance. Perhaps imagination seems too open-ended, too mischievous, tripping us up when we get above ourselves, pushing us beyond our comfort zone or just not much use as a problem-solver. But not everyone thinks this way. To some it's the creative driver, to others it's the safety net, and for others imagination acts like an elder who is demanding in order to keep standards high.

If we recognise its power, use it to 'imagine' ideas into reality, we can watch new ideas grow until they’re independent of imagination and can be allowed to grow on their own. And if these ideas are to stand the test of time, it will be because we've launched them, held them together with a focused imagination, until they're ready to initiate change; and to bring about as major a change as moving away from speciesism, we need that exhilarating burst of fresh energy from a lively imagination.

At a certain stage, if change is too slow it will whimper along, never building up enough momentum. It will always be being held back by our making mistake after mistake. We'll start to see imagination scuttling our ideas. So imagination has to be focused, to get past the stumbling blocks, in order to consolidate change and let it do its work to bring about change. Society's attitude to animals, for instance, will only change when enough individuals have been able to imagine change into their own lives, and go on to impress the majority to get with the same idea. And that, as an idea, is where Animal Rights needs to get to.

That level of change, affecting human nature on such a scale, needs far more than one isolated idea (being vegan, for instance) to succeed. It needs to take the idea of being vegan as the beginning of a much greater change ahead. It's got to cover everything connected to animals, and then start on it's long journey towards bringing about personal change, societal change, and exchange violent-thinking for non-violent-thinking.

For this to happen, we need a vibrant imagination. Without that, our species will surely die from unimaginativeness. And no doubt drag the other species and biota down with us.