Speculation, Redux

[kittydesade]

The first time I made this post I was on my break at work, which limited me to what can I type in 10 minutes, and I was still recovering from a nightmare of doom. Which, while it did in part inspire the whole speculation thing, did not help my state of mind. In fact, it inclined it more towards the exhausted and panicky. So, here is the post again, edited to add answers to some people's questions, and for coherency, and separated into topic.


And cut, of course, for people's friends-lists. I have the feeling this will go on for a while.


I. Mindset, Modern Culture, and Trends in the Imagination

Again, post previously posted, originally from oldestbeloved, regarding the death of the imagination. After a nap, a damn good dinner involving comfort food, and being calmer, do I think the world is suffering from a death of the imagination? No more or less than I did before. Do I think that people are more inclined to believe what they're told, do what they're shown, etc? Actually, I kind of do.

The world is growing so much smaller, and yes, a lot of the increase in bad news is more due to the fact that we can hear it coming in from all over the globe rather than bad things happening more frequently. But we also are open to receiving new solutions to unusual problems that may no longer be so unusual, in this wider world. What might previously have been nigh unthinkable... the first thing that comes to mind is dealing with a sexual orientation that is taboo or anathema to your home environment. A hundred years ago it may have been unthinkable that you would do anything about it, except hide. Now you do have more alternatives, but you also have one of three or four pre-packaged alternatives: come out and reform yourself, stay hidden, come out and rebel violently and blatantly, come out and attempt some sort of understanding.

Again, just an example, and a very broad one at that. But I do think that pre-packaged solutions are coming in more varieties, more able to deal with the new problems that life has to offer. I think that part, the following the herd, finding your answers and your choices and your decisions in what you see and hear in the media and in popular culture, has only gotten easier and not harder over time.

And, re-reading some people's responses to the initial post, I think pay_the_piper is right. People are exercising their minds less. It is simply, at least in the First World, easier for a lot of people to plug in a video game or a DVD and let that take care of their kids for them. Or in the case of adults, it's simply easier to play CounterStrike, World of Warcraft, Online Poker or Solitaire than to figure out how to save your marriage or pay your bills. Hell, I've done the same damn thing. Bad Jag. *handslap* People exercise their minds less. Like anything else, the less you work it, the more it atrophies.


II. Escapism.

I don't think this is the same thing as escapism. Related, yes, but not the same. I think escapism can take any one of half a dozen forms. The ones that leap to mind first are substance addiction or altered state addition, simple repetitive (yes, RPGs count if you play solve-the-quest ones too many times) game addiction, TV addiction, or just plain living in your own head too much. God knows I'm guilty of the last, and have been. I was the kid who could lay out on the grass, stare at the treeline, and daydream five hours away. And I did.

I don't think that necessarily has anything to do with a lack of the imagination. Like analise said, sometimes we just need something that we can't get in real life. Adulation, power, love, respect, understanding, laughter, friendship, Goddess knows. A good set of nail clippers. A puppy. So we make it happen, or we find ways to make it happen, in our minds and hearts if nothing else. I think that, even if it involves E! magazine (is that a magazine or am I combining a TV show and a magazine?) or Elle or Maxim or GQ or TNT or MSNBC News or ohnotheydidnt or whatever, at least works the imagination somewhat.

What do you need? Well, right now I need a nail clippers and an aspirin or two, but also? I need adventure. I need intellectual stimulation. I need someone who can keep up with me, who can follow the abrupt turns and twists my mind makes. I need passion and love and to just be left alone sometimes. I need someone who understands me, a need I'm pretty sure most people can relate to. I need... oh, hi Sam. I need to be a Very Important Person. So I gave myself my own Tower. I need a Muse, so I gave myself one. I needed to fly, so I gave myself wings. Possibly last night I needed to be scared into continuing my writing productivity, so I gave myself an inspirational nightmare. Or I just needed to cut out the serial killer shows before bed.

We can fulfill these needs with pre-packaged mush from our every-day lives, or we can season that mush with things from our own imaginations. And doing that, even if it involves sitcoms or Jared Padalecki or Stephen Colbert or Anna Nicole Smith or the newspaper or Extra! or Michael Flatley shows or Vegas, baby... it's still stretching the imagination. Anything that drives you to dream. To think. To try and grasp that idea that's just out of your reach. That's good, in my book.



III. Apparitions, Figments, Sam, and the Strength of the Imagination.

This tangent sprung out of the second prompt he did. They're linked, kind of, even more so with the nightmare I had last night. The bulk of it was very horror movie based, with the group of young men and women at the cabin in the woods with a psycho killer, so I will skip to the end. Apparently the psycho killer had the ability to jump bodies, and I was floating around the cabin in astral form, we'll call it. There was a bit of cheesy dialogue, involving the lines "Well, I'll just jump into one of them right before they leave and they'll never know." "Well, the joke's on you, because you jumped into me and I'm blind. And therefore you can't see to jump into anyone else." Except that then the bad guy in the friend's body turned and looked at me and said "That's not quite true, is it."

This nightmare had me up and shuddering for the next hour and a half. The feeling of that nightmare character turning and looking straight at me, not just me in the dream, but me, the dreamer. It was like lucid dreaming. It may have been because I woke up immediately after and there was the sense that I woke up to escape it. Him, it. Something like that. It was like lucid dreaming and it was like reality, if your reality encompasses people who can look at you through your dreams and hate you, and covet you like a prize or a favorite food or a thing. Astrally projecting people or telepathic attacks.

It was also like a violation of everything that is the inner me. Like I'd just been raped by one of my own nightmares. Like my insides were now on my outside being shown to me, something that shook the natural order of things, broke it, and put it back together in a fashion that was never meant to be. This was one hell of a powerful nightmare.

So, tangent. Take that nightmare, add to it the fact that I'd just a day or two ago written about one of my most coveted (and scary, if you've read his prompts) dreams coming to life to meet me at the Faire, add a lot of speculation on whether the world is getting stupider and less imaginative, or whether that is just my imagination. And you have a tangent.

Here's the tangent part one: Would it ever be possible to believe something hard enough and strong enough that it comes to life? Science says no. But science also said the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, there were only three states of matter, the speed of light was a constant. Science, to my way of thinking at least, is only another form of faith. The faith that some things are constant and will always be constant, no matter what. The sun rose today, yes. Or rather, scientifically speaking, we completed a rotation around our axis. The sun will rise tomorrow, or, scientifically speaking, we will complete another rotation around our axis. How do we know? We don't. Or we won't. Not until tomorrow. Do we believe, take it on our faith in science? Yes.

Is it possible to believe something hard enough and strong enough that it comes to life? Maybe.

Would I like it to be possible? ... Yes, I think I would.

Do I think the world has that kind of strength of the imagination? I don't know. I don't even know what kind of strength of the imagination it would take. What it would take at all. I think there are imaginative people in the world, people who believe hard enough or vividly enough or whatever-ly enough that they could. If it were possible by one person believeing hard enough, or vividly enough. Or. I don't know. I don't know how it would happen.

Would I like Sam to turn up? I... am afraid that the answer would be yes. And I do realize the consequences of that would be dire. Sam, for those of you who don't know or haven't listened to him rant about what he is, is dangerous. Sam is just seductive and nice and sweet enough to draw you in and then he will, in all likelihood, shred you. And I'm trying to summarize in one sentence what it's taken me three or four years to put together, probably longer. But he is very, very dangerous. gumnut asked me, rightly, if I would want to unleash that upon the world. Put it like that and the answer is... I don't know. Probably not. But, do I want Sam to turn up at Faire just for a day, just for me? Goddess, yes.

Would I be able to control him? I doubt it. Maybe for a week, maybe for a year, maybe even for many years I could do it, but not forever. And, let loose? God, how many people in this world would be capable of handling him even a little? Too few.

IV. Conclusion, of a sort

Is there a point to all of this? Not really. Have I reiterated a lot of stuff previously posted? Probably. I tried to make it clearer and less rambly, I don't know how well I succeeded. It helps that I had more than ten minutes in which to write it all down.

The prompts that started most of this are The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost that they might never have existed in the first place. and You've been granted one wish, what is it. The first thing that came to both my mind and Sam's mind was the ability of people to dream. It's valuable to Sam because it's the nature of his existance. If I hadn't dreamed him up he wouldn't be here. If people's dreams vanish to the point where they might as well never existed, he dies. For an immortal figmentious being, that's a terrifying thought. The wish, of course, is my conceit that his greatest wish would be to be able to be with me truly, in person, and in a way compatible to both of us. That's arrogance on my part, both that he would want to be with me and that I could make it a safe thing for him to be so.

But it made me think. It, and the nightmare, and people's comments to my first post about it made me think. As to the prompt, looking at it now I think that actually, if you can call anything in the world magic, then at least imagination is not dead. Or would not or could not be dead. As to reality, dreams, the imagination, manifesting things to life.

Well, I just don't know about that. I've had a lot of very good dreams. But I've also had a lot of hideous nightmares, and I don't believe you can have one without the other. I don't know if it would be a good or bad thing to unleash upon the world.

But, thinking about it? I think that if we did, we would find a way to cope with it. We're just resourceful like that. And imaginative.