Philosophy of Imagination*Twenty One

Why do we live in cities? Why do we pack and stack ourselves into small parcels of land that are dirty and polluted? Why do we pay exorbitant rents to live like a caged animal? There is plenty of land and opportunity other places. Look at fucking Montana! Wide open. I think they may still be giving land away free there. Sure, there is a lot more to do in New York City or Chicago or Boston. A lot more to see, but you can always travel there and see and do in chunks. Then return home to your beautiful, unadulterated, clean land, where the only thing crowding you is the trees. Why do millions stay crammed in the vacuum of the metropolis?

The better your Imagination you have, the more you use it to create beauty and art, the more gravity you will create. When you pack all those Imaginative, creative, charismatic people into a geographically small place, then the place will also have more gravity. As the gravity of a city grows, it pulls in more Imaginative/creative people, until you have a place filled with culture and beauty the these amazing people have created. And more come to bask. 

Sure there are many other factors. People are born there. A lot of them. Their families are there, so they stick around. A lot of people means a lot of jobs, so you have opportunity (despite popular belief, job pay is not commiserate with the cost of living for most professions, because there is a glut of talented workforce, drawn in by the Imagination gravity). There are a lot of things to do (but no one but the very rich (or kids of the very rich) move somewhere based solely on the fact that there's lots of things to do). It's cool to say you live in a big city, so it's a status symbol, mostly for people stuck back in hometowns across the country.

Cities are where things are happening, but most of this is predicated on art and culture and Imagination. It's where the Collective Imagination is thickest and you can feel the ideas swirling and dancing through the air if stop to feel them. But since there is so much other shit going on, people often get lost or overwhelmed or begin to feel inferior, as they were the only interesting creative outsider weirdo in their town and these cities are filled with people much like them from all over the World. Competition is high. If you can manage to not get sidetracked by drugs, alcohol and beautiful people, as well as not getting squished by the pressure or lack of money (which happens to most people first--and then they are ejected back him or to seedier livelihoods or they find themselves living on Long Island selling carpet). 

Cities are some of the most Imaginative places in the Universe. They are great places to be for the Imagineer, but the distractions are immense. Stay focused, tap into the Collective Imagination that is everywhere, pluck it from the sky and carve a place for yourself in the zeitgeist. Otherwise, you may as well move to Montana.

Philosophy of Imagination*Eighteen

Where's happy?

Hopefully all of them. Throw a rock and you'll hit happy. Have you ever been to an amazing concert? The band is playing the best song they've ever written, an energy and vitality like it was the first time they played it and crowd is going apeshit like it's the first time they've heard this musical genius!

What is that special feeling that everyone (except maybe the drunk people barfing in the port-potties) is experiencing? That euphoric happiness that is so strong, if a bomb was dropped on top of all of you, everyone would be fine with it. What is that connectedness that makes you lock eyes with a total sweaty stranger three rows down, while you dance and sing the lyrics to each other? Invisible, but palpable. Free, but invaluable. Strong, but fleeting. What makes this happen?

This can be said of all events where groups of people come together to share a joyous experience. Sports, movies, parades. It can also evaporate quickly and leave sad, anxious, angry feelings if something goes wrong. Like when your football team is winning big and the other team slowly comes back and that moment when they take the lead, its as if everyone was struck with depression and insecurities. They always use the term 'the air got sucked out of the stadium'. What is that? What sucks the collective exuberance out of a crowd? 

Imagination. Our Collective Imagination gets condensed, concentrated when we're all together, sharing an experience. Our Imaginations are working together toward a common idea -- how awesome this concert/game is going to continue to be. The best fucking concert ever! That's what the Collective Imagination is doing and it's so powerful, it can suck in everyone. 

If something goes wrong, someone gets hurt, the music stops, your team goes down late in the game, the same Collective Imagination that created the happiness hysteria, turns to Imagining the worst. The ripples encompassing everyone. Is the person gonna die? That might have been the last note my favorite band ever plays? Our season is over.

Overwhelmingly these events stay positive, fueling our happiness and love for each other without a word being spoken. How can we create more events and coming together moments where we tap into the beauty and power of our Collective Imagination? We should have huge coming togethers for no other reason than coming together.

For love alone.

Philosophy of Imagination*Fifteen

The dreams you create for yourself with your Imagination are the most precious resource in this World. They are what keeps our Earth spinning and the Universe Universing (it's so grandiose and awe inspiring, it's hard to distill exactly what it's doing -- because it's everything really). Your dreams need to be kept safe, nurtured and growing. Your dreams will always be in your head. Always. When they first emerge, they are so big and sublime that they could fill every last corner of the Universe. They are born from so many different places. Perhaps it's a film that you see (that's my favorite one -- mine was Fargo), or a parent that is great at their dream/profession or seeing deficiency in the World. Whatever exterior things your dreams are born from, you're Imagination takes it and turns it in to palpable inspiration and it grows almost too big to fathom.

Then, it's time for you to start turning those massive dreams into reality! What we call the 'work' or the 'hard part'. We get moving and immediately begin to face resistance, from every direction. The work is hard and time consuming. You begin to get tired. The realization of the dream seems so far off, that apathy and despair set in. You must believe in yourself, your Imagination and your dreams and keep moving ahead. You will be the biggest thing you have to overcome, but the outside World is great at reiterating your doubt. Almost everyone, and there is no hyperbole in that statement, nearly 99% of people will tell you that your entire dream or part of your dream are unattainable, that you should give up. Most of this isn't from malice or anger or jealousy, it's from their perception of reality and how the World works. As soon as we're born, the World begins to atrophy your Imagination. The hard work and the people and the obstacles you encounter tell you 'No' with such frequency, that it is hard to keep your Imagination from shrinking, forget not growing, it disintegrates fast.

You will have to be your teacher, your cheerleader, your guru. Sure you will meet a few people along the way who say 'yes you can' and some who will put you on their shoulders for a while and make sure you stay as close to those people as you can. That you reciprocate their kindness and optimism and remain loyal and true, but most of the work will have to come from within. From your Imagination, even while it is facing a constant barrage of naysayers and pessimists. One of the hardest parts about this is that much of your Imagination has been decimated by the time you reach school age, before you have a real grasp on who you are and what you want. So while your battling the outside forces that want to to disable your Imagination, you will also have to be rebuilding it. It's like trying to build your castle in the middle of an enemy attack. Trying to build a house while the rain pummels you. That's the hard work. 

So many give up. It's fucking really hard and the path to 'no' is easier. We can easily exist in this World even if we're not doing what we want. Lives can be lived and even be fulfilling in other ways. But there will always be that huge emptiness, that empty space (darkness, ether, dark energy, vacuum) in the Universe of your Imagination that can never be filled*.

You can realize everything you can Imagine. Fuck the people who say no. Fuck the people who say you'll never make it. Fuck the people who say you're crazy and are suffering from grandiose delusions. If everyone listened to it, we will still be pounding rocks and living in caves. I don't give a shit who you are and where you came from, you can realize your dream if you continually tell yourself yes in the face of all diversity, if you're willing to keep moving ahead when most sane people would turn back (You can't kill that dragon! Are you fucking crazy!). Greatness lives at the edge of crazy (Stay true to yourself and never hurt anyone and you'll never fall over the edge).

Also, make sure to realize that as you make this epic journey to wrangle your dreams, you're not doing it alone. Your inspirations, all the people that came before you that didn't listen to the 'no's' or the pain in their bodies. We are beholden to them and their Imaginations and the Universe. Without them, you wouldn't be able to live your dreams. And the people that come after you will owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude. Imagine if no one said no? If the World didn't inadvertently destroy our Imagination? If the hard work became a little easier, because everyone else believed in you and you believed in them and everyone helped everyone else on their quest for ultimate fulfillment? If we believed that everyone deserves something, instead of believing we deserve everything for our hard work? Imaginations. The most powerful forces in the Universe, working together for goodness and light? How many questions could we answer? How many lives could we save? How much pain could we alleviate? What if we all asked ourselves these questions daily? If we believed in ourselves and each other?

Keep running. Fuel your Imagination. And help everyone you can to do the same. What a beautiful Light we will make!!!

*If our Imagination is infinite, like the Universe, like time and space, will we begin to understand everything around us better as we grow our Imagination? Will those dark spaces and vacuums and things unknown start to make sense if we believe in ourselves and our Imaginations? That they truly can accomplish anything if we're willing to work hard and maintain our morals and values? Will the mysteries be solved? What is empty space? What is dark matter? What is the dark force? Can we catch light? Do we have to Imagine a solution first before we can prove the theory through math and science? Does something exist before we are able to prove it? Does proving it finally bring the theory into reality? If we all make our Imaginations stronger through hard work and belief in ourselves, will the great mysteries come more readily? Through the strengthening of the collective conscious? Does the collective conscious exist? Certainly there will always be more mysteries to solve, as the Universe/Time/Space is infinite. Surely more questions will arise? Without mystery, without the unknown, how will our Imaginations continue to grow? Knowing everything is fucking boring.

Philosophy of Imagination*Ten

Today is V-E Day! Hooray! One of the greatest days in the history of our World. The day before, we were engaged in the biggest war the World has ever seen. People were dying everywhere. The families of soldiers were scared and fearful that their sons and husbands would never come home. Europe was drudging through the idea that their future lay under the thumb of Nazi rule.

Then the next day, that was all wiped away! Everyone could Imagine a big bright beautiful future! Even for Germany and the Nazis. All of that positivity and hope and dreams unleashed upon the Earth by millions of people at once. It had to have been palpable, the song of the collective Imagination rising up and making a rainbow that shown across the whole planet. I bet V-E Day set the record for most fucking in one day?

Propaganda can be a very effective tool in wartime. It can tap in to the darkness of the Imagination and foster feelings of dread and hopelessness. The psychological damage can be much more severe than the physical one. If that hopelessness spurred on by negative propaganda permeates a city or town or country, often times there is no coming back. 

It's best not to listen at all and only see the life in front of you. Keep your spirits up and hope alive for a brighter tomorrow. That spirit is what kept the Allies going. Despite overwhelming odds, they could still envision a great future with their collective Imagination. They were able to defeat an enemy that was unbeatable, because they believed they could do it and they didn't listen to the voices telling them that they were finished.

Recently I was feeling very anxious, angry and scared about our current political climate. Every day there was something in the news that reignited the fire that I had put out the day before. I got so caught up in the propaganda, I was having trouble focusing on anything else. So I quit the news. I haven't read or watched any news in almost two months and I feel amazing! My mind and Imagination are working better than ever! And it allows me to Imagine my World, how I truly see it, not how the news media and advertisers want me to see it. 

We need to think more for ourselves. I didn't realize how much power the media has until I turned them off. It is powerful! They are creating drama and your Imagination (usually the dark side of it) blows it even further out of proportion. We have to think for ourselves. Take back full control of our Imaginations and let it focus on making our lives happier and more fulfilling.

You're Imagination is your own. Make sure you're piloting it.