Imagination

A Story by AlwaysNewbie

Quick thoughts, Not really a story, more of a discussion entry. Done based on personal experience and opinion, totally biased.

What was the initial process? How did you imagine or recreated an image in your head? What and how allowed you to think of that exact image? - All these questions were asked countless times.

Scientists say that it just your brain cells operating, but my inner self protests! I have no proof, no data, however I got an enquiring personality and willingness to go through a struggle of thinking through the nature of thought. School… It all starts in school, a place where you asked to achieve in order to get a number/letter on the paper that which is supposed to indicate your effort and intellectual levels. In school you are taught facts, what is considered as concrete knowledge that can not be argued with. That was a place where I first started asking questions which were never answered, or answered in the way that wouldn't leave me satisfied. For example you can be taught a way of thinking, a way to reason your ideas. But there is so much more to the idea of all that happens within your head.

For example imagination can not be taught, All of you can imagine the same thing, but in absolutely different ways, each distinct image results in distortion from person to person, due to culture, personal feelings and experience. There will be similarities, but would that imply that each one of us imagines the same dog? On the first glance you could argue that being the case. Dog has 4 legs, head and torso (Possibly a tail), it barks and is attached to humans (Also could be argued otherwise by people who had bad experience with dogs). However all of that is way to basic, when we are looking into creating an image of a complete objects we can follow two main paths (Possibly three, however the third one is rather radical and is generally applied by children): As our first possibility, we can image a real dog that we have encountered in real life. That is the way of recreating an image through concrete example. In this way you can recreate exact feelings and emotions, even the tiniest of details… (Implies you put in effort into doing that). Second way is probably more common, making a generalisation. When you combine a lot of images to create an absolute average. And than state the inaccuracies (Or don't, but in that case you are making a bold statement). However these ways don't mean imagination, we build an image through knowledge and experience. The images come out differently also due to cultural backgrounds (It has a huge effect on the image you get, but going into this will probably lead to unnecessary details put in the discussion, so lets say we are acknowledging that it's true, but not really taking into account).

The third and radical way, is to throw what we experienced out of the window and just imagine the image! Kids do that best, thats why from time to time they are the most intriguing objects you can find on earth. In this way there is no limit, no scale, no proportion. Nothing is concrete and everything is possible. Now apply this method to a solution of a problem. Imagine (huh Ironic) a problem that you can not solve for a long time, you think in your own past, look up the solutions which were already used in cases which were like yours, but you can't get the answer… Thats when you put past methods aside! You go on, just like a child a try to think of a solution trying out the most random of ideas. You will eventually get there, and probably address the problem in a totally different way to what you tried before; and it won't matter that someone might have already thought of that or found a different solution to your problem, the sense of achievement you get by going through this process.

Thats it for this time, some quick thoughts and ideas to your brains going! Hope you enjoyed and thought about a thing or two. Take care and take time to imagine all the things you will never encounter(Worth the time)! And remember I'm always new to this :P