The deep end
Once I was told, if you wish to sing, sing loudly. Even if it might be out of tune. Well, this is me singing loud today, better bring an umbrella and a swimsuit…
There’s this habit in blogging to start with an enticing scene from real life. Some lush strokes to paint a situation that lures you into the actual thing it wants to get across. I feel cheated when writers do that. Manipulated if I discover the trick. If done by the book the opening circles back in the conclusion, for a well rounded, how-it’s-supposed-to-be ending. Inducing an all is well feeling. We do that a lot. We seek it. Even when all is not well at all.
The planned opening for this post was:
I like to jump in at the deep end.
Meaning that I often get straight to the point. No introductions, because I simply forget that who I’m talking to doesn’t know what I know and is not at all busy thinking about the thing that has invaded my whole world. Which can differ from last weeks. I get invaded a lot.
It’s not true though. I don’t jump in at the deep end. At the actual pool I start in the luke warm baby puddle and work my way down. Not very brave. By now I know why. Or at least I have found a plausible story to make it workable. It’s compensation. And it’s not just me doing this.
My cautious real life behaviours and habits are in deep contrast with my inner life. So, while I’d like to go in head first for real, I imagine the doing at least a dozen times before I get to it. The rapid fire of inner scenario’s warns against dangers unseen and cascading risks unfolding from each tiny mistake. Pointing out the horrific consequences of a playground slide may be functional for boys and girls who go in blindly. It kept me from participating half my life. Thanks dad.
I see, I see, what you can’t see1. I have a vivid imagination. Brutally vivid. It doesn’t stick to unicorns and magic kingdoms. It imagines disease and war and wounds and complications. I have whole debates before they happen. Car accidents and escalating situations. Many possible outcomes and lives lived in a split second. The more I can come up with, the larger the chance one will actually happen. The bigger the disease I imagine having, the more symptoms I uncover. The jump into the cold end of the pool could only be reached by crossing half the distance with each attempt. I did get closer, but never got wet.
I guess that’s why I started writing fiction. Back then it was boring scenery where everything went just as I wished. I compensated.
I excelled in compensating. The ultra fast inner turmoil was perfectly caught in external slowness. I fooled everyone for years. Including myself. I envied the rapid responders. The ones opening their mouths to sing loudly and off key, to give shallow answers without shame, and who simply tried and often succeeded through dumb luck.
Rich on the inside and poor on the outside. I won’t tire you with a full analysis, it is still going, I do wish to share what I found on the slow path. People may be externally wealthy while empty inside. Cluttered with stuff, clothed in silk and hardly any value there. I believe humans are shrewd compensators. And not just with big cars. We have a complex way of hiding, and that is a big part of the trouble we’re in. Like the squirrels we stash away for future security. But we have started burying the treasures so deep, that we forgot how to retrieve them. We have lost the skill needed to remove all the layers blocking our core shape. The form from before all the amendments.
Imagination needs a reboot, or rather we do. This double edged sword is dangerous and functional. If it can imagine it’s way into a disease, It can slice its way out through the cancerous weeds. If I can imagine what has gone wrong, I am halfway repairing the damn thing. Seeing forty three alternative ways to use a paperclip is the result of a deeper skill. It can do much more than produce variations. Imagining is a core activity. Not some appendix. It lies at the foundations of thinking.
Most of it is unconscious. Did I just say most of our thinking done is unaware? Yes, I did. And it changes everything.
Beyond the daylight chamber of our conscious experience lies an unknown universe, despite the constant claiming of the opposite. Not a collection of static objects, but there’s a raging storm of change out there. Nothing can be looked at twice. Just below the threshold of our awareness things are a bit much. This messy flood is sorted before it is presented. The threatening overwhelm, the risk of being blown of your feet is being dealt with in the best possible way before it arrives on the screen. We see the edited version. Not censored by some foreign malign manipulator but by a caring creature. You. The bigger you. The known and unknown you. It’s not perfect, but the whole bundle is a lot more capable than given credit for. If trusted ‘they’ can do their job a lot better. The convenient screen version is just a practical measure. Most of the trouble is dealt with out of sight and encoded into what we think of as the coherent world (on a need to know basis so to speak). That is the reality we experience. And it is not too real. Most of it is imagined. And that’s quite allright. As long as we trust the imaginative. The wide stream of implicit clues of what is actually going on. If you are ready you get acces. Augmented reality has been around for ages. But almost nobody remembers how to activate it.
Trust2 has eroded. It is crumbling. And loss of inner trust is compensated for in a million different outfits. And they are not making things easier. The less we trust, the less we are able to keep up with the storming rage of the actual universe.
Fortune telling
Humans are fortune tellers. All of us. The brain tries to predict the future. It is terrifically bad at that task, but knowing what will happen next is too important. It can’t help but try.
We compensate for the uncertainty of reality in myriad ways, many of which unrecognisable as fortune telling. Disguised as research, history, scientific inquiry3, the news, plans, experts, they are all attempts to predict, to make certain. Presented as based on experience, on gathered data, we secretly use it to try and sneak ahead. To get the advantage on time itself.
It’s imagination. It’s all fiction. Unrecognised and dangerous. If we start believing the imagined for real we’re in trouble. I rest my case.
The elemental ‘skill’ seen as appendix is now tolerated on probation. But bad imagination can’t participate of course. It must be ruled out. Regulated invisible. It can’t be trusted. And then it bites us in the butt. When domesticated it gets sick and dies a slow and nasty death. I really do think awareness is for the funny bits, for the humour of it. The serious stuff lies underneath. Way too wild for control. There is no such thing as bad imagination. Only results taken too seriously. We aim for doing the sorting out on a conscious level and are discovering it is undoable. It eats up all our time and energy.
Imagination doesn’t work as a gadget. We are stuck with the simple fact that we do not know what is coming. Yes, fact. No amount of modelling suffices to not bring an umbrella and a swimsuit4.
We must try. With all of the registers open we can, and must, and should imagine the future. And then we must go find out and discover it is very, very different for real. All on a voluntary basis of course.
Theory and practice are at odds. Damn.
Theory as imaginative practice unleashes an inner freedom lost to modernity. A space for play. It lets go of assuming we know. It discerns the product of the imagination from the living assisting undertow driving our being. It no longer takes the results so seriously, nor will it try to build lasting structures based on imagined longings or fears. In stead it holds the imaginative practice in the sacred sphere of attendance. We can be again. You remember? The original you was a being.
It is futile to consciously know and understand everything about this moment if you accept we are incapable of knowing what will be. Getting to know (and becoming known) is the ongoing property of life. Real knowing happens only when you’re done. Having wide eyed expectations of the arriving now and having knowledge and experience at hand is a much more healthy, whole, way of dealing with uncertainty. Because uncertainty is creation. Not knowing and allowing to unfold the core principle of reality. Planning tomorrow in the way we now take for granted disables the deep wisdom in the sum of all spheres. Planning, predicting, research, data gathering, ordering, structuring, judgement, even building, and above all imagining all serve. None of them can lead. The leading is done by what we cannot name, but only imagine.
Hard to accept for a smart creature set on figuring it out. The quest to outrun this moment is a fools quest. Goal oriented living is competing for the end. If you get it you’re out. If you settle you’re done.
The end of the world.
It is on the daily news. On your mind if you have any awareness on how we’re doing. Let me tell you a secret. It’s not going to end. It is not reality that will grind to a halt, it is you, us, the imagined we’ve taken for real. Its the imagined world that will end and that’s going to hurt. We will get unsettled because it is not the ‘what’ that is the most unpredictable. What predictions are easy; it will rain. It is the how that defies grasping.
What is real? Is that the question? The weird thing is that rediscovering the imaginative foundation could help find our way back to the real. I am a thinker, but my main income at this moment comes from building timber frames. Oak beams are very real. Not much room for misunderstanding there. If I do not communicate with the tree I’m risking my life. Nothing woohoo about that. If I make crucial mistakes along the way they could render the whole building worthless, up to the point of collapse. Society is nothing as simple as that. But the same risk applies. If there are crucial mistakes in the structure of civilisation, no amount of repair will help us.
A big part of my job is imagining at every stage of the build what the possible consequences could be. I suspect a few fundamental flaws go unseen in project humanity and we need widespread unblocked imagination to uncover them.
Apocalypse can be seen as the revealing of what is fake. It will be a big reveal. But remember, fear is also a product of the imagination. Important, but it is not the danger itself. There a difference we seem unable to sense anymore.
There is only one way to find out for yourself what is real. And it doesn’t involve doing away with the imagined. It won’t even get rid of the fear. On the contrary, it is about bringing the process to completion. Sticking with it, seeing the possible horrors and the potential storm, and still diving in. From theory to practice. From virtual to actual. That’s the movement. Not the other way around. Only doable without getting hurt when a huge amount of imaginative energy is applied. Internal imagination. The one that is yours and only yours. No external fantasy offered can assist with returning to real. With moving towards the actual life. Now with the best chance for survival and the full experience of the amazing leap we are in.
‘I see, I see... ‘, is the Dutch variation on, ‘I spy, with my little eye....’. A game that names the colour of something in the sphere. Making you guess what the other can see. A wonderful metaphor.
Trust is a difficult thing to write about. It must be addressed though. If we wish flow we must deal with trust and the lack of it. Lots to ponder there, trust will return….in these writings at least….
I know reducing science to fortune telling is a provocation. But your response brutally exposes a lack in the most fantastic skill. If nothing else it is funny. Lighten up if your offended. If not, I can announce divination is a rich enough subject for future posts.
While experience teaches it is wise to bring both swimsuit and umbrella, it is the imagination that reveals we need neither to enjoy ourselves.
