Imagination

When we are children our imaginations flow as freely as our curiosity, and the two of them reinforce each other. Happiness in adulthood relies in part on imagination, as well as that other thing that comes naturally to us first as children: love. Love is the awakener, healer, restorer and expander of our spirits. With the loving attitude of respect, curiosity delves the mysteries and makes us a grow in mind and reality. But the fruits of curiosity and love cannot be fully actualized without imagination. Imagination helps us to understand others in a dynamic rather than nominal way, and it helps us make a better society, both socially and materially. The great irony of the era in which we now live is that the realization of imagination is completely lacking among those who have the power and means to affect the common good. The monetary resources that can make our people and civilization shine are trapped by those who make no constructive use of it. A massive concentration of capital under the control of the few who would rather just hoard it, who live lives higher than most can even conceive, and they (along with future generations of their families into the imperceptible horizons of time) will only ever need a fraction of this immense wealth to see to their every necessity, fancy, notion and whim. They could use this huge surplus of wealth to fund ec0nomic rehabilitation here and abroad through useful projects of life ameliorating research, dynamic education and mentorship programs, cultural exchange and development, life-enhancing physical structures, green energy. infrastructures of humane utility and transportation, which could together easily pull our world out of economic decline, civil strife, urban decay, political agony. Please remember we are talking about billions of dolllars, and collectively as a class adding up to trillions. Think of what it would take to make any given social project or service happen and operate at truly effective and optimal levels. Most would amount only to several millions of dollars, and a billion is a million millions! A visitor from another planet would think that the wealthy and powerful are utter fools to have as their highest aspiration to bleed their societies dry and sit on their piles of money, monitoring its accumulation as electronic blips on a computer screen with moronic avidity. Is that any way to run a world that is not headed for termination? Somehow, somewhere, at some point in their lives, the wealthy of our nation traded their imaginations for the very flat intelligence of bestial cunning. The rest is just the fumes of the dragon's lair.