Imagination and seeing
The term “imagination” in what I take to be its truest sense refers
to a mental faculty that some people have used and thought about with
the utmost seriousness. The sense of the verb “to imagine” contains the
full richness of the verb “to see.” To imagine is to see most clearly,
familiarly, and understandingly with the eyes, but also to see inwardly,
with “the mind’s eye.” It is to see, not passively, but with a force of
vision and even with visionary force. To take it seriously we must give
up at once any notion that imagination is disconnected from reality or
truth or knowledge. It has nothing to do either with clever imitation of
appearances or with “dreaming up.” It does not depend upon one’s
attitude or point of view, but grasps securely the qualities of things
seen or envisioned.
I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination
thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a
responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in
it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a
place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see
it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By
imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and
nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see
the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow
members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination
enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection
that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving
economy.
--
Wendell Berry
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