“In the same way that the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky revealed the hidden unconscious biases of our minds, and indirectly ushered in the entirely new field of bias studies, it is time to acknowledge the vast mythopoetic or imaginative aspects of mind that shape our thinking and sense-making processes.”
“Broadly stated, the imagination has five steps: mimicry; abstraction/decoupling; recombination; expression; and social feedback.“
#imagination #mimicry #abstraction #recombination #expression #feedback
“Popular culture recognizes only the fantasy version of artistic imagination and fails to appreciate that everyday conversation, daydreaming, map navigation, political strategizing, scientific hypothesising, moral reflection, field surgery, cooking, reading and lovemaking are all imaginative activities, too.”
#culture #imagination #conversation #daydreaming #politics #STEM #introspection #cooking #reading
“Imagination, understood as the mind’s ur-operating system – the system within the system – generates our human biases, our visual communication grammar (also music, dance, etc), our political tribalism, our search for meaning, our scientific research programmes, and our virtual rehearsal space for social life.”
#OperatingSystem #imagination #communication #music #dance #politics #research #social
“this is also the core of sense-making or meaning-making activity and, once recognised, we can see that imaginative work such as storytelling, image-making, song, dance and so on are some of the earliest and continually powerful forms of knowledge.”
#sensemaking #imagination #storytelling #music #dance #knowledge
“Earlier humanities and social science scholars grasped the value of artistic education, but primarily as a bulwark against scientific reductionism, which they considered dehumanizing.”
“Psychedelics research is having a renaissance currently, and it could be a boon for imagination science. Psychedelic substances engender psychological and philosophical states that reveal important features of imaginative structure and function.”
#AlteredStates (and imagination more generally) were probably selected for in evolution because they present us with novel perspectives and virtual rehearsals of possible futures, which can mash up previously disparate elements in productive ways. The imagination is adaptive in a changing and challenging environment.
“We need ethnographic participant observers who are willing and able to do phenomenology, rather than facile reductions to tired theories. Anecdotally, it is remarkable how many people do academic work on creativity or imagination but do not themselves make anything or engage in creative practices.”
#imagination #ethnography #academia #creativity #phenomenology
“Imaginology must cultivate a certain tolerance for ambiguity. Sense-making emerges out of nonsense, to be blunt. We need to accept stages of confusion as potentially enjoyable, playful, resources.”
#imagination #sensemaking #nonsense #joy #confusion #imaginology
“Consider a different metaphor: imagination as the ‘plate tectonics’ of mind and culture. From this submerged mythopoetic perspective, the divisions between traditional disciplines shrink. Fractured territories on either side of a great divide become mere continents riding on the hidden motions of creativity below. Imaginology beckons us deeper.”
#imagination #mindfulness #culture #mythopoetic #creativity #imaginology
I personally look forward to this -- the altered states, and in particular dreaming states, are still largely uncritically observed by and large. Changing this might provide some feedback into our mindscapes, though even that will require a lot of data.
Also be interesting to see them come to the conclusion of how bullshit engines don't dream, they just make shit up.
Coach Pāṇini ®
Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊