Yesterday an interesting coincidence called my attention (once again!) to the power of human imagination. This is what happened:
Packing books for our upcoming move, while tuning into the Families Belong Together marches, I picked up The Violence of Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine. Henry Giroux’s 2014 book is as relevant today as it was several years ago. Perhaps even more so, I thought as I opened the book at random and read segments:
“Anyone belonging to a population identified and treated as disposable faces an existence in which the ravages of segregation, racism, poverty, and dashed hope are amplified by the forces of ‘privatization, financialization, militarization, and criminalization,’ fashioning a new architecture of punishment, massive human suffering, and authoritarianism.’” (p. 57)
Looking up at the TV, I heard the actress America Ferrera explain why she was there:
“I am here as a human being with a beating heart, who can feel pain, who understands compassion and who can easily imagine what it must feel like to struggle the way families are struggling right now. It is easy to imagine that I would hope that if it was my family being torn apart, if it was my brother being arbitrarily criminalized, if it was my sister who was being banned, that someone would stand up for me and my family.” She then read a stirring letter from a grandfather detailing his struggle to re-unite with his granddaughter held at a detention center. She urged us to put ourselves in his place, reminding us:
“What makes humans remarkable is our capacity to imagine. We have an imagination, let’s use it.”
Looking down, I read:
“State violence…is now justified as part of a state of exception in which a ‘political culture of hyperpunitiveness’ has become normalized…public values appear to have become irrelevant…State violence operating under the guise of increasing personal safety and security, while parading as a bulwark of democracy, actually does the opposite and cancels out democracy….” (pp. 52-53)
Looking up I heard, singer-songwriter Alicia Keys pleading, “Our democracy is at stake. Our humanity is at stake.”
In a “culture of cruelty” imagining the unbearable suffering of others requires heroic stamina and noble courage. Constantly. It’s tempting to turn off our empathy if even to get a good night’s sleep. Yet, we must remain vigilant. Empathy keeps us from becoming a caricature of what it means to be human.
With intentional empathy as its first function, human imagination will naturally seek its next level, generously giving us visions of positive solutions. Coupled with compassion, problem solving skills soar.
With genuine concern for the good of all, human imagination kicks in overdrive.
During the past two weeks, I have talked with people of differing political persuasions and various ages and educational levels. Every person said he or she can imagine a compassionate, yet effective immigration policy. Every one said he or she can imagine border control without domination and violence. The first step to any positive solution is imagining it.
Just because those currently in control lack imagination doesn’t mean we have to stifle ours. Let’s continue to imagine the world we want for our children, knowing that human imagination is a reliable, benevolent guide to a more humane future for us all.
Copyright, Gloria DeGaetano, 2018.