Articulating Vague Intuitions
The December issue of The Atlantic Monthly is available. I devoured it between St. Louis and Los Angeles and it was delicious. As usual, I found David Brooks particularly good:
"... the imagination is amphibious. It lives in the worlds of both reason and fantasy. It always seems to be pushing us toward some product or benefit. But it also ventures forth into make-believe landscapes and into the future, places where logic and calculation don't really help us."
The David Brooks article was a timely reminder of how mythical it is that we see ourselves sometimes as dispassionate effecient machines. This is most often expressed in how the market works. Brooks riddles this notion with bullet holes with the following:
"The key to consumption is not calculation or emulation. It's aspiration. The minds of shoppers relentlessly race ahead of reality. People tend to buy the things that set off light shows in their imaginations. But once an item ceases to fire their visions (because it no longer seems to provide a pathway to some idyllic future), they lose interest in it, and their imaginations go off in search of something new and exciting."
Of course this applies to a lot more than just consumer spending. What role does this imagination play in a political philosophy or religion? A spectacular one, no doubt. A fitting conclusion (though I recommend you treat yourself to reading the whole thing):
"... we all live with our thoughts always in the forest of the future; we are filled with vague cravings, and are finally impelled to wander amid the trees to find our destiny there."
8:29:02 PM 
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