Can Imagination really be quantified?
Imagination exists on so many levels and is affected by so many things. It depends on so many variables that it would probably be like quantifying the weather.
But should everything and everyone be associated with a number value and a percentage? Will our thoughts eventually become defined by numerals and binary also? Maybe they already are?
It leaves me wondering if less imaginative people will have steady predictable climates like a desert and more imaginative people dynamic and varied ones like a rainforest. Their thoughts growing and spreading like its vegetation.
The ecosystem of a rainforest probably is a better analogy of an imaginative mind is the always growing and regenerating; because dynamic, varied and thriving, it can also be complex, difficult and disorientating for other people to venture into, including ImQ researchers.
And consider how many artists have also been the victims of their own successful and thriving imagination.
So how well, easily and effectively can we quantify the ecosystem of the rainforest that is an imaginative mind?
I wonder if this interest on quantifying imagination is in part also because, like all natural resources (and forests), imagination is becoming scarcer and more important/valued in our increasingly complex world.
Can an individual’s imagination be increased? Can we turn the desert into a prairie, or forest? Is desertification affecting our minds and not just the environment. Maybe we can alter the ecosystem of the mind, but by how much? Can we really significantly alter our already well established mechanism of thought and process?
Firstly I think to be imaginative you need to be more of an abstract thinker and secondly be curious, learning from as many different sources and interested in connecting as many dots as possible.
The more dots you can join the more imaginative you can be. But is mainstream culture conducive to becoming an abstract thinker and joining the dots?
Are you joining enough dots? And are some dots better to join than others?
That being said, instead of quantifying and testing our imagination without real purpose besides collecting information. I think time would be better spent nurturing it. I think this is can be done simply enough by a lifestyle that allow us to experience and contemplate about as many different things as possible and break away from cyclical routine.
For further reading check out a musing on the subject of “Abstract Thinking in a Technological Culture” HERE
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