J.K. Rowling gave a deeply thoughtful address this week on the indispensable power of the imagination.
She told the Harvard Class of 2008 that when they consider what they might do about their fellow human beings suffering in the world’s various police states, they have a responsibility to use their imagination, and to act wisely on it.
The speech is here.
Frank Warner then reminds us that we often lose the ability to imagine evil after a long period of good...
Give a nation twenty years of prosperity, and a quarter of its people will believe prosperity takes no work.
Give a nation twenty years of peace, and a quarter of its people will believe peace comes from ignoring enemies.
Give a nation twenty years of freedom, and a quarter of its people will lose the ability to imagine the misery of a life in chains.
We in the Free World have been given so much that many of us have lost the feel for real suffering. Somehow we’re able to play pretend, and yet too many of us have lost our imaginations.
When a fourth of a population lives an illusion that appeals directly to selfish cynicism, it doesn't take much effort for that quarter to block the other three-quarters from doing the necessary things that also happen to be hard.
Short on imagination, long on self-deception, we live in dangerous times.
Perhaps it is a good thing that a nation such as ours should have frequent episodes of fear and and want. For without them we would become like sheep led to slaughter.
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