Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Failure of Imagination

Which is the greatest and most devastating of all failures that haunt the mankind ?
If the list is drawn, the top slot would always be occupied by failure of imagination. But why is this a failure in the first place? How can the act of not imagining something be regarded as a failure? These are questions that must now be answered.
History of the world is a solemn testimony to the truth of this statement. What exactly happened on september 11, 2001? A failure to imagine that aeroplanes can be hijacked and used as guided missiles to destroy buildings. Result was mass devastation of life and property and unwanted war on an ill fated nation.
And Why did the Titanic sink? Iceberg? Oh no not iceberg. The major reason it sunk was failure of its design. The designers of titanic failed to imagine that a ship could hit icebergs in the atlantic ocean and so they didn't use thicker steel body as it is used in the ships of today. A ship shouldn't be made of so a light a metal that can cause a hole on collision with an iceberg.
Why did the chernobyl nuclear disaster occur? Why did we have bhopal gas tragedy? What was the true cause of 26/11 tragedy?.
Some designer of boiler plant failed to imagine that water pipes can get clogged by usage and didn't put the safety valve in the design causing bhopal gas tragedy. Somewhere else some people who were the law enforcement agency couldn't imagine that terrorist could take easier sea route to mumbai for attack.
We now realise that Failure of imagination is disastrous. Einstein had said imagination is more important than knowledge.
This is true because all Knowledge is the effect and result of imagination as imagination is the key to all knowledge. Without it there is no life no civilization and no possibily of humanity.
Every object that we use in our life is a result of some ones imagination. Just look at a simple object like a chair. The chair was created in some ones mind used by him many times to sit on it in his mind. He could feel his balance on all the four legs of the chair in his mind. And then it was created in physical form. All physical objects in this world are nothing but mental images of man looked from that angle.
Having understood the importance of imagination and the devastating effect of its failure one should also note that there is no alternative to it.
Imagination is the highest form of human intelligence. So it should become a seperate discipline neutral of all subjective knowledge. The ability to imagine must be exploited to the fullest extent possible by special training to the mind.
Imagination is the key to all inventions and progress.  Imagination is life.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good one from Bernard Shaw:
Imagination is the beginning of creation.You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.