Monday, 13 October 2014

Imagine More Than We Know As It Will Be So

Giving my daughter 10p extra, when she went out to play in the 90s as emergency money for a phone call, I would not have imagined that we would all be carrying pocket size portable phones with us today. Someone did.

Einstein, in an interview in 1929 said, 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.'  As Oscar Wilde said in The Picture of Dorian Gray, 'To define is to limit.' Is that what we do when we name and categorize?

Are our young adult books like The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner and Divergence seeking to push past those limitations and boundaries, to think outside the box, while commenting on our habits of putting people into boxes, creating boundaries and limits? Are they warning us of our possible futures if we continue?
Sunset and Moonlight on Brighton Beach

Oscar Wilde wrote in The Critic as Artist that 'a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.' Will we listen to the dreamers who see the dawn before us or will we just have to wake up and see it with our own eyes when it will be too late to do anything about it, in the cold light of day?

Or can we be dreamers too?

Einstein, A.(1929) What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, The Saturday Evening Post, October 26 1929 ,Saturday Evening Post Society, Indianapolis, Indiana. 
Wilde, O.(1881, 1997) The Critic as Artist, Green Integer 
Wilde, O.(1890, 1998) The Picture of Dorian Gray, Random House

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