Can We Imagine?

What would life be like without imagination? As we slide ever further down the road of artificial intelligence, some of us are wondering whether we will eventually lose the capacity to imagine. To dream. To create. To be stopped in our tracks by something that causes us to pause in awe. Perhaps using ChatGPT stimulates our sense of wonder. And maybe not. For some of us it is a world behind a door we choose not to open.

Generative pre-trained transformers. Fifteen years ago, could we have imagined such things flitting around our universe? Long gone are the days we all memorized important phone numbers because we had to dial them with our fingers. Is our human ability to marvel before the unfathomable mysteries of life on the same trajectory toward extinction?

To what or whom do we pay attention? Besides the people we share life with, the news is likely an immediate response. But which news source? And in what form does it come to us? If we are listening to the news being reported, is it that we prefer the reporters’ voices or appearances over others? Or that we are more comfortable with the perspective of the reporting? Does a particular broadcaster break an event down into pieces we can easily digest? Are there stories that are simply too massive to comprehend? We may recall staring at our television screens as the images of smoking skyscrapers filled them on 9/11. Did we ever imagine being confronted with such scenery?

Many of us would choose to be awed by the scenery with which the natural world confronts us. Standing at the base of a mountain gazing at its grandeur. Sitting at the edge of an ocean as its undulating contents mesmerize us. Peering out a window at the blazing of the clouds as the sun sinks behind them, setting them afire. There is much around us which stirs what’s within us. Our wonder. Our awe. Our imagination.

Eugene Peterson dissects with great clarity the culture in which we Americans live. In a volume titled Subversive Spirituality he writes, “We have a pair of mental operations, imagination and explanation, designed to work in tandem. Explanation keeps our feet on the ground; imagination lifts our heads into the clouds. Explanation puts us in a harness; imagination catapults us into mystery. Explanation reduces life to what can be used; imagination enlarges life into what can be adored.” Peterson continues with his assessment: “But our technological and information-obsessed age has cut imagination from the team.” Is it time to call for its recruitment through the voices of those who envision a different world?

Written by Rebecca Taylor, Pastor, without the assistance of AI