Imagination is tricky.

While it appears to me to have an hallucinatory and mimetic  existence apart from language — so in dreams and in creative-expression nonverbal invention we have a prior-to-expression sensory experience (universally) — when we attempt to community via any art / any mode, we have to produce an external facsimile of that interior experience.  A large part of that becomes integrated into some verbal behavioral repertoire (lexicon, grammar, social grammar).  Our problem is that on the receiving side of this model, words become real and symbols, dreams, experiences, memories, and so on float in our cerebral soup together — and suddenly every little Muslim boy wants to be Muhammad and every Jewish kid understands perfectly the commanders exhortation, “Go in like Goliath and fight like David”.  The external reference becomes an internal marker.

The stories relayed by good men to their children, and the manner of their delivery, intend their children’s survival, and with the same the transmission of the tribal culture through time.  Some men, however, become the “bad daddy” in various ways and the bullying, cowardice, lying, and other facets of malignant narcissistic manipulation begin.  As head of a family, one might beat up his kids; as the head of a state or a movement, the same may lead the vulnerable and infantilized to ruin.

If that kernel of an explanation seems to work, well, perhaps we should struggle with it some, punch it around, road test it.

Back-story confession: my graduate school era introduction to Maslow –not on the curriculum . . . I stumbled into that one all on my lonesome — had a profound impact on my own stance, and, indeed, shifting focus toward the perceived healthy individually and communally may become a part of helping to make things a little bit better for the world (another lookup: “Tikkum Olam”).

The melding in imagination of language-derived or language-delivered concepts, injunctions, legends, and myths may play a mighty role in conflict — and we’re getting too old — and too powerful in destructive capacity — for “letting God decide” these matters on fields of battle.

In five words –

Confused
Subjective inner states
Exteriors

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