Art in the Imagination Age

'In the imagination age, we are trying to create the future we can imagine.'

Rita J. King

We live in a world of intention. Sometimes it feels like everything is made with a purpose. Roads are designed to move traffic around in a particular fashion, brands and logos are created to evoke particular emotions, and we constantly look for maps, or pre-designed paths, to tell us how our lives are supposed to progress.

It feels fixed, but it's not. It feels like there is a plan behind everything, but that plan may have been executed incorrectly, or flawed in the first place. 

There is always the opportunity to redesign, to create, and to change. The only question is, can we push ourselves to participate in the art* of imagining a different future rather than accepting the present. 

We can all be thinkers, designers, and builders because we are all human. You do not need credentials to do art. It is our right to break things down, think about how they work, design a new system and create it.

We just have to be bold enough to try. 

*I'm talking about the art that Seth Godin talks about

Goals and Hoops

‘We can reach more ambitions goals if we are given the latitude to set those goals for ourselves’

Sal Khan

This line from Sal Khan's book The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined refers to the benefits of flexibility, freedom, and choice in education. The freedom to choose which path to take or which project to work on gives students more opportunities to dream. This extends beyond students and reminds me of this cartoon by Grant Snider:

I love this cartoon, and I think that it blends well with Sal Khan's sentiment. As 'adults,' we need to embrace the freedom we have to make our own hoops. Once we do that, we will naturally pursue more ambitious goals and be more zealous about our mission.

Now, imagine that during the course of your education you not only learned everything that Snider mentions in the cartoon, but that you also learned and practiced how to create your own hoops? What if that happened from day one of your education? I believe that this is what the future of education will look like, and that it will help develop the adaptable, flexible, creative and critical thinkers needed to solve the problems of the future. 

But that doesn't mean we're off the hook. What can you do right now to create your own hoops and set more ambitious goals?

Changing Systems

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” 

R. Buckminster Fuller

Taken from the book Critical Path, which is full of many radical and innovative ideas, I like that Fuller doesn't compromise in what he sees as the way forward. He recognizes that entrenched systems make radical change very difficult to enact, but that doesn't mean it is not worth trying.

I think about this with respect to the systems of energy and education. Both are very entrenched systems and are resistant to change. Many people, myself included, want to change these systems, not in a malicious way, but because we can see a brighter future. This quotation reminds me that it is important to be proactive rather than reactive, to build instead of break. Worrying about the current system and trying to destroy it puts focus on the system in place and does not do much for implementing change. Building an improved system is a more productive way to cause change. Of course, that does not come with out the difficulties of navigating around the entrenched system, dealing with resistance to change and in general being the underdog, the upstart.

But if it wasn't challenging, it wouldn't be as interesting. 

For the Dreamers

 “Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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.”

Oscar Wilde

I have been thinking a lot recently about how we can design systems to improve and change the world. With such a lofty goal, it is easy to become discouraged and to think we are foolish for even trying to affect large scale change. This quotation always reminds me of the importance of 'pushing the envelope' and going after things that seem absurd. All that matters is that the desire and drive to explore are in you. Then, even if the path leads nowhere, the worst thing that can happen is that you pursued your passion, learned something new, and head off on another exploration.  

What Could Be

"Sometimes what we know gets in the way of what could be"  

Jay Silver (JoyLabz founder)

I love this quotation, pulled from Jay Silver's awesome TED talk, because it reminds me that expertise can be detrimental. Even with two decades of education (and partly because of it) it is easy to feel 'not qualified' to answer certain questions or attack certain problems. However, that expertise is not required to ask questions and to probe what is possible. It is our right to ask questions about anything, and though those questions may sometimes come from a position of ignorance, they more often come from a position of innocence, leading to unique and novel insights. This quotation reminds me to step outside of whatever image I have of 'who I am' or 'what I know' and attack problems in a childlike way, with curiosity, imagination and wonder.