Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Political Fantasy

The thing that amazes me most about this bio-organism I inhabit, is my imagination. I will hazard a guess that imagination makes a human unique among the animal kingdom.

It is easy to see how with the aid of imagination, mankind has become the most successful species. The question that comes to mind is how did this capacity propel us to such heights? Most of us see imagination as a relaxing form of entertainment but it offers a real survival advantage.

Imagination allows a human to game play courses of action without having to experience them first hand. A man can imagine a scenario and his computer will see the fantasy as reality. Whether an experience is real or imaginary our bio-processor can’t see the difference. Thus, like flying on a simulator, a person can crash all they want “Imaginatively” and no harm is done. An animal only gets to crash once because they only learn through first hand experience.

Through imagination we can embrace the full range of emotions and experience the physiological consequences. When we listen to a story we can live vicariously the words that we hear. When we read a novel the alpha characters come to life eliciting images, recorded in a book. When we look at an attractive “Significant Other” our imaginations can make our hearts go pitter-patter and if we think hard enough our body will respond to its full design potential.

It is said we have created computers based upon the model of our minds. I believe that. A computer is dumb as a box of rocks and can’t imagine anything. If the code doesn’t spell out exactly what the machine is expected to do it can’t do it. Computers follow their programming and don’t do a very good job managing the unexpected. Most animals are environmentally reactive but people can conjure up an environment in their minds and their CPU doesn’t know the difference. As a consequence we can trick ourselves into believing anything and while that has some survival benefits there is a down side to living in a dream world. This is evident when a person can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. I could give some political examples but won’t bother.