Heroes Not Zombies

Here’s where I write.

The reflection of the sky in the window of my study really caught my eye. In fact, I’d say it caught my imagination.

Imagination.

Too often these days imagination is harnessed to fear. Our daily newsfeed from the media provokes us to think about and worry about the most awful horrors. During the Referendum campaign in Scotland this year the No camp bombarded people day in, day out, with scare story after scare story. How else can a minority continue to hold power over the majority? How else can a fraction of the 1% who grow richer by the day, no, by the minute, continue to exert power over the 99%? Is it any wonder that in democratic societies so many are disenchanted with politics? Where are the politicians and parties with vision….with spectacular, engaging ideas and passionately held values which motivate us to create the solutions to the problems which face us?

It seems to me that we need to fire up peoples’ imaginations.

Where else are we to get our new ideas from? Where else are we to get our hope from?

Ursula Le Guin, the author, received a medal at the National Book Awards recently, and she said this –

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

I so agree.

Hard times seem to be coming. For many, they are here already. We DO need the writers who can see a way ahead and inspire us to create a better future. We do need to writers who “remember freedom” and count it as “our beautiful reward”. And we certainly need writers who can “imagine some real grounds for hope”.

I hope that, daily, little by little, I am becoming one of those writers……

After all, if we can’t imagine real grounds for hope, how do we carry on?

Imagination is such a precious and amazing facility. We can use it to solve problems. We can use it to create – art, music, literature, new thoughts and new acts…..not just, as Ursula Le Guin says “other ways of being”, but other ways of becoming!

If we are to realise our potential to become heroes not zombies, we’re going to need those writers who can fire up our imaginations…….. to think creatively, and, importantly, to DO things differently.

If we believe freedom is possible, aren’t we going to have to use our imaginations to create it?