Using imagination to escape chatter

25 Nov

Imagination

When a class of primary school students were asked to imagine an apple, they could not picture it in their heads. No doubt they could google the image, so does this really matter?

Albert Einstein thought that:

“imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

But Einstein didn’t know about Google. This essay will explore the importance of imagination in the face of the massless playground of the internet. So, are we on the cusp of a brave new world where we are an amalgam of silicon and organic intelligence? Alternatively, will we have to learn to exercise our minds, like we had to learn to exercise our bodies when making a living became physically sedentary?

As a start, it is easy to see that Human imagination is astounding. It can interpret the present, show the past and predict the future through the power to create objects, situations, and worlds that only our brains can see. Still, we can experience what our imagination shows us as if it was actually happening.

Our imagination must be regularly exercised and warmed up to remain healthy enough to encircle the world. For example, people can focus better on an event if they have pictured the route rather than listening to a navigation app to get there.

Paradoxically, a child imagining a box as a dragon was vital because this fantasy develops the ability to focus on reality as an adult. Of course, adults indulging in fiction strengthens their imagination, but there are many other ways to do this. This essay suggests, well, reminds us of some of them.

Chatter

Unfortunately, As we can only hope to dip a toe into the wonders of our imagination, this essay will focus on how we can use imagination to escape chatter.

Imagination can be like loving prompting. But unfortunately, it can also be like incessant nagging. Dysfunctional nagging in our heads is called chatter. It is defined as thoughts that stop us from asserting our individual humanity. This can be when self-monologuing forms negative cycles of thoughts, images, feelings, and memories. For example:

· It is too cold to take a walk.

· I do not have the willpower.

· I should have eaten less dessert.

· It will make me look stupid.

· The person won’t respect me afterwards.

· I will be surrendering control to another person.

A healthy mind is good at prompting us about problems and threats. So, we would hope a driver who sees a ball bouncing in front of their car should imagine a child running after it and brake. Likewise, an airline pilot’s concentration will hopefully be diverted when they see a mountain goat high up in a cloud. Their healthy imagination should prompt them about the looming mountain so they can pull up.

This facility, of course, is essential for our survival. However, our minds can become dysfunctional when it begins to cycle prompts about a problem we can’t resolve. Such as why our children won’t do as they’re told. Unhelpful reminders that distract our focus on how we assert ourselves in the world are chatter. So, for example, it is not surprising that money worries create chatter, which undermines our decision-making.

Another vital role of imagination is the aha moment when you remember someone’s name after you tried and failed three hours before. This is because the imagination has been working on it in the background of your mind.

To facilitate understanding can also associate and categorise concepts to simplify the world. For example, associating burning fossil fuels with global warming or preferring science fiction to crime novels assists us in saving the planet and choosing a good book.

Unfortunately, this unconscious working of our mind can form a second type of chatter, which can cause world misery. This includes generating chatter to segregate people into “them and us”. For example, at one time, being fat meant prosperity. Now the cliché is that the obese are lazy and self-indulgent. Simplifications like this are commonly held and can be rationalised. However, in this example, many fat people are not lazy, self-indulgent or prosperous, and these connections are chatter.

The third source of chatter is external. It is the massless playground of the internet. In the example of the apple, this can make our imagination less fundamental to our day‐to‐day lives. However, using its research and communications facilities, it can help us become more original, novel, and unique. Alternatively, taking part in internet porn, metaverses and virtual reanimation could make us uncritical enthusiasts of what is famous or infamous.

Activities

As with physical fitness, many pursuits can pump up our imaginations. This essay suggests day-to-day activities and techniques which can amass imaginative vigour and divert chatter. Consequently, these suggestions should demonstrate the value of a healthy imagination to enrich our lives.

If, after reading this essay, you still can’t control your chatter, Ethan Kross‘s book: “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It” is strongly recommended.

Therefore, this essay will suggest activities to coax our awareness into imaginative states and release us from chatter. These activities expand on exercises proposed in “Seven principles of building resilience”,

1. Facilitating

We may know that physical exercise is good for us. However, facilitating this knowledge in a way that suits our preferences and capacities will require taking part in an intentional exploration of memory. This is called recollective imagination. It generates an aha moment when it spontaneously applies self and world knowledge. Self-knowledge can be the importance you put on people, causes and beliefs. This ranges from loving your children to acceptance of global warming, from formal religion to your connection to the universe.

For example, a search for self-knowledge would be needed when identifying a plausible and sustainable physical exercise program. This search may suggest rounding up friends to exercise with or joining an exercise class to facilitate good exercise habits.

Facilitating meaningful interactions with reality can be disrupted by self-demeaning chatter. For example, recycling what you should have said in your head can make it hard to remember where you put your keys.

Self-demeaning chatter is a common and challenging problem. However, it is not a by-product of low self-esteem. In fact, paradoxically, this chatter can be about feeling superior arrogance and ride. It is anything that diverts us from who we want to be. This chatter is an attempted remedy for:

· impulsivity or immobilisation,

· hostility and aggression of others

· helplessness, humiliation, and shame.

Facilitating activities can be used to find a means to master and control these life stressors without demeaning ourselves. The first suggested technique is to use your inner voice to reframe situations as a challenge. This is effective for preventing immobilisation and hostility and aggression of others; for example,

· Feeling angry is a natural response to being hurt. However, It is demeaning when the anger immobilises you with chatter that can only cycle around your head unresolved. This can happen when you don’t want to make a primitive response, such as punching someone. So instead, try to resolve this by challenging yourself to find out what to do about it?”

· Feeling superior immobilises your true self and can distance you from people. So instead, challenge yourself to find something interesting about them.”

· When dealing with the hostility and aggression of others, remain true to yourself. For example, challenge yourself to be happy, helpful and interested. Behaving true to yourself protects your self-esteem. Also, many bullies will be repelled if they can’t crush you.

· Challenge yourself by committing to a cause, such as rescuing whales; or raising funds to sustain a shelter for homeless people;

Another technique is to remind yourself of how you handled similar problems previously. This is effective for immobilisation, helplessness, humiliation, and shame: For example:

· If your fear of public speaking has immobilised you, try telling yourself, “When I have liked my audience, they have liked me.”

· If personal vulnerabilities have caused harm, remind yourself of your strengths and do something that engages them.

· If your mind doesn’t stop going on about something, remind yourself that many people are willing to nag you, so there’s no need to do it yourself.

· If you fear heights have made you feel helpless, remind yourself of dealing with similar situations previously. So try coaching, such as “I‘ve climbed a ladder before, and I didn’t panic.”

· If something has humiliated or shamed you, try telling yourself, “We all have bad days, and I’ve had many good ones.”

Finally, imagine how you’d feel about the demeaning worries that cycle through your head if you look back at them from the future. This time this technique is effective against impulsivity, shame and helplessness. Examples of this are:

· If you get a threatening chain letter that tempts you to be impulsive, then try asking yourself, “How would I think of myself next week if I gave into this idiotic manipulation?”

· Project your imagination forward in time if a troll induces shame or helplessness. Then, from the imagined benefit of hindsight, ask yourself what this issue would look like in the future. Also, you can let your future self give your present self some advice.

· Imagine how you would feel later if you failed to challenge statements and views that are hostile, unfounded, biased, or open to interpretation.

· Imagine how you will feel about

· current dark times when you have reconnected to your goals or purpose in life,

These activities have strengthened our recollective imagination when our distinguishing attributes enhance our lives. Or when we have silenced the inner voice that demeans us. This bolstering of our sense of self is pivotal to our well-being. But unfortunately, we can’t stop here unless our way of life is stagnant and isolated.

Thankfully our lives are not over yet, and other activities in this essay suggest viable ways our minds can interact with the world, other people, and the future.

2. Appreciating

We can assert our individuality when we forge expressions of appreciation, such as:

· Don’t you just love that artwork?

· I feel so much better after my walk.

· I know it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I love my music.

· I love to be part of the crowd when I watch a game.

· You know, I never thought about it like that before.

· I love the smell of rain.

· I’d kill for a BLT.

Our mental imagery is strengthened through activities such as appreciating nature and humanity. Slowing down the hectic pace of life helps us achieve this, for example, by taking a walk in green spaces. Surrounding our living and working areas with greenery will also release progesterone. This happy hormone replenishes our brain’s limited attentional reserves to deal with chatter and day-to-day problems.

We cherish the beauty that we see. However, we shouldn’t neglect the other senses. . For example, not sharing the touch or the smells and sounds of beautiful weather during a video conference limits our appreciation of these meetings.

Here are two activities that can enhance our appreciation for the joy of living. First, reflect daily on three good things we have done and their impact on others. Secondly, write a journal of the best possible outcomes for ourselves in the future using topics related to people, causes and beliefs.

In contrast to appreciating, crude chatter promises to help you belong to something great. However, this contagious ballyhoo will keep you in the fast lane to sap your sense of self. For example, scenarios linking gambling to sharing a good time with friends.

The most virulent source of this is electronic spam. This includes metaverses and virtual reanimations. This is where we can outsource our fantasised worlds and memories of loved ones to the virtual world.

We may take comfort in feeling immune from the influence of mass media. Still, crude chatter from advertising contributes to our current obesity epidemic, so we suffer from an increased prevalence of diabetes and heart disease.

There was a man on the train who I saw doing something extraordinary. He was tapping his umbrella on the floor and singing to himself. He seemed happy to do this, even though everybody else in the carriage had earbuds and was listening to one of those magical devices that Steve Jobs created for us.

Maybe this man was showing us something important. In brief, to strengthen our mental imagery imagination, we should find what we love and participate in it. Certainly, pleasurable activities such as singing to ourselves or having coffee with friends can slow us down enough to strengthen our sense of self. This should allow us to quieten crude chatter to regulate, for example, our gambling and how much sugar and fat we eat.

3. Relating

Relating has two components. They are reaching out to offer help or asking others for help. Examples of activities for relating are:

· Discuss your feelings openly with a caring friend.

· Active listening and asking with genuine curiosity.

· Take the trouble to remember people’s names.

· Sensing someone else’s happiness and being genuinely happy for them.

· Imagining yourself in a struggling person’s situation and feeling sad when they are sad.

· Seek to understand those who are not like us.

Relating to others requires an empathetic imagination. This allows us to see things from someone else’s perspective. Chatter that hinders relations is often from stereotyping. This is particularly virulent when we think we know what others are thinking.

We all stereotype to help make sense of a complex reality. However, assumptions rather than personalised information can justify perhaps well-meaning but biased chatter. For example, before Putin’s invasion, Ukrainians in popular literature were predominately violent criminals. This won’t be true now that the plight of Ukrainians has become personal to us.

By previously saying there is a solution to bullying, I have implied being bullied is your fault when distancing yourself is more common advice. So, of course, it’s not your fault. To enforce this belief, try pretending to be someone else and give yourself advice. Ask yourself. “How could this advice be improved to deal with my situation?”.

Fortunately, using our empathetic imagination to envision their advice can also reflect objectively on the unkind emotions responsible for our chatter. This objective advice is more effective when third-person expressions that use your name, such as “come on, Julie”, replaces first-person pronouns. For example:

· Come on, Julie, don’t define them by their trauma.

· Come on, Julie, don’t assume their attitude is the same as those who look like her.

· Come on, Julie, you can’t read their mind.

· Come on, Ken, you know women can do this as well.

· Come on, Ken, how does your personal experience relate to this “them and us” attitude?

· Come on, Ken, stop thinking drinking is expected of you.

To silence stereotyping chatter, we should take opportunities to learn about others and celebrate their rich and diverse histories, cultures and languages. Without this interest, the idea of, for example, a fair-go Australia is empty rhetoric.

It is a paradox that we can often perceive a friend’s biases more clearly than our own. Therefore a technique to create a more inclusive and resilient community is to openly discuss common ground between diverse positions. This common ground can become a path to justice and healing for all.

For example, the Makarrata is the culmination of the agenda: for the coming together after a struggle. A Makarrata Commission, as proposed in the Uluru Statement From The Heart, would have two roles: supervising a process of agreement-making and overseeing a truth-telling process.

4. Seeking Alternatives

Seeking alternatives can divert chatter through the intellectual pleasure of finding a resolution, which puts you in the picture. Particularly when an aha moment is generated. To engage in this activity, try telling yourself:

· That the truth is never straightforward and rarely pure to prevent simplistic parroting.

· We should expose ourselves to a broader spectrum of opinions to clarify subjective ideas in our complicated world.

· To examine our culture’s norms, such as Australia’s beer drinking.

· To look at this from another perspective to avoid lazy selfishness.

· So that you can find original and unique ideas, try to work out how two things that have never been considered together are related.

To bring new ideas to mind and divert chatter, we can use episodic reasoning, for example, “Why do I go for a swim in the morning rather than after work?” Future thinking like, “What if we become carbon neutral? Will it save the Great Barrier reef?” Finally, we can imagine new scenarios such as “What Ideas can I discuss with my friend that I have never discussed before?”

When seeking alternatives, an interpretive imagination is brought into play. Curiosity is the key to the capacity for finding alternative explanations. So, a healthy mind should find seven new things every day. New items can range from a cure for cancer to discovering the dangers of stereotyping to seeing something new while commuting to work.

Superstitious chatter promotes lazy selfishness, simplistic parroting, demeaning dichotomies, and unexamined custom. This chatter can pervert our thinking if our interpretive imagination is weak. For example, the statement “Addiction is a Choice” is propaganda, which justifies divisive feelings towards addicts. Wanting to belong or, in this example, distance ourselves from a group is a powerful source of superstition.

“[people] are deceived if they think themselves free, an opinion which consist only in this, that they are conscious of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined” B. Spinoza.

Our choices do not freely determine our behaviour. This is because past events and behaviour patterns strongly influence behaviours and attitudes. However, we can assert our will more effectively with a healthy interpretive imagination. For example, it can find alternatives to :

· A mindset that interrupts women more than men.

· Behaviour patterns that motivate histrionic outbursts formed from successfully throwing tantrums as a child.

· A phobia generated from a traumatic memory.

Finally, the power of ideas has become the mainspring for understanding historical change and the rise and fall of civilisations. Cultures, for example, have been classified using ideas such as inequality, individualism, masculinity, pragmatism and indulgence.

5. Implementing

Implementing involves Eureka moments that promise rewards. This can be coaxed with “If only” first-person statements. These should broaden our perspective to apply our designs in the real world. Here are such opinions with implied solutions.

· If only I could support my boss more, we could increase productivity.

· If only I was more positive with my partner, we would be happier.

· If only I didn’t get angry with my brother and could just be myself with him.

· If only I could be more humble so I could discover wisdom from others.

· If only the world had no borders, we could eliminate world famine.

Implementing brings our insightful imagination into play. It requires imagining the future, grasping reality, and turning ideas into real-world success stories. This includes reconciling our imagined alternatives with accepted truth. For example, insightful imagination is needed to put the alternatives of interrupting women and histrionic outbursts into practice.

Enhancing realistic optimism can be achieved by reflecting on the good that has happened to you over the past 24 hours and find three things you are really grateful for. People who do these exercises regularly report enhanced optimism, positivity, energy and connectedness.

Manipulative rhetoric or histrionics impedes compassion, integrity, honesty, and fortitude. If you are alone, this impedance isn’t a problem for implementation, but human interaction will be problematic without these qualities. To identify this rhetoric, ask, “Are they accountable for their words and actions?”. Manipulation includes”

· Paralipsis: I’m not saying; I’m just saying. For example, I refuse to see you until you ask to see me.

· Exceptionalism: This is important but doesn’t apply to me. I shouldn’t have to ask you, but you should ask me

· Ad populum: appealing to the crowd’s wisdom, using popularity as the measure of value. For example, Anyone would agree with me.

· Ad hominem: attacking the person instead of their argument. For example, “This is all down to you.”

· Ad baculum: threats of force or intimidation. “If you don’t do this, I will never speak to you again.”

· Reification: treating people as objects or victims, for example ‘I will always want to be hurtful to you because you have the wrong attitude.”

· Dramatic statements targeting emotional weaknesses. This narrows our perspective and limits the application of our designs in the real world. For example: “They have hurt me deeply” reduces the situation to hurt.

Such statements can be the residue of being bullied. Alternatively, they can be manipulative behaviour from patterns formed in childhood. This rhetoric increases distrust, polarisation and frustration, making it more challenging to protect or gradually advance our civilisation. Trump, for example, is a rhetorical genius.

6. Vitalising

Vitalising is using creative imagination to venerate the power of our humanity. It generates thoughts that are original, novel, and unique while at the same time promoting and supporting who we are or driving progress. Whereas recollective imagination is the basis for awareness of the past self, creative imagination provides insights into the potential self. For example, identifying how a new job could improve your life.

Vitalising is about our inner world, or what meditation calls our true self. Psychology calls it a fantasy personality trait. Creative people can think of it as their muse. What many religions have called the realm of angels is a different door to the same place.

A healthy creative imagination maintains perspective in our inner world. It can focus on innovative and flexible thinking. It is one of the roles of dreaming. Changing our inner world can be elating, such as when our team wins. Alternatively, it can be trauma, which rips our hearts in two when, for example, our once-perfect child gets an amphetamine addiction.

As discussed earlier, when seeking alternatives, superstitions are chatter. However, creative superstitions can divert unhelpful voices in our heads. Sportspeople, for example, use mannerisms to clear their minds. The tennis player Nadal has created a set of quirks that he uses before every service to quieten his chatter.

Although life is a series of random coincidences, if touching wood, for example, reduces stress about health, it shouldn’t be dismissed as a superstition. Similarly, if Friday the 13th was a fun day and lifted the mood, it was creative. However, if it inhibited desired conduct, it was superstitious chatter.

So, any object with an abstract meaning harnesses the brain’s power of expectation or, if you prefer, creates a placebo. For example, using a lucky charm can divert chatter. You don’t have to believe in supernatural forces to harness this vitalising power.

In contrast, materialistic chatter keeps creativity earthbound. It seeks convenience and efficiency to gain the approval of others. Materialism incorporates three components:

· Placing possessions and their acquisition in the centre of one’s life.

· Believing that obtaining possessions is essential to happiness.

· Considering possession as a criterion for judging one’s own and other people’s success.

Despite materialism’s emphasis on self-enhancement and self-worth, its chatter is associated with reduced happiness, relationship quality and well-being. Successful strategies to reduce materialistic chatter include”.

· Avoiding or minimising the situations that encourage materialism.

· Maintaining a personal perspective that doesn't bow to the opinions of others.

· Challenging statements and views that are hostile, unfounded, biased, or open to interpretation.

Creative imagination can let us see our future. It can then inform our goals and vitalise our lives. As it is free from reality, it is difficult to scientifically study. However, this ability extends our awareness into the abstract.

On the one hand, this power of humanity enables us to grasp the abstract meaning in symbols such as flags and money or systems such as the law, music and sports. These stabilise our civilisation. On the other hand, humans can also grasp abstract concepts such as the ‘spirit of liberty, marriage equality, the growth of nationalism, democracy, freedom and racial injustice. This understanding can bring about a gradual advance in our civilisation.

So our creative imagination is an amalgam of contesting forces. Some promote stability, and others strive for change. So it is not just external factors that bring about transformation but internal contradictions. This means expressing a shared imagination is essential to uniting human civilisations in a shared vision.

Kenneth Vickery