What is the experience of being an imaginative human being?

This is the third article in Know Yourself and Know People-Imagination.

I have a friend with a wide range of hobbies. She likes painting, and always paints some wonderful things, such as an uneasy and shy big-eyed dinosaur, stretching out a heart for an ugly little girl, overlapping a flat color block into a fairy tale scene and so on. , can unexpectedly but reasonably impress people; She likes poetry, so she adapted the poems in A Dream of Red Mansions with folk songs. Simply put, only three A minor chords are used, but they can pop up and sing a desolate and ethereal taste.

Another friend is good at reasoning with metaphors and stories. For example, once, his 7-year-old nephew held a magazine and pointed to several words in the article and asked him, what is the difference between CEO and COO? After a little thinking, he said, the CEO is a general, the chief operating officer is a political commissar, and the CEO is responsible for making money and formulating food strategies, and decides whether to fight or not; The chief operating officer is responsible for dispatching troops, how to make comrades think in one place, how many guns and armor to buy, how many chariots and tanks to use, and what tactics to use. Children who love the military will understand at once.

And once I asked him, in an organization where the system is constantly changing and the employee status has long been "wrong", where to start to restore confidence? As soon as he opened his mouth, he gave me a passage of Shang Jun's Book, and then added Zhou Li, which is equivalent to roughly refining the main points of management-saying that teaching must be clearly stated, distinguishing its proper position, and talking about all aspects of teaching and discipline and how to implement it.

Some people laugh at their curiosity: too much knowledge will delay work, I don't want that; Some people admire their unique perspective and hope to have the skills of cross-border integration like them.

Whether you like them or hate them, they are sometimes quite irritating. When they bring you a unique freshness, when they examine and disassemble the problem from an unexpected angle, you are surprised to ask them, how did you come up with it? They will probably say, ah, well, I just, see more/see more/like it. It's as irritating as Xue Bajun saying "I learn easily", just as the old cow said to the little squirrel "This river is shallow, so you don't have to take it seriously". People! Health! Gas!

However, they are right.

Being able to think of things that others can't think of is really based on "being well informed" and "being knowledgeable".

"Watching too much" means that you have a lot of "appearances" stored in your mind.

Let me explain the concept of "representation" in psychology first:

Representation can be immediate, memorable, direct contact, abstract concept, previous experience and so on.

"Appearance" is the raw material of imagination. Only by processing, transforming and combining representations can we create new images and new concepts; Only on this basis can we talk about imagination.

Just like building Lego, you only have a few hundred pieces, which is different from the richness of the works you have hundreds of thousands of pieces to build.

How to improve imagination? As a guy who is often regarded as a brain hole breaking through the sky, I usually give this advice to friends who want to improve their imagination:

① Accumulate knowledge and experience. Imagination is a process of transforming, reorganizing and creating new images from existing representations (knowledge, concepts, memory, experience …). Therefore, the more images, experiences and knowledge you store in your mind, the easier it is to generate imagination. It is difficult for an ignorant person to generate imagination.

② Try to recombine different kinds of representations to form a new image. For example, the common copywriting training method: choose five words from a book and use them to make a poem.

③ Be good at analyzing the most representative general features of several similar objects, and then concentrate on synthesizing them into new objects. For example, Lu Xun's method of creating roles: taking one person as the main prototype, and then focusing on the characteristics of several people.

4 Stay enthusiastic. Teploff said: "A person's imagination activities are closely related to his emotional life. The great creation of creative imagination always comes from rich feelings. " Poets are most likely to get the guidance of the muse and write touching poems when their emotions are surging and intense. In summing up his own writing experience, writers often say: It is not my works that move readers, but the scenes of the works that move me first.

Pay attention to and try to deconstruct the existing "imagination", myth, story, religion or social discipline in existing society. Gradually approach several elements of "essence", then reconstruct and tell your own story.

What are the advantages of being an imaginative person? There are many benefits!

People with imagination are lovely. Imaginative person, good at innovation;

Internet plus commerce = e-commerce; Live broadcast+business = network celebrity economy; Media+commerce = advertising; Big field+vertical subdivision ... People with rich imagination can bring new experiences by recombining several ideas.

In science fiction, aliens are representations, humans are representations, bugs are representations, and the concept that humans absolutely crush bugs' intelligence, physical strength and vision is also representations. Put them together, this is an excellent story:

Higher civilization will crush mankind like ants: it's none of your business to destroy you.

Liu's "Three-body" is to discuss such a story: Can we survive when people who think they are the spirits of all things are treated as a group of bugs? What should we do?

Not only that, it can be said that imagination is the cornerstone of our human society. Whoever has imagination, who can understand the imagination of this society, has power.

From this perspective, people with imagination can be terrible:

Imagination is not nothingness, myth has its meaning. Imagination and even prejudice have always played an important and even indispensable role in human social organizations. Humans are United by imagination. Imagination sometimes maintains a stable environment for the progress of productive forces, and sometimes creates all kinds of intractable disasters and troubles for mankind.

Humans rely on the imagination of * * * to distribute power, form classes and maintain rule.

Let me give an example to illustrate this matter.

In the era of lack of communication, there is no way to say who copied who. The imagination of human beings in the East and the West is very close:

There is a cloud in Records of the Historian Tian Benji: there must be war when the stake is guarded. The invasion or stay of Mars near Cape Rocky indicates that there is a war.

I was puzzled at that time, because in Harry Potter, divination professor sibyll trelawney also said that the angle between Mars and a star represents the future of war.

Why do people think of using the star overhead when it comes to ground warning?

Because in an era when productivity is underdeveloped and many things are beyond our understanding and control, people's needs are similar: when everyone needs to live and work in peace and contentment, they need a reason to recuperate; And when everyone's land is not enough to grow things and eat, they need a reason to occupy more land.

What reason can we imagine to dominate the major events on the ground? River? Too stingy. Vegetation? One year old is too common.

When a homo sapiens looks up at the sky in a quiet night, when he sees the sky, he is shocked: the starry sky is boundless, far-reaching, complex and beautiful, and certain laws can be observed.

Only the starry sky is as complex, changeable and regular as everything in the world. It may not be clear that we spend our whole life explaining it, but the assumption that "things are regular" and the imagination that "heaven will be responsible for the world" derived from it have given us guidance and trust in the long history.

The ancient literati, as Tian Shelang, boarded the emperor's palace at dusk. When the emperor was extravagant, they had to rely on the imaginary world to plead for the people, trying to restrain the emperor whose brain had been swallowed up by desire: "For the king, the world returns to the heart; Your majesty, you are bossy and rebellious. " -if you can't restrain yourself, the imagination of "doing things for heaven" will be strong, and people who can't bear it will gather to kill him.

The imagination that "God will be responsible for the world" is still very popular. ...

Another example, about the "imagination" of nature and women, the change between the East and the West is similar:

Women have always been regarded as closely related to the "earth", nature, the material world and nature. Aristotle believes that women's nature and body are not conducive to spirit and soul.

The changes in the relationship between man and woman, reason and sensibility, and man and nature can also be seen from the changes in an imaginary image-"snake+woman":

Whether in the west or the east, the imagination of snakes and women has the same history of change from god to demon:

Western snakes (representing wisdom and prophecy, fertility and growth) and women are inherently one:

In ancient Greek mythology, snakes and women together represent medical gods.

Akso is a goddess of health in Greek mythology, with the image of a young woman holding a bowl full of snakes. She is the god of medicine in charge of health, safety and medical treatment in Greek religion.

Once, she was lost in thought for treating a disease, and a poisonous snake quietly coiled around her crutch. She killed the snake. At this time, another poisonous snake appeared with herbs in its mouth, which revived the first dead snake. This made Akso realize. Snakes have always been regarded as the embodiment of wisdom. Snakes are poisonous and deadly. I am also familiar with the characteristics of all plants, including medicinal properties. Their rough nests are places where many effective drugs grow. From then on, Akso would not only lean on crutches, but always wrap a snake around them.

Then, is a representative of pure and kind woman, stepping on the foot of an uncontrollable snake:

In Christianity, the snake has lost its main role as the source of wisdom and immortality. First of all, it became the most important symbol of evil in Christianity. When it fell at the feet of the Virgin, it was no longer her direct symbol, nor her knowledge and strength, but an example of her victory over evil.

When women's scepter is deprived, society's view of women becomes clearer:

So, women began to use snakes to represent darkness and evil:

-If the rational power is "fight or flight", then the irrational, immoral, instinctive, unconscious and mysterious power is "love and hate"?

In the East, in early fairy tales, it was the male gods (the water god * * * and the fire god Zhu Rong) who fought and made a mess of the world, and the snake goddess made people clean up the mess. At this time, the woman and the snake are one:

Later, the pre-Qin and Warring States periods were naive, and folk songs said that thinking was naive; Qin ci and Han fu are also frank and frank, and they don't see too much restraint on human nature; During the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, celebrities advocated the style of comeliness and freedom, which was still the animistic way of Taoism and nature, and man and nature lived in harmony. But in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, people's desires became endless, and the expectation of theocracy, in addition to treating diseases and eliminating disasters, became just needed.

As a result, there appeared the myth that the virgin killed the snake to save the baby, which also means that reason and nature began to conflict:

In the Song Dynasty, when women gradually accepted the power of "instinct, unconsciousness and mystery" as a shame, the atmosphere of hating women broke out.

It can be seen that the husbands of the Eastern Jin Dynasty had no control over "divines" and dared not "think about it".

They don't "suck the breath of the sun" and harm their health. Most children born to male parents are extremely intelligent. Moreover, when they are separated from their husbands, they usually give them valuable items, such as gold bowls, gold pillows, beaded robes, etc., to improve the living conditions of their husbands and children.

But in the Song Dynasty, the painting style of fictional stories basically became like this:

Slowly, even Xian Ru Lian Deng (Yuan Zaju) is a loser who needs a man to save him. Banshees and ghosts have gradually evolved into inferior creatures, and only smart and virtuous people can be accepted (enslaved) by human society.

But how smart and virtuous are you? In this world, human (male) is the main body. People (men) say that a change of heart can destroy you, and destroying your world precepts can also destroy you.

The changes of various elements in human imagination are strikingly similar everywhere. Because, with the changes of society, people's needs are similar everywhere.

From a social point of view, what happened?

Productivity from low to high, distributable resources from less to more; The ability of ethnic groups to accumulate resources has changed from fertility to physical strength; From dependence on nature to control of everything. Therefore, the distribution of power has also changed from fertility worship to depriving them of their power with physical advantages, and then to enslave them, hate them and make them feel guilty. -and all this needs to be done with the imagination disciplines such as "myth" and "story".

Otherwise, let's suppose: What would Zhu Can Xi do with these unmarried pregnant girls if he crossed into the Han Dynasty? Everyone can talk nonsense and say, oh, I got pregnant after eating bird eggs, so the ancestor contract of Yin Shang was born. I stepped on the footprints of giants in the wild, and Zhou Wenwang was born; I had a dream that I slept with Shenlong, so Liu Bang was born ... Did he dare to ask these unmarried pregnant girls to be immersed in pig cages? Come on, even a man has to slap him in the face. In the social imagination of that era, it would be nice to have a child. Who do you love? Fertility is the primary productive force!

That is, in the Song Dynasty and later, he talked about three obedience and four virtues before anyone listened.

When you have an opinion that is beneficial to you, don't know if you should speak it properly? At this time, if we can connect it with a certain part of the existing cognition, we can use our imagination to interpret the "truth" to attract fellow travelers, form a class, punish rebels, and guide and even rule the operation of human organizations.

I just asked if you were happy. This is the great charm and power of imagination.

So, what is the experience of being an imaginative human being?

An imaginative person, like the image of "magician" in tarot cards, has the wisdom to see through the essence of everything, extract the elements he needs from it, and then reconstruct and reconnect everything:

The magician receives energy (inspiration) from the sky and introduces it into something concrete and real-land (practice). In other words, he can extract clear and powerful ideas from vague ideas and turn them into something we can see and touch; He can use his imagination and will to produce concrete results.

He is not driven by the trend of life, but in these trends, he acts for himself and does concrete things to show incredible miracles.

-it is an easy experience to enjoy, an experience that everyone is willing to listen to when telling stories, and an experience that is convenient for doing evil or doing good.

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I will slowly introduce psychology to you in about three months.

Welcome to pay attention, more 3 ~ 4 articles.

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