Social constraints on freedom of imagination

Politics is the enemy of the imagination. To act politically generally means joining with other people to be effective, aligning preoccupations with those of others, producing analytical compromises, deciding on priorities, methods of presentation and strategies. To act seriously in a political way is to have in mind a version of the future of which others need to be convinced. Acts of the free imagination call for the exact reverse of these requirements. The imagination is individualistic, egotistical in the extreme, reserving the right to be contradictory and espousing the unthinkable. Imaginative thinking is constrained in an atmosphere of official half-truths and erosion of freedom of information.

The freedom to think imaginatively is protected as the result of political action.