On Imagination and Fiction
Imagine a great sky falling. Or imagine yourself becoming a cat — no school, no work, just meow meow.
Now imagine the fundamental substance of the universe: a ubiquitous glob that makes up everything.
Or imagine a force that connects every cause with its effect.
According to David Hume, imagination is the most important faculty we possess.
It allows us to think and behave as humans at all.
Hume is perhaps the most radical of the empiricists.
He suggests that anything not directly experienced by our senses requires an act of imagination.
Everything we cannot immediately see, hear, or touch must be constructed by the mind.
If we follow this idea, we begin to notice how much of everyday life is built on these imaginative fictions.
When you press a switch and the light turns on, you do not see causality — you imagine it.
When you picture a dragon, you combine wings, scales, and power into a single myth.
When you reflect on who you are, you do not find a fixed essence — only fragments: memories, sensations, emotions.
Even something as simple as a “guitar” is not a singular object in your mind,
but an abstract construction shaped by experience.
At the most fundamental level, we are constantly dealing with fictions that go beyond what is directly given to us.
And this does not stop at the individual level.
Collectively, we construct and agree upon shared fictions:
laws, property, the value of life, even the need for governments.
These are not things we experience directly — they are sustained by imagination.
Imagination is a strange gift.
It gives us ghosts, mythology, and entire worlds.
It lets us meet our favorite waifu, pilot a Gundam, or become a Power Ranger.
But more than that, it is the foundation of how we understand reality itself.
It fills the gaps between what we experience and what we believe.
Without imagination, we are not fully human.