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The academy slowly catching up https://t.co/mpEFy99d9s
Iāll live read this later but one immediate note: Iād love it if imagination finally got the respect and legitimacy it deserves as the load-bearingest bit of the human mind, Not least of all cuz itād finally allow us to draw clearer distinctions between imagination & imaginal
As-is, people often use the word āImaginalā when theyāre talking about imagination but donāt want to use the word āimaginationā since no one takes it seriously. If people take imagination seriously, we can have a less-cloudy distinction
(tbc, Iām as guilty of this as anyone. My work deals with BOTH the imaginal & the imagination, tho I tend to use āImaginalā way way more often Part of this is cuz my main focus is definitely the imaginal, but part is becauseā¦ yeah, hard for folks to respect āimagination-workā)
@m_ashcroft Well obviously, https://t.co/ADYb4s8STY
@m_ashcroft More seriously: the imaginal deals with the archetypal realm, the mundus imaginalis. Itās the place where the patterns are kept, where we and the Patterns can mingleāthey come through to be embodied, we go over to find and clarify oneās worth embodying/bringing through
@m_ashcroft Another useful distinction: imagination is sth done by the ego, the imaginal is a place you can go when you either leave the ego behind or train it to be fine with sitting quietly and not fidgeting or interfering
@m_ashcroft https://t.co/gExUlM1WzJ
You know what, actually, this might be another decent heuristic for the division between āimaginationā and āimaginalā in addition to the others: Imagination can be satisfactorily approached and explained in biological terms (if youāre so inclined), The imaginal cannot https://t.co/HmHmIfvL85
Imagination is not a peripheral feature or an aesthetic concern: it is the core cognitive capacity that grounds all of our sensemaking https://t.co/nEBJ2ZVPPm
(I donāt expect this to make it into academic journals anytime soon, but while weāre here I might as well say it: Imagination is also our core spiritual capacity that grounds not only sensemaking, but also our ability to journey and find and discern what matters)
Mythopoetic aspects of the mind have been neglected for too long, despite being literally the bedrock our minds are built on https://t.co/Ls3Wqr4yDF
Weāve taken one strange little islet in our cognitionāan unusual pattern based around verbal propositions and logicāand decided that this odd lil protrusion is the main thing worth studying and attending to Baffling choice. https://t.co/1Vwkiui6Cr
A āwelcome backlash of embodied and enactive cognitionā indeed. Iāve said it before and Iāll say it again: fuck the linguistic turn https://t.co/VIOYsR8J0x https://t.co/FxjWsiqSGE
So-called āirrationalā aspects like the emotional and somatic are undeniably *foundationally beneath* ārationalā thinking, Itās a truly irrational act to try and ignore those foundations https://t.co/9CrdOv7Jqt
our Imaginative faculties are the hub, the junction, the mycelial network connecting everything else & holding it all together Relegating it to a touchy-feely aesthetic side-concern for poets & dream-readers to deal with isā¦ well it should be too stupid a mistake to occur but, https://t.co/h459cM3zK9
There is unfortunately no mistake that is too stupid to occur https://t.co/8uP5tTfz8G
The imagination is where ā¢weā¢ happen. Itās where our world comes into being, the entirety of our experience while weāre alive; this is where it knits together. Maybe the āwhat the fuck is waterā obviousness of it is why itās the last major element to be taken seriously https://t.co/GRXWZFiFuN
Always back at the estuary. I think that across domains, imagination and the imaginal are by definition an in-between interface between things (different *things* in different cases) Without imagination, everything is discrete & lifeless Only imagination enlivens https://t.co/xZvgkkOAp6 https://t.co/vPnvRyVCx2
What the fuck is water? https://t.co/2qDFTCJkGB
Mythopoetic cognition is the engine of mind https://t.co/fRTLApF9Ai
Mythopoetic cognition is the engine of mind https://t.co/CSd3NeQ4PG
MYTHOPOETIC COGNITION IS THE ENGINE OF MIND https://t.co/pR3YFXnFav
This is a fairly succinct summary of one lens on my somatic-imaginal work, Aaaand on why the fuck I insist on persistently hyphenating those together into a single concern. We live by image and narrative. Our images and narratives dwell in the soma. https://t.co/hV6hCiSVSF
Iād need to talk to this guy face to face to get an embodied sense of what exactly he means here, But my (possibly projected) sense is that the imagination is often approached outside-in when it should proceed from the inside outward, Which, yes, useful framing https://t.co/jZhpqjUeWX
Hmmm this feels like a rich question https://t.co/scGPL7ynoy
Estuary again: imagination is where the map becomes the territory, and the territory is woven into the map. Mythopoetic mind *is* humans native territory. And this territory is also our map of further territories. https://t.co/Q0bkGia5xu
š· an object-world of impersonal laws š¤© a living world of intention and story https://t.co/9br6kNd4UR
Imagination is not the type of thing many peoples ideas of mind can get a grip on, Mythopoetic cognition doesnāt just point at something, or refer to it, Imagination is *imperative*, enactive, it makes demands on us to *do* and *be* rather than to passively observe and refer https://t.co/xRAXK3tBbM
Yet another reason imagination and the mythopoetic may be more comfortable to ignore and delegitimizeā Language requires nothing of us but to say, hear, refer to things. Words are cheap. Imagination is decidedly not. Mythic living *costs* us, it *makes demands* of us
Much better to ignore that sort of thing entirely. Whoās going to approve my grants or my tenure applications if I start taking the inner worlds demands seriously?? No no, much better to stay in the verbal rational logical zone, keep it nice and discrete from silly imaginings.
This whole rush to ground imagination entirely in materialism and biology is frustrating but very much expected, Have at it yall, do what you gotta do to build cultural acceptance, Iāll be waiting here when people start to notice thereās more and that itās calling them https://t.co/BuHakfDmsD
storytelling, image making, song, dance, and so on are some of the earliest and continually powerful forms of knowledge. An epistemology that cannot recognize this has failed to understand the biological mind. https://t.co/EdiHiYaSkz
You know what, actually, this might be another decent heuristic for the division between āimaginationā and āimaginalā in addition to the others: Imagination can be satisfactorily approached and explained in biological terms (if youāre so inclined), The imaginal cannot https://t.co/HmHmIfvL85
A factual description of the world comes after our embodied imaginative interaction with the social world https://t.co/hsuewcWRbb
Acknowledging the imaginative construction of a given moment doesnāt make us untrustworthy or flighty or touchy freely, But denying that construction does leave us detached, disembodied, denying basic levels of our being https://t.co/hDMUdO2uTy
I am both totally on board w a taxonomy project, and totally sure Iām gonna hate whatever taxonomies they land on https://t.co/fEhjjZ12Kb
Prolly gonna leave off here, cuz the paper is leaving territory Thatās particularly relevant to me, but Idk Iām not so sure that getting academics to pull together a taxonomy is going to be *better* than folk taxonomies, rather than worse https://t.co/3NzTa7NXqy
Also, and this is a minor quibble, and I get the dynamics behind it but, Thereās a bit of a trap happening here with āimagination is core and underlies logical and linguistic aspects of experienceā leading to āletās codify logical linguistic descriptions of imaginationā
I get that itās necessary for him and his job and his field and building legitimacy within the academy and so on for this subject, And I get that there are many aspects of imagination that will be aided by being better-understood on these levels,
@TylerAlterman Nope, thisān? https://t.co/gCjWyXluCV
