Robbing of Imagination

I remember the old “pitch-back” I had when I was young. It was about four feet tall, three feet wide, had a net stretched tightly with stiff steel springs. I would spend hours on a humid summer day pitching a baseball into the net, aiming for the one foot by one foot square in the middle that represented the strike zone.

I would pretend that there was a real batter standing at the plate, real players in the field, and stands full of spectators cheering us on. I was into the game, standing on my makeshift mound, serious, focused, and determined to pitch a no hitter. I wound up tight and propelled the ball from my arm like an eight pounder from a pirate’s cannon. The ball sank into the net stretching the springs to twice their length at rest and came hurling back like a line drive hit by a batter. Collecting myself, I positioned my glove not a moment too soon to stop the ball dead in its path. “You’re Out!” the make believe umpire would shout; his authority reverberating through the park to let everyone one know that one was down, and two to go.

As a child I relied heavily upon my imagination for amusement, as every child did in those days. I played several games that made use of simple things to transport my mind into a dimension more interesting than the one for which I existed. I had a small orange flag in the shape of a pennant supported by a long, thin fiberglass rod attached to my bicycle that doubled as a javelin; A large wheel barrow that became a dump truck when dirt or rubbish needed to be moved; and a riding lawn mower, for which I was forbidden to operate, that became an imaginary race car in its kept state. The imagination provided our path to gratification, not the material things that are now designed to imagine things for the child.

I did not enjoy the luxury of a cell phone, Ipod, play station, computer, digital camera, or satellite TV to pass the hours of the day. Nor did any of hose items exist when I was coming up. The expense required for my own youthful occupations amounted to about a day’s wages in current dollars. None of it required a warranty, lifetime technical support, or a loan from the bank. Everything relied on what was created within my mind, and the possibilities were endless and free.

Today, with the concept of instant gratification becoming a right of humanity, a child’s entertainment requires several months’ wages with residual commitments, and additional investments necessary to sustain a child’s active engagement in life. The sad thing is that children are being raised with little value placed on the imagination, and more of it swayed toward products that create the imaginative atmosphere for the child. Our society is substituting the limitless abilities of the immaterial for the material. The notion of individual creativity is evaporating, and soon will only be nurtured by a gifted few.

The advent of our high tech society has brought about tremendous change for the good, but is also responsible for sending millions back to the dark ages of creativity. This materialism of high tech gadgets is creating a culture of dumb-brutes incapable of thinking for themselves, and creates a class division not based on the haves and have-nots, but on intelligence and ignorance. The bad thing is that it will take several generations for civilization to adjust, therefore producing chaos among members of both classes and a suspension of civil prosperity.