Last updated on November 14, 2022
In my previous post about imagination, I talked about Hitler and the Nazis as an example of a remarkably destructive imagination and how it can warp political reality and behavior. But our response, as I said, ought not to be a call for less imagination, as if that were possible, but for a moral imagination. The moral imagination is distinguished, here, from the “idyllic imagination.” These terms are not my own, and come out of the work of Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Russell Kirk, Claes Ryn and others. I’m honestly not convinced these labels fit best, but they’re what I’m working with at this point.
So what is the difference between a moral and an idyllic imagination?
Attunement and movement towards reality characterizes an elevated, mature will and the corresponding moral imagination, while the revolt or evasion distinguishes the lower, immature will and the idyllic imagination. The moral imagination and the higher will strive for and express moderation, order, prudence, proportion, and the restraints of tradition and civilization. The idyllic imagination favors what is spontaneous, “wild,” unrestrained, and merely sentimental; it celebrates human freedom understood as opposed to the inhibitions of tradition, civilization, and historical experience. The moral imagination does not favor liberty for its own sake, but as a necessary condition for authentic human happiness and development.
This probably seems quite abstract, and not as precise a definition as one might like. Furthermore, this distinction likely strikes modern listeners as arbitrary and very “unscientific.” It is not grounded in an explicit understanding of psychology, an abstract notion of “nature,” a school of thought, or a single religion. It is also not meant to be absolute, definitive, or rigid. The distinction is rooted, instead, in the long and complicated history of the Western world and in humanity’s interminable struggle to know and live the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Over time, those aspects associated with the “moral imagination” and the “higher will,” have produced “fruit” in keeping with human dignity, peace, discovery, community, truth, goodness, and beauty. The virtues of moderation, prudence, humility, and restraint, for example correspond historically to those individuals and actions representative of what is widely considered the “best” of humanity. Such a seemingly subjective formulation may raise eyebrows, unless one assumes that human history is one of the primary means by which the good, the true, and the beautiful are disclosed. The more we study history, literature, art, drama and the humanities generally, the more we start to see the “permanent” things emerge in a diverse set of ways. We can look through the constantly changing world to a common ground that helps make sense of it all.
This is not easy. To cultivate a genuinely moral imagination requires significant intellectual, spiritual, and ethical development. It requires both freedom and restraint, pain, risk, failure, and above all, time and humility. Indeed, the human condition is characterized as a perpetual struggle between our higher and lower “selves,” or between the moral and idyllic imagination within each of us. A thoroughly moral imagination seems to take a lifetime to cultivate, and especially in our own time. The hostility to history, tradition, proportion, modesty, and restraint seems to increase daily. We can so easily get swept up in escapist, conspiratorial, and radical visions because they provide an alternative to the challenges of developing a moral imagination.
So we need to accept what it takes to develop a moral imagination, and we also have to be more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity without sliding into nihilism. Question things, sure, but don’t stop believing that there may actually be answers. The Good, the true, and the beautiful exist. There is often a “right” answer or several right and wrong answers, but they may take a lifetime to find. And when you discover you’re wrong, don’t give up hope.
Also remember that we’re not alone in this quest. We have centuries of recorded human experience in history, fiction, poetry, songs, art, myths, and drama. These resources afford us a reservoir of insights which shatter oversimplified narratives and give us hope that this life is not meaningless and arbitrary. Some of these resources may lead us to darker places animated by the idyllic imagination, as in the case of Richard Wagner and Hitler, but a mature moral imagination can resist such stories, or, more accurately, it can resist elevating the spirit of a Wagner opera to a personal and political manifesto. Indeed, another way to think of the moral imagination is a kind of inner-check that warns us when the idyllic imagination is beginning to have the upper hand.
So who or what is providing the source material for your imagination? What stories are you creating and drawing on – intentionally or unintentionally – that inform your politics, your faith, your ethics, and your relationships? Have these stories produced good “fruit,” as it were? When lived out, does reality seem to get in the way or have you obtained a level of maturity where you are acting with, not against reality? Do you run from, or toward, the Good, the true, and beautiful?
As the Architecture of Doom documentary (mentioned in a previous post) and the historical record shows, Hitler and the Nazis were monstrous. They told a story that was grounded more in their resentment and arrogance than it was in actual German history and moral reality. They asserted their own imagined reality on others, and it cost millions of lives. But humans in the 20th and 21st century continue to fall for these stories because we take the perspective of Walter in The Big Lebowski, who says, “I mean, say what you want about the tenants of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”
But simply having an ethos or poetic ideals and extravagant visions about bringing heaven to earth doesn’t make you or me a good person, nor does it make a political movement something worth following. Indeed, it was the ethos of Hitler and national socialism that treated the world as a blank canvas, and people became as disposable as paint brushes and crayons. The same could be said of the murderous ethos of communism in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and especially following the disastrous Chinese cultural revolution of Mao Zedong.
But none of this changes the fact that we, as human beings, live according to our imaginations and the stories that shape them. One could argue we were made to learn and grow this way. From a Christian perspective, this is exactly why Jesus spoke in parables. He began by saying, “the kingdom of God is like…” and then proceeded with a story that seemed to say more than a straight sermon would. The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce once remarked, “Great artists are said to reveal us to ourselves.” How much more so when the artist is the Creator of the Universe.
To conclude this series on imagination, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, perhaps drawing on Napoleon: “Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.” The most powerful people are not always those with the biggest guns and the most money. They’re the ones who can shape the narrative and convince others to embrace it. But we are not helpless in our struggle to resist the diabolical, totalitarian imagination. We can draw on the insights of others who resisted, often at great personal cost. We can turn to Edmund Burke, Pope John Paul II and James Madison. We can look for courage in the writings of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis; for warnings in the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ray Bradbury; and for inspiration in the poetry of T.S. Eliot, the music of Mozart, the art of Thomas Cole, and the scientific genius of Norman Borlaug. Finally, we could seldom do better than to look to one of communism’s greatest enemies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who once said, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”
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