Everyone’s heard of it… but hearing about it isn’t the same thing as knowing. Knowing is where the flavor is, that is to say, a personal experience, sensorial, real.
Now, it just so happens that the reality can be uninteresting to certain power groups who pressingly dedicate themselves to masking the reality, substituting it by some kind of popular party, like Carnival or the World Cup.
How can reality be hidden? By one’s imagination. Imagination is the human faculty that gives shape to that which does not yet exist—and may never exist in the world of phenomena, of things and people.
Any image that involves what is real on a smoke screen can help to make up a fantasy, whether it’s the ET from Varginha, the little old lady from Taubaté or a trip to Disneyland.
A concrete example of this game of prestidigitators is the World Cup in Brazil. As soon has the good sense of the thinker minorities started asking inconvenient questions, questions about the absurdity of deviating to the sports arenas the bulky funds denied to schools and hospitals, they shot into the horizon of the media – at the speed of light – their first commercial advertisements to justify such abuse. “When we are having fun, amazing things happen!” “Our imagination runs wild. A new world appears on the horizon.” “Imagine Carnival! Imagine the party!”
And what was the bait used? Imagination! In order to turn our eyes away from the roofless schools and all the sick piled on top of stretchers in the corridors of our hospitals, we are all invited to use our imagination and see something that does not exist: crowds in the streets and squares in uniform costumes celebrating with Epicurus a little extra Carnival under the franchising of FIFA. “Just imagine 2014!”
Sure, the cheerers drink beer and Coca-Cola. That is, they consume. And in consuming, they are happy. Soon—a simple matter of logic—the Cup will make us happy. Just imagine… when tourism and entertainment become priorities, at the expense of education and health, it is time to ask in what direction the Brazilian nation is headed.
It doesn’t matter to anyone (or does it?) the fact that the children will go on without receiving a possible education, that teachers and doctors remain underpaid, and the ill patients are still bleeding on the cold cement. Damn! What poor imagination these people have! All they had to do was imagine…
This is only one case in particular. There’s no denying all the years that TV has distracted our eyes from the essential, entertaining us with images that hypnotize and invite us to sleep. And the people adore it. They give audience, applause and… become a mere spectator of existence.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the theater owners manipulate the strings of the sleepy puppets. They eat, drink and dream. Their new motto? “Imagine that!”
And if I only imagine, but fail to see the real, never will I put to use the valuable method of Joseph Cardjin’s model of See – Judge – Act. But now the question is: is it within the interests of the powerful to have people taking action?
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