Commentary: A Lack of Imagination

By Peter Siedlecki

Buffalo, NY – What we are living through in the city of Buffalo, in county of Erie, and in the United States of America is failure... failure of many kinds, but most importantly failure of the imagination. However, when those charged with leadership at these varying levels are confronted by financial shortfalls, the areas that are first to feel the effects of the budgetary axe are somewhat loosely bundled and labeled the "culturals" a word chosen, I am sure to suggest exclusivity and to imply that these are the province of the priveleged and are peripheral and, therefore, dispensible. That is like saying humanity itself is peripheral and dispensible. There is nothing complicated about what it takes to survive or to become affluent. We can learn lessons about survival and affluence simply by observing the animal world; but to create a painting, or a musical composition, or a poem is not something that can be done by squirrels or by lions; it requires imagination, one of the special gifts associated with being human.

The socialist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, for most of his career, believed in socialist realism, or that the only good art was that which contributed practically and intentionally to the permanent revolution. Near the end of his life, however, he changed his mind. He realized that all art no matter how abstract or experimental because it opens us to possibilities, because it engages our imagination, contributes not only to revolution, but to evolution, a rising up from what we are, to seek change for the better.

When we do not support and encourage the use of the imagination, imagination fails and societies become drab. They begin to die, section by section, city by city, county by county. In the midst of chaos, we fortify ourselves with those simple and gross stories that involve fighting for survival. In Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut wrote, "I had suddenly become more and more enraged and mystified by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason American shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books."

How simple it is, how gross it is to end a story by having someone shot, an Osama Bin Laden, an insurgent Iraqi, an abortion provider, an unsympathetic classmate, a neighborhood troublemaker, a liquor store proprietor, a convenience store employee. How simple it is to avoid complications, and how completely lacking in imagination.

Listener-Commentator Peter Siedlecki is dean of the division of Arts and Sciences at Daemen College.