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Imagination - a Manifesto

I’ve been slowly delving into the work of Ruha Benjamin , a social science scholar and professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. This book comes at an interesting time for me.


"Dream a little before you think" - Toni Morrison

Imagination a Manifesto
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Imagination: A Manifesto is an invitation to think about a different world. The author expects us to make a real effort to build a new world. And for that, imagination is essential.


In many ways, our work in technology and organizational design is all about imagining new realities and building them through our interpretation of this new world. We can imagine an incredible world when we think about the possibilities of technology for the future, or when we imagine how far we can go with the evolution of genetic medicine, but thinking about a world where everyone has access to universal, free, and quality public health care often seems impossible.


Ruha, as a sociologist, rejects in many ways the immutable perspective of Human Nature, which tends to categorize behaviors as fixed and deterministic, used to justify public policies and general actions. The book provides examples and evidence of how we are socialized into different ways of being and thinking: it was institutions, propaganda, communities that built the social structure that we inherited. These are what shape our imagination.


"Imagination: A Manifesto is a proposal for the exorcism of our mental and social structures from the tyranny of dominant imaginaries. It is a field guide for sowing an imagination grounded in solidarity, where our interdependence with the rest of the planet is reflected back to us through our institutions and social relations."

A curious experiment presented in the book shows the longitudinal research on Divergent Thinking, carried out by NASA .


Divergent thinking is believed to be one of the important skills for innovative and creative people. The aim of the study was to identify characteristics and monitor the development of children into adulthood to better select the next geniuses for the space race (in the 1960s).


A group of 1600 children were monitored to identify their ability to find innovative solutions to problems ( Divergent Thinking ). The study found that 98% of children adhered to what the researchers identified as “Brilliant Creative Ability” in children up to 5 years old.


But the surprising thing is that each year, this number drops dramatically: 30% of 10-year-olds and 12% of 15-year-olds scored in the “highly creative” category, respectively. Only 2% of adults scored in the “highly creative” quadrant.


“What we conclude is that uncreative behavior is taught.”

Imaginative capacity, and consequently our ability to think of alternatives to our problems, is taken away from us from childhood.




Imagination and creative capacity need to be fostered! We need more innovation to solve today's social problems: and this doesn't always have to do with technology!

The author invites us to critically imagine a different future, going beyond our non-creative conditioning.


In creating a new world, why limit yourself to the obvious:

  • A world without prisons? “Never!!”

  • An education system that promotes genius in all children? “Naive”

  • Work that doesn’t take us to the grave? “Impossible”

  • A society where everyone has access to food, shelter and love? “Keep dreaming…”


Exactly…


“Actively imagining the future is how humans guide their present actions to make the future a reality. Imagination is shared through stories and narratives—the way we design everything from the technologies we invent to the social systems we implement, the norms in which we perform our identities, and perhaps even the mutation of our DNA, our perception of reality… We cannot have a small fraction of the global community defining the values and features of our future systems. The stakes are too high.

Using real examples of groups that have been trying to build a world based on different premises, the author presents her perspective in a practical and direct way: we have all the tools to build a new human reality, but we need to organize ourselves . As Angela Glover Blackwell describes, this Radical Imagination is a speculative methodology at the service of a more just world, gaining prominence in the construction of our own future realities.


Whether discussing the tragedy that mass incarceration causes to the poor, mostly black population, or the creative experiences in Finnish education, Ruha creates in this manifesto a catalogue of projects and groups engaged in imagining a new world: more just and inclusive.


APAC , from love no one escapes, is a documentary about the recovery and resocialization project for incarcerated people that I learned about a few years ago and that shows how it is possible to think differently about the prison environment. I highly recommend that you watch it:



It's a good book . I hope to continue delving deeper into her work soon.


When I think about how I conduct much of my work, this divergent thinking seems like a constant: To create something new, you have to imagine a different future.


When we set up Lambda3, we started from a different perspective of looking at a company:

  • Is it possible to create a democratic company in the management model?

  • Is it possible to create an environment that, despite still delivering software as a business model, is organized based on different pillars? Autonomy, transparency and collaboration - instead of control, hierarchy and command?


From this possibility, a new environment was created, and we were able to create a new perspective on work, and on how an organization could function.






This quick book is an invitation: cultivating imagination is our only way to a better world.


I recommend it !



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