James Hillman - The Roots of Imagination

in the United States 49th in the world of literacy twenty-eight among 40 nations in mathematical literacy one-third of the biology teachers in our Republic support the teaching of creationism 61% believe the biblical story of the creation in six days is literal truth 61% once our youth ranked first in the world in high school graduation rates and today we are 17th we are departing from the educated community of so-called developed nations 80% of the population abroad accept evolution in the United States 35% merely in terms of these and many similar numbers the United States in this age of information that relies on an educated people cannot sustain its economic supremacy even its physical standard of living as it declines in patent registrations in the sciences technology and engineering in literacy itself its prowess can depend only on military coercion and I've said nothing of our form of government that relies upon the mental acumen of the people Jefferson wrote and I have what he said a sentence well we do have it if a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization it expects what never was and never will be Sam Adams who was a too neglected founder of the Republic he was a firebrand not John Quincy and not John Adams a cousin who was a a wild man earlier than they wrote that democracy flourishes as long as education is extended to the masses and a recent president george w bush said rarely is the question asked is our children learning so that's where we are now where we are is serious because this is not only education it's what what Steve just talked about education of imagination and here it ties in with where we are in another respect our current situation Robert McNamara Secretary of Defense during much of the Vietnam War looking back rights we can now understand these catastrophes for what they were essentially the product of a failure of imagination Donald Rumsfeld the surprise and its consequences not this is not a quote yet panic and terror are do that is what has been going on are due to what he said is the poverty of expectations the failure of imagination then when comparing the surprise at Pearl Harbor with the twin towers the director of the National Security Agency Michael Hayden said perhaps it was more a failure of imagination this time than last so you see education of imagination might even be useful pragmatic if that's where we are now in England they talk about they talk about imagination as a no not a Giunta they that when they were revising their their syllabus and curriculums and all that in the schools and the you know the these various tests and stuff they spoke of Education for capability that is education for what do we call it a coping mmm I wonder if this is the right moment for that I think I'll hold that off I'm gonna do a little negative capability will hold that part off for a minute well say a few other things first I think we need to talk about imagination first and it's education and that how to have the educated imagination is perhaps the specific ignorant that our society suffers I mean I just quoted mathematics literacy and so and so forth but there's something else that is more specific and that doesn't show up in the figures which I would call the education of imagination now how that goes about what that involves is what I think this program is partly being initiated for is to connect imagination with education in some way so I think we need to talk about that perhaps but before I go to this thing about capability and in capability and so I'm gonna rely now on a man named Ted Hughes who has written on myth and edge Kayson and who was I think the husband of sylvia plath is that right does anybody know yeah now he says he says a formal education is not for children the proper education for in plato's world especially is for the future ideal citizen it's something quite different it's to be found in the traditional myths and tales of which Greece possessed such a huge abundance now when Plato recommends the study of myths he had no religious motives for Plato those gods and goddesses and I'm quoting now Ted Hughes were hardly more serious as religious symbols than they are for us nobody believed in them yet they evidently did contain something important what exactly was it then that made them in his opinion the best possible grounding for his future enlightened realistic perfectly adjusted citizen let us suppose he thought about it as carefully as he thought about everything else so what did he have in mind trying to answer that question says Hughes leads in many interesting directions and he goes on to say that that means holding the stories the rich plethora of stories the the hundreds of varieties of stories of of the myths as being fundamental to the an imaginative education and he says the head that holds many stories becomes a small early Greece beautiful idea now this doesn't have to be only Greece he's emphasizing Greece I'm emphasizing Greece but as Michael Mead would tell you a head that holds many stories becomes a small Ireland if not a contemporary Ireland it doesn't matter either how the oldest stories are stories are old the way human biology is old that's a very important idea because we like to think the body is conditioned by its genetics and its patterns and so on what about the stories being as old as biology is old in other words what young calls the collective unconscious which consists in patterns and the patterns are presented in mythical stories then tears goes on what do we mean by imagination there are obviously many different kinds or degrees of it then he says the word imagination usually denotes not much more than the Faculty of creating a picture of something in our heads and holding it there while we think about it since this is a basis of nearly everything we do clearly it's very important that our imagination should be strong rather than weak and we've just seen witness to the failure of imagination or weak imaginations education neglects this faculty completely how is the imagination to be strengthened and trained a student has imagination we seem to suppose much as he as a face and nothing can be done about it and we say this guy has a big imagination and he has no imagination but what are we really saying and we do realize that it can vary enormous ly from one person to the next and from almost non-existent upwards of a person who simply cannot think what will happen if he does such and such a thing we say he has no imagination play this against contemporary events he has to work on principles or orders or by precedent think of Eichmann by the way and he will always be marked by extreme rigidity because he is after all moving in the dark we all know such people and we all recognize that they are dangerous since if they have strong temperaments in other respects they end up by destroying their environment and everybody near them this was written by Ted Hughes some time ago the terrible thing is that they are the planners and ruthless slaves to the plan which substitutes for the faculty they do not possess and they have the will of desperation where others see alternative courses they see only a gulf so you can see why I opened with those statements from Rumsfeld and and others how that fits in the basic type of imagination is our most valuable piece of practical equipment it is the control panel for everything we think and do so it ought to be education first concern yet whoever spent half an hour in any classroom strength trying to strengthen it in any way even in the sciences where accurate perception is recognizably crucial is this faculty ever deliberately trained so he's coming down pretty hard on this mmm-hmm the faculty we mean when we talk about the imagination of the great artists this is the character of great works that in them the full presence of the inner world combines with and is reconciled to the full presence of the outer world and in them we see that the laws of these two worlds are not contradictory they are one all-inclusive system they are laws that somehow we find it all but impossible to keep laws that only the greatest artists are able to restate they are the laws simply of human nature you see that's the crucial thing here imagination is not something strange it is these these mythical stories depict the basic patterns of human nature of the world's nature and men have recognized all through history he says men but I'm sure he meant women as well and men have recognized all through history that the restating of these laws in one medium or another in great works of art are the greatest human acts they are the greatest acts and they are the most human so this means studying not only the myths but the exemplars of this union of the inner and outer world in the painters Rembrandt and the composers Beethoven in Shakespeare in dust is key in Melville and Faulkner because in them the blueprints for imagination or imagination of that sort is a matter of Education as Plato divined and that these stories these myths and the exemplars that presented are like an archive he says of draft plans for the underlying pattern of human life and of the way of the world now maybe I can say something I've started to say about this education of imagination for being able to cope what what the English call education for capability but in addition for the education of imagination there's an education for in capability of what John Keats called negative capability some of you know this from teaching English or studying English not knowing surely you see what what the literalism of the beliefs today they know surely if the text is literally believed they know surely but negative capability is not knowing surely it's a kind of openness a sustained hovering over the case exposed that's what Henry James described the writer what is a writer's job it is a sustained hovering over the case exposed pondering wandering prodding peering back and forth supposing without judging or deciding or coming to conclusion letting the case the event move the mind from off its sureties this is a negative capability and this is what myth does this is what these stories do and this is imaginal capability why because you know it's only myth that it's not true that it doesn't ask you to believe the whole tale and all the figures in it are fables or confabulations not directly denoting or referring to anyone anywhere and yet to everyone everywhere yet the mind and the emotions are captivated as if this story these gods and goddesses these heroes and animals and strange events are saying something deeply important about life and the ways of the world they are talking psychologically or they're talking psychology in the language of imagination remember as you well know the the in the Greeks had no psychology no philosophy and now they had no psychology they only had myth they had no subject called psychology but they had mythology or rather they didn't have mythology either they had myths and the great plays that no one has ever been able to equal so now I'm going to interject a little personal note after a talk sometimes someone will ask me about what they might read more of mine for example or where do I begin what's an introductory book or something like that or student wants to go deeper into some ideas that I've laid out and I say read young and I say read Freud and I say read Plato and the answer to the study of an idea or a person's ideas is the background of the sources so to study young you read what young read or you find an author and you want to read what he read or what she read you go backwards and this is true for education in general it seems to me you go backwards you learn backwards what did Picasso look at Greek images African masks what did Joyce read Homer's Ulysses st. Thomas Aquinas what @k Keats read Shakespeare they went back Stravinsky Thomas Mann Rothko they went back to the mythic the mythic is the source of culture of ideas the very word idea is Greek as is logic as is psyche as is democracy and so on and so on and so forth we are planted in mythical soil both as a civilization and as a culture and from this soil ever new fertility arises nourishing imagination and testing can't touch it so a word about this test free stuff for it what I'm proposing is a test free education we need a test free education or at least not let the ends govern the means now that's an appropriate sentence here in this ex Jesuit place not let the ends govern the means the means of learning our teachers and books and experiments and writing and speaking all requiring for judgment observation formulation critical reflection aesthetic appreciation and so on that's the means of Education the ends of testing is scoring by simplifications into right and wrong or multiple choices and remembering the least ambiguous facts where there can be no dispute it's either right or wrong the least ambiguous facts which is pretty narrow really simplifications in other words a first step into ignorance even in mathematics where there are so-called right answers it is in the process of arriving at the solution of a problem not the solution that constitutes mathematical intelligence when the ends determine the means teachers must teach toward testing and students study to pass the test the end result is passing the test not to learn the material because there is not necessarily a direct relation between the test and learning the material that little step which is the course would be the essential step is not really carefully thought-out so testing favours ignorance another thing it does is it in the attempt to objectify assessment to remove assessment from being my personal feeling for the student teacher's pet that I like this one or I have a neurotic connection to this one which by the way is absolutely essential in all teaching all the way back to Plato there is that we have to get rid of that and we have to objectify it as much as we can so we have objective measures of assessment but what it does is it it separates the function of this assessment which is inherent in you and me and each person has an internal Assessor going on all the time when you're working at anything you're you've got a critic you've got an Assessor is this done right if I do it again is that the right answer maybe I should work it this way so on and so forth it splits the Assessor from internal figure into an external power figure so the internal critic is is devalued in a sense and replaced by an external person hmm I wonder I'd like to talk with you about some of this when when I'm finished but I have a few more things I want to say first now that one is terribly important because power gets into the game so easily it's already in the game in a way because the teacher knows and the pupil doesn't know anything and so on but that is not the case with adult education as it is imagined at Pacific and in particular but if teachers are to teach imagination it is not only teaching mythical stories that could be the material of the content but there's something else that is required I think it's very important for the teacher to feel comfortable with the imagination and that's first of all and I believe that the techniques of exploring the imagination guided imagery and so on maybe waystations but I don't think that's the whole point because as long as their techniques you know having animal guides and guided imagination and active imagination under supervision and so forth their techniques they're not imagination the best way to begin that exploration of imagination is to trust one's fantasy life and one's fantasy life may be full of emotions that one doesn't want it to have there may be emotions of rage there may be emotions of desire I mean fantasies of anger of hatred fantasies of sexual activities of adventure various sorts of fantasy they can be the seeds of one's imaginative life as dreams are and it's very important for the teacher to allow these things to occur to feel them to experience them even to record them so that she or he feels comfortable with the strangeness of the imaginative world with the gods and the demons and the animals and the jungles and the territories that are the source of one's imaginative life unless the teachers comfortable with that he or she will censor and repress or suppress the imaginative life of the pupil the student or will worship it excessively because he or she will be cut off from an insight and therefore find these marvelous students who have such a rich imagination and they won't be able to discriminate one thing from another because they're they're cut off from their own imaginative life now in my reflection in my reflection on this program I have a few concluding cautions it's great to be old you can do these things first learning alone you know this is part of this program is long distance so learning alone can't substitute for learning in a group with colleagues the back and forth the communal enterprise notice that home schooling by parents of children is usually found among the ideologically entrenched avoiding the cacophony of voices and views of the classroom hence it seems to me email among co students is an important corrective to learning alone and conference calls in other words making use of the network's second a place is part of learning the internet is not a place all our memories of schools from kindergarten through college are ensconced in images of place think about it hence the program to be launched must have regular periods of travel to and study in a physical campus where the ritual of the group takes place third learning akan there only 3 learning occurs even adult learning in a direct relation between teacher and student and let me expand on this one for a moment between teacher and student now teaching and learning are not to be confused with education and may even be hindered by education put it simply and practically something quite naturally wants to learn especially in childhood but how to use a saw cook a scrambled egg remember the lyrics of a song where does the Sun go when it goes down and where are the Robins in the winter and why don't Ducks drown like chickens something in us wants to know where how when what and the questioning is innate to the human psyche and a child keeps asking and as we grow older we also keep asking and with children it just goes gets obsessive you know why then and why and why and why till it's time to say that's it to bed but corresponding with this desire2learn is an equally innate urge to teach something again quite naturally wants to reply to a question to demonstrate explain correct here give me that let me show you how to use that how to hold that don't hold the saw so tightly let the teeth do the work rain what is rain why we make rain in our own bathroom see how the steam from the bath makes little droplets on the cold surface of the mirror and so on there's somebody they are always with answers who wants to show somebody else how to do it where it came from give an answer explained so we have the an innate desire to learn and an innate desire to teach and in between these natural connections comes education this great big massive thing called education with degrees the relation between learning and teaching is animal natural given unless the product of civilization and culture than their basis and however we frame the relationship teacher and learner knowledge and ignorance the full and the empty our constant constituents of the soul's interior life and they belong not only to early years or early phases of investigation the search for a teacher for teaching and the desire to teach continue importantly into late life one and one of late life's more miserable moments occurs when the teaching urge is frustrated and no one wants what you can teach between these two impulses and their affinity for each other comes education and that's the problem education sounds very reasonable it aims to facilitate the relationship by removing the haphazard and the controlling can't and controlling the contingent picking the right teachers selecting the right students organizing the system organizing the relationship setting up the rules the whole business but eventually the native calling becomes a profession and power inevitably follows the division into classes which threatens teaching and learning with fear of the other so the students become afraid of the teacher the teacher becomes afraid of the students everybody's evaluating everybody else and you've got a whole other world rather which is called education rather than teaching and learning I think my point is made many of you are teachers all of us are learners so when I say that I say all of us are teachers too not just the professionals so that's where I want to stop

Channel: Intellectual Deep Web

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Keywords: james hillman, psychology, roots of imagination, imagination, alchemy, soul practice, soul code, carl jung, cg jung, american education system, mythology, alchemical imagination, imaginal

Id: cuYg3QKj2K4

Length: 32min 10sec (1930 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2018