The Never Ending Story
I once read the book The Never Ending Story when I was a child, and when I’ve became a mother I promised myself that our child should hear Michael Endes fantastic The Never Ending Story. When our son was old enough to understand The Never Ending Story we read it together, talked about it from a child perspective and a grown-up perspective. Children are so wise – no need to say that our son agreed with the boy in the story. If you haven’t read this book – basically about imagination – you should definitely read it – if not for you then for your children. In the book this line really gets to me; “Once someone dreams a dream, it can’t just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can’t remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under earth. There are forgot dreams stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer they are. All Fantastica rests on foundation of forgotten dreams.” and it goes on in the book with beautiful wisdom about the imagination; “Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can’t explain them, and those who haven’t known them have no understanding of them at all.”. The Never Ending Story is a magnificent story where we dive deep in understanding why fantasy and imagination is so important in our life.
We as grown-ups sometimes have to listen to children especially when it’s about imagination. In the book the main character is a young boy who is on an adventure. On his adventure he understands that Fantastica is dying, because grown-ups have forgot to use their fantasy. The young boy; “… had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying “Life is like that”, but he couldn’t agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles”. This was certainly me as a young child – believing in mysteries – but I was also very much aware of another true sentence in the book; “When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.” and “Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them” – and the story goes on in this beautiful book; “The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they’re as clever as can be and are convinced that it’s terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn’t exist.”. The book is about a young boy fighting for Fantastica so the humans don’t become controlled and life become gray and dull. To me this book The Never Ending Story is beside a story about a boy growing up also a warning that we as humans MUST be connected with our imagination, our inner child to survive, and there is a risk that we forgot to use our imagination when we grow up.
The True sign of Intelligence is not knowledge but Imagination
These words was once said by Albert Einstein. Being the most well known scientist of the 20 century in physics you’ll thought being analytical and logical was the most important sign of intelligence, but not according to Einstein. He was very clear in his message; ” A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity” and he continued “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere” and as the message in The Never Ending Story Einstein was also aware that; “Imagination is the language of the soul” in fact “Creativity is intelligence having fun”. Never the less also Einstein have had some experiences with his teachers in school similar. He was expected to just accept “life had to be as gray and dull” as his teacher in physic thought it was – luckily for us today Einstein didn’t believe in it. So according to Albert Einstein imagination is the reason why he got the idea of theory of relativity. It makes you – or it makes me wonder….how is it that we’re so eager to let AI do our imagination work? Or another question could be ( and yes I know it’s a sceptical one) why is AI companies so eager to harvest our imagination and let us believe that it is the right path to let AI do the imagination work? Is it not what Michael Ende wrote in The Never Ending Story ” When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies.”?
If we dive deep into Lev Vygotskys psychological definition of imagination; it is explained as a mental and cognitive ability to represent, create, or construct images in the mind and plays as such a very important role in human processes e.g. language and thinking. As P.L.Harris (2022) writes in the book Children’s Imagination; Imagination relates to creativity and the fantastic but also everyday thing, by taking existing knowledge and generating hypothetical and new ideas. Imagination allows a person to make sense of the world and their place within it. To me this is serious talk – isn’t it? So use your imagination don’t outsource it to AI – listen to Leonardo da Vinci in saying; “Whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands…it lies in his (or hers) power to create…”
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