2022-03-13

On abc/Ellie Han and abc/Social Imaginaries (aka Collective Imaginary)

Context is link from Joe Ross & Tomas Bjorkman essay: http://www.whatisemerging.com/opinions/building-bridges-into-the-fog

YouTube video they link: Ellie Hain on the Social Imaginary/Collective Imaginary. Also read her essay https://www.elliehain.com/imaginaries-and-the-breakdown-of-normality (main thing linked on her site)

Seems to be a synonym for worldview (or cultural frame).
Why adopt the term "imaginary"?
An emphasis on very deep (ontological) worldview i.e. we are thinking about the very nature of being for human beings
Gives example of hunter-gatherer => agriculture or agriculture => industrial societies. These involved big mindset shifts.
- [Ed: again I'd just term these worldviews or culture and that culture includes an implicit ontology, epistemology etc]
Seems terminology may trace to abc/Charles Taylor (sources of the self etc) who wrote Modern Social Imaginaries (2003)

YouTube transcription

Hello everyone so today i'm going to be talking about imaginaries now imaginaries it's a word that keeps coming up a lot recently we talk about social imaginaries collective imaginaries the imaginary of society and it's something that we seem to intuitively grasp however very few people are actually clear on what that concept means which is a shame because they are so important to understand current times so let's go with it what are they okay so imagine that you want to understand the nature of reality so we have of course the natural world where we have chemistry physics biology nature the great outdoors but we are social animals so we don't only live in the natural world we have the social dimension where we create art culture ideology politics markets economies states law but in order to create all of these phenomena we need to essentially create a new dimension and that is what we call the social imaginary and now you might be thinking nice sounds like you just invented another fancy word for culture or ideology and you may have a point because they are indeed quite similar in some ways but they are actually different and the essential difference is that we need an imaginary in order to be able to create these other concepts so the imaginary is the territory or the background where we create concepts like culture or ideology and the following question would be nice but why does this differentiation matter like at all and here's the thing the truth is that in most cases it doesn't really matter that much because most of the time the conversation that we're in or the plane of thinking that we're at doesn't really go that deep that abstract into the level of imaginaries however there are certain times where talking about imaginaries is essential and those are times where civilization humanity is undergoing very deep and massive transformations like when we went from 100 gallery societies to agricultural societies or from agricultural societies to the modern industrial ones now in those cases the types of culture change or mindset change that are needed in order to keep up with everything that's going on in society cannot just happen at the level of culture or ideology but really needs to be deep at the level of imaginaries and i know that this is quite abstract so let me give you a very true history-based example so some of you might have heard of this quote by ursula kellegging who is the absolute queen of imaginaries that says that the power of capitalism may seem inescapable but so did the divine right of kings and this quote is super important because it points out to the fact that imaginaries tend to be constructed around some key concepts that dictate essentially how we perceive our whole social existence so let's dig deep into that now let's look back quite some years into our pre-modern social imaginary that is the middle ages now in those times our whole social order was constructed around the idea of god the divine king and the underlying mythological order of the cosmos now those ideas inform everything about our whole social world and social existence like how we perceive ourselves we're basically here our whole worth as a person is directly related to how close i am to god which if you're a priest or a king or a noble quite a lot but if you're a peasant it's essentially zero or how we related to others like forget notions of equality like that's cute now here what matters is a divine order of the universe where everyone everyone is exactly where god intended them to be no matter if you're a priest a peasant or a princess you're exactly in your right place and of course they also affect how we perceive the broader systems that we're ingrained in like for example how should we take decisions or how do we know what's good or who should rule things well of course it's all according to god's word i love it or hate it the truth is that this story worked relatively well until the 18th century came with the scientific and industrial revolutions and of course the modern indictment and at this point the story of gods and kings just didn't really cut it anymore and gradually a new story starts to emerge now we're talking about the market economy and the revolutionary idea of nation-states not ruled by kings but by sovereign individuals and instead of looking at the world exclusively through the divine order and god's word narrationality comes into place which now this concept might seem extremely obvious because we're just leaving painting them but then that was extremely revolutionary and so slowly but surely all these concepts started to permeate and infiltrate every aspect of our social life now we don't think of ourselves anymore as mere servants of our god of our king no now we are proud citizens of our nations and productive members of the economy and instead of just accepting god-given hierarchies now we think of ourselves as autonomous goal-driven individuals that we can collaborate with each other and make agreements that we should stick to them with honor and responsibility well at least if you're a white man and that thing about just ruling the whole of society according to god's word how embarrassing no now we have the scientific method secular humanism and economic rationality and we're able to measure everything and see how effective things really are and we try to implement at least some kind of meritocracy that is based on reason and efficiency and not just on religious ideology now of course this doesn't really happen on a conscious level imaginaries are more like the collective unconscious it's not like we just go around every day explicitly thinking oh i must be a productive member of society today or else it'll be completely worthless no this manifests on a much more subtle level like for example when we tie our identity so much with our profession and you know the classic story here you meet someone you say your name and then two seconds later what do you do or it's also the reason why our idea of making it or of success is essentially identical with being a high achiever in the modern economy or my personal favorite when we feel this deep deep existential guilt and even worthlessness when we are not being as productive as we'd like to and oh my god the pandemic absolutely hit us hard there but it's okay i know there's no shame we've all been there it's not us it's the imaginary and you know that thing that i was saying before that imaginaries are the background where we create concepts like culture or ideology well that is just so painstakingly clear when you realize that the main ideologies that we invented in the modern age they all essentially refer either to the economy like communism capitalism socialism or to the nation state like fascism so as you see imaginaries are incredibly powerful they really are like the dark matter of society that holds everything together or like the deep code that's running us without us being aware of that but despite of all their power or precisely because of their power the truth is that imaginaries remain completely invisible to us and that's why a very common metaphor to refer to them is to say that imaginaries are like water for the fish so it's something that is all around us that we are completely ingrained in and that we need for living however we are completely unaware of them but still we must make an effort in really trying to understand them because at the point where society is at with all the massive transformations that are happening right now the kinds of change that need to happen that culture change that systems change that revolution tm can't just happen at the level of culture or ideology really needs to be much deeper at the level of the imaginary because looking back at the way that we transitioned from pre-modern middle ages to the modern society the modern enlightenment imaginary was not just through arguing which king is best or which god is best because we know that these discussions only got us stuck in endless wars and crusades no what we had was a radical reimagination of our whole society in a way that we created new concepts that transcended those of gods and kings so similarly today the discussion at the level of how can my country do it best or which is the best way to organize the economy well it's not that they're not needed but they won't be enough in these times the kind of change that we need requires again a much more radical reimagination of our whole social existence and again we need to create new concepts that include but move beyond the ideas of the economy and nation states we need to start asking questions like in the age of globalization and automatization how do we perceive ourselves beyond the life of a hard worker of the economy and a proud citizen of our country or in the age where we are constantly interacting with diverse people and perspectives and where fixed roles and identities seem to constantly dissolve how do we then know what good fair and meaningful relationships look like or in the age of climate change which new standards do we set for ourselves that go beyond efficiency or in the age of infinite data and information overwhelm and of systems thinking and complexity science and where we're only now starting to awaken to the interconnectedness of all of our systems how do we then know what is true how do we make sense of the world that is a deep kind of imaginary change that i'm talking about how do we then create that kind of change and here's where the tricky part comes because imaginaries rather than being intellectual theories that we can create about how the world works or how the world should work are more like the ways of being that emerge out of the way the world actually works so in this case it's just not enough to gather a bunch of thinkers a bunch of philosophers to theorize about how should the new utopia look like well we don't need the theories imaginaries aren't actually made of them they are made of stories images metaphors myths memes that without us knowing they just shape and run our collective imagination and provide us with direction and meaning but in a much more subtle and evocative way so yes we don't need the philosophers but in terms of imaginary we especially need the artists the storytellers the creatives the mean makers all these people who are engaged in the work of translating theory into imaginary and that create the stories in the universe that without us knowing we all live and breathe and then what we also need in these uncertain times is for everyone that instead of trying so hard to go back to our old notions of normality or stability well maybe we can start to be more present in the current moment and more open and perceiving to other ways of being of doing of relating or of knowing that wouldn't have been really apparent was before but that make much more sense for the new world that wants to emerge and it's maybe then when everyone's playing their role well that that no imaginary will be born you