Abstract
At a conference at the Biblioteca Alexandrina a few years ago someone asked the question “Do Egyptian children have imaginary friends?’” The only answer that came was a simple “No”. A child is seldom if ever alone: there is always a parent, grandparent, servant, or sibling who cares for them and keeps them occupied. They don’t need an imaginary friend for company because the solitude from which these imaginary characters might emerge is rare. The question is an important one and the answer was rather dispiriting. A strong and protective family environment certainly has many admirable aspects, but there is a negative side to it. In societies similar to that of Egypt, which pretty certainly means the overwhelming majority of humankind, ‘Father knows best’. And it isn’t just father, it is the priests and preachers of religion, school teachers, political and community leaders, and adults generally. In such societies it is usually considered to be of the highest importance that religious belief is inculcated into the child. From this perspective, questions are not encouraged, because they interfere with the process of making children believers. Similarly, systems of mass schooling also have the tendency to avoid the difficult individual needs of the child, in favour of instructing the whole class on one subject, at one pace, with one approach and one set of expected learning outcomes. Leaders in all societies, whether democratic or authoritarian, are acutely uncomfortable with questions about their policies; they either need supporters to get re-elected, or they fear that dissenters will overturn their regime. Worse still, the adult world is full of those who gave up asking questions long ago and are impatient with anyone else, adult or child, who insists on being difficult. Quite simply a child is presented at every turn with a benign but insistent authority and the scope for a speculative, imaginative side to their character tends to wither away.
The consequences are considerable. Societies with a deeply embedded distrust of the imagination tend to be static societies. Change by increments is usually horribly slow and there is a risk of civil strife precisely because an imaginative segment of society is frustrated and feels obliged to contemplate catastrophic change. This can be disastrous, as we have seen for instance in the Arab Spring, which arrived with heady optimism and which has been followed by widespread destruction, death and long term disruption in a number of countries. A society needs legitimate outlets for the creativity of its people and if there are no outlets then disillusionment, emigration and revolutionary leanings are consequences. The case for fostering imagination and creativity is not just that suppression threatens the social harmony that it is supposed to protect, and not merely that creativity leads to social and material progress, but that intellectual freedom fulfils needs experienced by a large proportion of humanity.
What should be done? The story of a religious leader who originated in a community in which cousin marriage had been regarded as an admirable norm for generations is instructive. His very reasonable speculation on the reasons why several of his children suffered from terrible birth defects gradually moved beyond distress at the wrath of god, to some elementary study of genetics. The answers to his family tragedies were there for him to find as soon as he moved out from under the protection of religious authority and community norms. What he needed and what we all need is space to think, and the implications of this are clear. We should not regard reading as a dangerous luxury. We should support educational systems that seek to develop the individual learner. We should seek exposure for all of us to a wide variety of broadcast and digital media. We should use and contribute to a rich mix of web and social media content. We should promote the availability and use of all kinds of libraries. By doing these things we will encourage questioning and individual speculation. This will certainly undermine orthodoxies: and a good thing too.