Imagine No Imagination

What would the world be, if Humans weren't to rise as the dominant species of the animal kingdom, or the whole planet for that matter?

The Earth would be a whole untouched wilderness; our unique ability to comprehend, and to innovate, would not exist. We wouldn't have reached the peaks of the sky, or the depths of the deepest oceans, let alone break out of the Earth itself, soar high into the sky, further and further until we went where no animal has been before, into a whole new wilderness, the wilderness that has been unchained. A wilderness that exists beyond what any person can understand, or hope to understand for years to come. We have gone higher, and higher than before - so high that it is well and truly beyond what we as humans are naturally destined to do. We have fled the Earth, to explore the fuel of life, to explore the very edge of existence itself, to ponder simply what lies outside our boundaries. Outside our imagination. Outside the Earth. Perhaps on a new planet. On the continuing quest for a new life; or maybe just to find another life, somewhere, somehow.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it birthed humans. Curiosity empowered us with the ability to innovate, to find "Another way; a new way, a better way." The fundamental ideology that drove centuries and centuries of inventors, driven by a simple thought: to make life better - the thought that evoked the power imagination itself.

The computer wouldn't have been invented, nor would the printer be invented, paper wouldn't exist, you wouldn't be here to read this and I wouldn't be here to write it, imagine what the loss of imagination would change? A lot, by the looks of it. The average lifespan of a human would be merely 20 – 30 years. Quite drastic, the consequences if doctors did not exist. How does that compare to 80 years or more? Not even close to a comparison.

On the other hand, imagination has driven the humans against each other, carried away by our thirst to control and conquer; we have attempted to grasp everything in our reach, everything close to our reach, and everything anywhere in sight of reach. In our attempt to feed the eternal flame of humanity we have attempted to grab territories that are in our own hands; turned our backs to life, and embraced the power of death. World War One and Two are just two examples of our own humanity; driven by an unquenchable thirst of power to play god. New weapons and devices made to kill are advancing at an astonishing rate, from mere stones tied to twigs, to swords made of iron, to explosives made from gunpowder, and lastly to missiles that travel at more than five times the speed of sound. Imagination has turned us against ourselves, to the stage that now if a war was to break out, it would dawn the end of the human race. What future would the Earth face then? No more people to cut down its forests, no more people to dig it up? Maybe there will finally be peace. I don't know.

After all, imagination can be wrong, right?