In his speech at the state opening of Parliament, David Cameron spoke about aspiration:

“In recent days, I have noticed some of the candidates for the Labour leadership seem to have discovered a new word: the word being aspiration. Apparently it has upset John Prescott, he went on television to explain he doesn’t know what it means. I am happy we should spend the next five years explaining what it means and how vital it is to everyone in our country. If the party opposite truly believe in aspiration, they will vote with us to cut people’s taxes so people can spend more of their own money as they choose. If they believe in aspiration, they will be voting with us to cap welfare and use the savings to fund more apprenticeships.”*

Aspiration appears to mean a good job, good pay, good spending, good pension, good retirement.  As important as these things are, the next thing the prime minister could have said was, “so that every Briton can arrive at death in the best way possible.”

He didn’t, though.  It’s not where most politicians of different shades and leaning would want to acknowledge.  It’s not in their interest to say anything which upsets the need for everyone to be a good citizen within society.

Institutions of many kinds and size don’t want to admit the emptiness of their circular arguments; neither do they want to admit they don’t know how to encourage people’s imaginations outside of the work hard, earn as much as you can, save, and retire well message.

Pathos: here’s a larger tale, though, from behind the facades of government and employment and taxes and healthcare. First the pathos:

‘Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planets big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools.’**

Then followed the agricultural revolution around 12,000 years ago, followed by the industrial revolution 300 years ago – each having an incredible impact on the world and all of it fauna and flora.  We are presently using the resources of one and a half Earths.

One of the things my friend Steve does is work with secondary school students science through Non Fi-Sci – remaking well known movies by putting the science right.  If they were to remake Independence Day – in which Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith save planer Earth from aliens aiming to eradicate Humans and plunder all the Earth’s resources – maybe they’d have to cast the Humans as the alien plunderers.  Our ancestors were exterminating all kinds of species long before farming came along, as they travelled to new continents and islands.

We have to acknowledge the destructive nature of our species: they didn’t realise the devastation they brought, we do, and ignore it.

Imagination: We need everyone’s imagination set free and encouraged so that we may find better ways and means of living as the peculiar species we are on planet earth.  Imagination which connects people with each other, outside of the silos we build, as well as connecting us with the only planet we’re able to live on at the moment.

Here are the five elemental truths which I have share before:

Life is hard
You are not as important as you think
Your life is not about you
You are not in control
You are going to die.^

I include them here as imagination, because they are only half formed.  We can complete, or transform them, with great imagination.

(*From theguardian.com.)
(**From Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens.)
(^Five things taught to young people entering adulthood by tribes and societies around the world, as identified by Richar Rohr in Adam’s Return.)