The Nature of the Imagination

I have noticed over the last few years that the quality of my talks, and especially the many spontaneous bits, seem to be in direct proportion to the engagement and interest of the crowd. It’s like jazz or something. So for my talk at Palenque Norte at last summer’s Green-themed Burning Man fest, I decided to not prepare at all beyond setting a title, attacking a problem I feel unresolved about, and opening my mind on my bike ride over. Immediately after the talk, an enormous storm hit. It was a fun day.

“The imagination is a key and pivotal interface between human beings and the natural world. Any kind of restorative, sustainable renewal of our planet has to exist on the imaginal realm as well as the realm of technical solutions, political developments, and technological fixes. It’s a multi-dimensional problem.”