This is a collection of thoughts which had either hit me hard in my mind or the ones which lingered on for really long time.

Each chapter has no real connection with another. The topics of chapters vary between art, religion, psychology, politics, economics...!

Abstract

"Your only limit is your imagination" - is perhaps the most viral quotes of all time. Imagination is built upon experience whether physical or mental. By mental, I also include dreams. Most of human history's scientific personas like Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Ramanujam, Edison, Mendeleev etc dreamt of the work for which they became famous. Notably, using insulin for diabetes was also from a dream, our atomic model, sewing machine and Benzene structure were all dreamt before physically realized.

Having said that, dream is also an experience. It moves in the direction that 'imagination' is more about creative combination of shapes, actions, other sensory characteristics which we experience. We will explore if that is the case.

Then, I will look into derived art - paintings, sketches - and see how imagination works in art. If we can imagine the unknown, we need to build counter examples. For e.g., if we make a list of all aliens depicted in movies, all of them can be separated out into components of animals we humans have seen. Can we imagine and draw an alien which cannot be decomposed into the fauna-and-floura which we know?

Also, I will also look at abstract art and discuss its limitations.

Abstract

Fantasies are usually personal though not all of them. The public fantasies have created industries worth billions, like animation movies, games and books. They have bedazzled us, made some earn livelihood and have become new cultural identities for specified social groups.

Here, I talk about the personal ones, the most practical use which I have found of them is to cope with quandaries one faces through life. My argument is that fantasies can avoid depression, gloom and put a wall between the affected and psychological diseases. There are however possible side effects in this approach which will be discussed, but I contend they are not easily realizable. Also, mental depression outweighs the side effects of having fantasies.

Various forms of depression can also occur by substance abuse, genetic inheritance and other purely chemical, biological external substances. This form of depression is not dealt here.

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