Sunday, October 15, 2017

Brain Is Wider Than the Sky

Brain Is Wider Than the Sky 
A Socratic Dialogue written by: Jennie Camile
April 2015  


Socrates: A human’s thinking and creativity is not limited to the life it knows and experiences. It
reaches and spans far greater than the limits of the material and tangible world. 

Alekto: You mean to say that there are no limits to the ideas and thoughts our brain can
produce? 

Socrates: Precisely. Take a story for instance. A fiction piece one writes, made up of characters
and set 3000 years into the future. As a human living in this time period of 2015, how would we
know what 5015 would look like? The author would have to create every technological advance.
Other details would need to be created as well, such as: what people might dress like, what they
would eat, what they would drive, etc. It would go far beyond the material world we live in now.


Alekto: Yes, but would one not look to the progression of the last 3000 years and use that
pattern as a point of reference for the future? Wouldn’t that use of pattern make your creativity
rooted in the material world?


Socrates: Points of reference are helpful to all creativity, but to create the future, one would have
to imagine beyond anything anyone has ever known. This kind of imagining far
surpasses our present day and time. Though points of reference are used, it doesn’t make the
creativity rooted in the here and now. Think of the inventor of the cellular phone. Would you say
that his invention is just an extension of the regular household phone? That the cellular phone is
rooted in the year 1876 because that is when the phone was invented?

Alekto: No, but it is the same type of invention. The cellular and household versions are still
both phones.

Socrates: Yes, but the telephone is separate from the cellular phone just as the bicycle is
separate from the car. Both get you to your destination, but the mechanics of each are very
different. For someone to come up with each takes imagination that far surpassed what was
normal at that particular time.

Alekto: Point taken. So, then let’s talk about the characters of a story. Do you mean to tell me
that these characters would not have any attributes to people whom surround the author every
day?   

Socrates: Yes, they would be fictional characters who do not exist and so all of their attributes
would come from the mind’s eye. The author would create their hair color, their eye color, their
height and build. They would create where the characters come from, what their hobbies are and
what type of person they turn out to be, such as: a hero, a villain or a sideline sitter. Every bit of
the author’s imagination would come into play to create each and every character.

Alekto: So, the hero in their story would not have any familiar qualities of an everyday hero in
their life? Such as bravery, chivalry, strength or kindness? 

Socrates: Of course they would. These qualities you speak of are timeless. The difference
between the people who surround the author day to day and the people in their story would be
the combination of attributes as well as possible traits that haven’t even been invented yet. The
author’s limitless mind could come up with a woman who reads through invisible eyes on the
back of her head. She could have the same color eyes as say the author’s Mother, but no one in
this world can read from the eyes in the back of their head. 

Alekto: I agree. So, if one was to look at the works of artists like Picasso, Michelangelo, Monet
or Rembrandt, you would say that their creations came from a limitless mind? These painters and
sculptors were only mirroring what they saw here in the material world.

Socrates: Yes, I see where you are coming from, but don’t forget that painters and sculptors – all
artists – are interpreters. If you put their artwork next to the real thing, (the tangible items of this world) they would have differences and similarities. What the artist chooses to put in and leave out is all his own imagination and creativity working. His interpretation far surpasses what is right in front of him. His brain is in a realm of limitless possibilities. 

Alekto: So, the inventor of the space shuttle had a brain of limitless possibilities because he saw
the moon as a place to travel to? 

Socrates: Not only did he see the moon as a place to travel to, he created a way to get there. We
can say we want to travel to the deepest depths of the ocean, but the mind being wider than the
material world comes in when we deem it possible. Then, we create a vessel with the means of
getting us there. The brain becomes limitless when there is nothing we can’t do. 

Alekto: I’ve always wanted to live in a house under the sea. My brain can prove to be wider than
this material world when I create my house under water. To my knowledge, no such home exists.
I could draw up plans for such a home and then work on ways to actually create such a place.
Plumbing, electrical and pressurized cabins would all be tricky, but I could create it and then it
would be real. This would be the only way to prove I had a limitless brain? 

Socrates: Actually just the creating and planning would prove that your brain was limitless. One
does not have to follow through with the plans and make a tangible contribution to the world.
Ideas are born every day and sometimes they are never carried out. Just the ideas, inventions and
stories alone are enough to prove that the “brain is wider than the sky,” as Emily Dickinson
would say. 

Alekto: So true. 

Socrates: So you see, the limits of the material world have no hold on our imagination or
creativity. Do you have any further doubt that our minds can reach passed the material world
Alekto? 

Alekto: I can gladly say, I do not. 

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