A man on the Internet was claiming that imagination was at the root of all the world’s problems.
My response: Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge; and he was smarter than you.
There are people whose first solution to things is to find people to dump on. It is necessary to check these people. In most such cases we see cruelty and stupidity; and that is a deadly combination.
Anything human can go bad. Religion can go bad; but so can rationalism. The historical catalogue of atrocities knows no single cause, and it knows no single solution.
So there were Greeks claiming that ignorance is the root of all evil. In fact many people who are evil know very well what they are doing. Ignorance can most certainly be evil. But so can any number of other things. There is no single human cause for evil.
Is it, as Christians say, that the root of all evil is Satan? If that is the case, then evil will take any number of possible forms. An entity with that kind of knowledge and that kind of craftiness will find ways to use anything to his advantage. He will find the way to do his will through all belief structures, systems and institutions and turn them all bad.
This will certainly include the church. There are many atrocities that were done in the name of God, from Inquisition to Colonialism to domestic violence. People who were a part of these things thought that they were doing the right thing when they weren’t. So we see some people claiming esoteric knowledge to be of the Satan, when any number of people with esoteric knowledge are using it to do good things. Everyone expects these people to be evil; but most of them aren’t. Whereas nobody would expect evil to come from the people trusted to be good; but it does.
If Satan is the root of evil, then we will find evil everywhere; and of course we do. Specifically, we will be least likely to find it where we expect it and most likely to find it where we don’t. I have known any number of people who were demonized who were good, and I have known any number of people thought decent who were horrible people. These people typically found ways to convince others of their goodness and of the wrongfulness of their victims. As we stand to expect from Satan.
So now we have people claiming evil to be the result of actions of sociopaths and narcissists. Most people who do wrong are perfectly normal. Most people who took part in colonialism were perfectly normal. Most men who beat their wives are perfectly normal. Most kids who pick on other kids are perfectly normal. We see here created a false Satan, while real Satan is out there laughing at us.
So some people also create false gods. One of these is reason; and – surprise surprise – what do we see but people using reason to do all kinds of wrong. And then of course in response to that there are people calling these false gods Satan, such as any number of people in anti-rational ideologies. Both are wrong. Reason is a tool that can be used for any purpose, both good and bad.
Once again, if Satan really is the root of all evil, then we will find his work expressed in anything. This will especially mean people from whom evil would be least expected. Any attempt to fight such a thing will demand extraordinary discernment; and most people involved in it will find themselves fooled.
In many cases, people’s perceptions are not only wrong, they are precisely wrong. There were people describing my former wife as a bully. She is the opposite of a bully. She is someone who fights bullies, including many people much bigger than herself. There were people describing me as a misogynist. I am the opposite of a misogynist. I generally see women as being better than men and want to see their lot improved. If this is a work of Satan, then Satan must really know what he is doing. Which means that we need to also know what we are doing in order to correctly counteract him.
One thing is for certain. The people whom everyone expects to be bad are no more likely to be bad than the average person; and the people whom everyone thinks to be good are in many cases absolute sharks. As for imagination and reason, neither is god and neither is Satan. Both are human phenomena that can be used both for good and for ill.
With phenomena that can be used for both good and ill, the correct solution is mastering both. That way both sides correct the errors in one another and synthesize to achieve wisdom quicker and fuller than through either acting alone. People should be trained in both reason and imagination. That way they have mastery of two modalities rather than one. And that allows them a fuller perspective on things than either one by itself.