Boredom and Imagination
I had a long conversation last night with a colleague who teaches something of a philosophy of art class. We were discussing attitudes - our own and our students' - toward art, observation, beauty, fiction....you know, standard Tuesday night conversation.

She said something that frankly shocked me. The last few semesters in this course, on the first day's discussion, students almost unanimously deride the value of imagination. They consider it a "pointless" resource, and using it a "complete waste of time".

Needless to say, I don't get to have discussions like this in a music theory class, so I didn't see it coming.

For a generation enthralled with role-playing games, virtual reality, and networks of friends and relationships even that exist on the fringe of the imaginary, I would have thought imagination played a key part in their existence. But it would seem the opposite is the case. Indeed, I am left having to assume that any person who fully discounts the usefulness of one's imagination - the fundamental muscle of creativity - simply doesn't have one, or at least not much of one.

Is this possible? Is there a population surge among the un-imaginative?

The second part of our conversation hinged on a question of mine that seemed like a logical follow-up to this revelation. Given that I *know* most of them are not spending lots of time productively on the outside of their brains, what do they spend all of their time doing, if not exercising their imaginations in some way or another?

She asks them that question, she said (see, I told you it was logical), and to a person, her students respond that they spend most of their time looking for ways to avert boredom. Their default position (in life) is bored disinterest.

Now, I'm not trying to disparage the youth here in a "the-kids-today" rant. That's the most tired, predictable, silliest drivel ever to mark growing old. For the most part, I consider that kind of nonsense to be sheer jealousy. What is more pathetic than the ravings of those that envy the beauty of youth? I'm not immune to it, obviously. But I try to keep it to a minimum. No, my trouble here is that I associate that kind of attitude - that would decry the value of imagination, hence stumble day-to-day in dreary boredom - with the jaded older set, those who prefer to lift up the glory of imagination's counterpart: reality (otherwise known as "the reeeal world"). I would not have thought students today to be so thoroughly disconnected from their imaginations....already.

And so I have questions.

Do you think they are telling the truth? Or did they simply not want to admit to or discuss their imaginations? Were you bored in college? (the stage of my life when I was *least* like that) Did you - or do you - think the imagination holds no value? Does this sound like young people you know? (no names, please) Do you think young people have always been like this and I'm just crazy? If not, to what do you attribute this phenomenon? What - if anything - might be the antidote?