By Anthony Weston
Book review by Tedi Elliott
By day, Anthony Weston is a Professor of Philosophy at Elon University in North Carolina , where he teaches Ethics, Environmental Studies, and “Millennial Imagination.”
Ethics and Environmental Studies could be your run-of-the-mill college courses, but… what about this one on Millennial Imagination? That’s the first hint that we might have a rather radical thinker on our hands. Once you start to peruse this book, that sneaking suspicion is confirmed: Professor Weston’s ideas and his classes, are not likely to induce much snoring.
His book is basically a guide to jump-starting one’s creative imagination in order to make some needed improvements in the world around us. Oh, you’re not creative? Not a creative bone in your body? This is your book and the Professor will have none of that negative thinking, so don’t even go there. Filled with examples of how it’s done, this book really does provide usable tools to help you begin to think in different ways, to create some brand new neural-nets in the old gray matter. You find that once you get the hang of it, it’s like a game to try and push beyond old ways of thinking. Then once you think you’ve got it, Weston shows you you’re just beginning…why stop there? Keep going!
Here’s a quote from the beginning of the book that piqued my interest:
“Radical imagination begins with a move beyond complaint and resistance, beyond reactive tinkering or hunkering down or cynical accommodation. The first big move is to an alternative picture of how things could be instead.”
Doesn’t that precisely sum up our usual approaches to what we perceive as problems, obstacles, or challenges…the things we’d like to change? In my experience, there is great whining and throwing up hands, or digging in of heels, and surprise!...nothing changes at all. Weston gives simple, practical examples of how to think differently than you ever have before, in ways that can really change the world. Not only can we improve the world around us, but thinking in new ways improves the brain within our skull as well.
Here are just a few examples of how Weston thinks, and how you can too:
“Stretches -
When you want big ideas and big new steps, deliberately take them…”
Why settle for inching up the fuel efficiency of cars – why not make them five or even ten times as efficient as they are now? Don’t ask how to reduce the workweek by just an hour or two - go an order of magnitude farther. Why not cut it by half? Stretch those ideas, exaggerate them. Instead of just making a few more bike paths and narrowing a few roads, what if we took out the roads entirely? What if we turned the roads into bike paths and walkways? Why don’t we make New Orleans into a floating city to protect it from flooding? And don’t stop there, and don’t even think of saying “that’s impossible” or “that can’t be done.”
This little book is about 140 pages long, comes in paperback, is small in size but chock-full of Big and New. Get yourself a copy, read it in one night, then put it in your pocket and start changing the world. It’s already happening. You might as well join in, and besides, it beats whining!
For more background on Anthony Weston: http://org.elon.edu/philosophy/
Tedi Elliott is a freelance writer and massage therapist. She can be contacted at telliott79 {at} hotmail {dot} com
