>At 11:31 PM +0100 5/9/03, Liz Kirby wrote:
>>Margaret Thatcher didnt use imagination to wreck havoc here - she used the
>>whole apparatus of the state. Imagination to me implies an ability to
>>engage with other people's reality and to have empathy, a quality that was
>>singularly lacking in her politics.
>
>Wilde said "The only sin is lack of imagination". I've thought a lot
>about that since I read it, because I think it's true. And I also
>think it's true that something Thatcher did not suffer fom was
>imagination.
Alison & Liz
although i did not read the whole double article, there was a two parter in
the Atlantic Magazine awhile ago on 'the mind of george bush' (which some
might take as an oxymoron, but we won't go there), in which the writer made
an interesting point: he sai that Bush had vision but no imagination. if
'vision' is taken to be a monomaniacal (chasint eh white whale) kind of
thing, then perhas he has, but i certainly do agree with the 2nd half of
the sentence; & as it applies to Thatcher, as well, & then, well, alas, as
it applies to most of the men who have led parties at both the national &
provincial level in my own country. in fact how far back would we have to
go to find any leading politician anywhere who had what i (& perhaps some
of you) would define as 'imagination'?
ah, well....
doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Violence can only be concealed by a lie,
and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method
is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
Alexander Solzhenitzyn
