Imagine !

Imagine that you are in a prison that offers you what you wish , things you enjoy , knowledge you aspire to , power of controlling others and people you love …Would you think of getting out of it ?!
تخيّل أنك في سجنٍ يمنحكَ كل ماتريد …. هل سترغب أو تفكر بالخروج منه

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*photo from “Where the Wild Things are” a chidren’s picture book by Maurice Sendak

 

41 thoughts on “Imagine !”

  1. By tomorrow I want the power of cotrolling others and make them cook for me , wash for me , clean for me , then write a lot of commonts in this post. What are you doing now , Ghaythaa Slawek Dado Nora Katia Miho Tomokos Naomi ? Hello again, Jaz .

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      • Haha, sorry I missed your comment, Ghaythaa. I should welcome to my cyber potluck party this week. Naomi said to me she would like to have a chat all of you with tea and sweets. I totally agreeee with her. In Japanese old saying it is called ido-bata-kaigi, chat and meeting around the well. Can you imagine it? :p　

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      • Hey R2D2 how’s it going? About imagination, Prof. Matsuzawa gave us his comment on the post of “About Prof. Donald Keene” please look at and give your comment for us!

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  2. I really can’t tell, for sure I will say that I will try my best to break away from this prison as real life and real experiences are more colorful you can color each moment out side and you are free to choose how ,,, “ignorance is a bless” they say .. knowing everything and having it flowing exactly like you want .. doesn’t really represent a real life , it is some kind of illusion .. but again I will say.. I don’t know If I will have the power to get over the temptation of not having problems at all 🙂

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    • Hi Nora 🙂 isn’t that difficult ! I mean this prison may include all temptations that we like and aspire to then it will be almost impossible to distinguish what is an illusion … what do you think ?

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      • Hey Ghaythaa 🙂 … to tell you the truth ,, it may be easy to distinguish the illusion from truth but the hard thing is to confess and refuse the sweet / easy lies ..

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    • Toooooooo late, Nora after all I cooked myself … olive salad you recommend My daughter became your olive salad lover too.

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      • haha 🙂 you made my day … yesterday I ate a large bowel of “Nora” salad 🙂

        hugs and kisses to your daughter :-* 🙂 she seems clever 🙂

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      • Katia you missed one of Nora’s best recipes , BTW Mami Katia is talented in preparing Turkish coffee 😛 and you can ask Nora about that

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      • Hahahahahaha Come onnnn this will haunt me for the rest of my life 😛 that is my secret and I don’t want to share the method of making the coffee XD

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  4. Mamii I missed our talks 😀 I think you are playing Yoda on us 😀 I am preparing to sleep or I will go eat the whole fridge after I read the street food post 😛
    as for my comment to this beautiful question, freedom will give joy, knowledge, and love their meaning, I can’t imagine why would someone wants to control their beloved ones or any other for that matter!
    If you are free, you will be able to express your joy in unpredictable huge number of ways
    If you are free, you will be able to search for the knowledge, to gain it and to develop new and creative ideas, let your imagination and curiosity guides you, this way the process will be more productive
    If you are free, you can burst into tears, draw smile on your face and let your feelings float to the surface, you can stand for the right and have your opinion….

    And the list goes on and on……with love ❤

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  5. Controlling others or knowledge instead of freedom? No, thanks… World without mysteries is not too interesting as for me. I like ask questions and discover reality around me. If I knew everything I wouldn’t ask questions.
    As for me sometimes it’s hard to control myself – additional others controlling? It would be to much as for me 🙂

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  6. It is an interesting paradox! Hi, Slawek, you want freedom. Ok, you can enjoy any freedom you want which is offered by a prison as you wish. It gives us anything in the way we want. As it mentions “in a prison”, we imagine a small space. But is it so? It seems similar to Utopia. If all people seek to be comfortable world for each, it would be consisted of well-orderly systems that will attain dehumanised levels at the end as criticised by Thomas More. Paradise isn’t realistic because people have different characters and wishes. So, what is the key for people to live peace and happily somewhere between Utopia and Paradise? I suppose it will be a mind to accept differences between people.

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    • Haha 🙂 Mami I have procrastinated with my comment and in the end you’ve written this what I wanted to write 🙂 Me also Miho’s comment associated with E. From’s book. Haha too many freedom can cause a fear of freedom and this fear is a cause authoritarian attitudes – so we shouldn’t feel a fear of freedom Miho because we will start to escape from it hahaa 🙂 But be more seriously I’m aware that Freedom/Liberty shouldn’t been the most important things in life (even if I didn’t mention it in my earlier comment).. Too many freedom can lead to the Anarchy… I even consider that real freedom is impossible – Imagine: if you want to do something you must impose a restrictions yourself – for example if you want to learn something, you go to the university and work hard above books even if from time to time you don’t have mood to do it, you must impose dyscypline yourself, limited your freedom. Generally Freedom issue is more complex than it seems at first glance e.g. theory about “Freedom from vs Freedom to”. You mentioned about T. More so, I also will call one of classical thinker Thomas Hobbes who considered that people have to resigns from freedom for social contract – only then the Society is possible. When is a freedom then “Homo homini lupus” …. Hahaa Eventually it turned out that I have similar opinions like you (if I understood your comment well)… 🙂

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      • As Slawek mentioned, freedom is not easy to be defined in contrast to its first look. Freedom doesn’t mean that people can seek their own happiness only. It is attendant on ethical matters; so, Mami, you (& your daughter) are right, I agree with Fromm’s thought. We live in a society which requires us humanities (?; I recognize I cannot be optimistic on this view for all people) or a contract as Hobbes suggests. As for this view, I feel closer to Hobbes’s thought who is less idealistic than Fromm. Sometimes I wonder how people can be so stupid when they exist as a group though individuals can act ethically.

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  7. Hi! It is not necessary to refer to famous people, like Hobbes or Fromm, when you talk about “freedom “.
    All you must think of is whether you, individuals, are guaranteed the freedom of speech or not. Under the current Constitution we Japanese are guaranteed the freedoom of speech. We can now exppress our ideas without fear, while under the old Constitution, which was valid before 1945, the year of the end of the War, the expression of the ideas was strictly limited.It was against the law to criticize the Emperor system. Actually those people who did so were imprisoned or tortured to death. In recent years, there is a movemnt to return to the ancient regime by revising the Constitution.
    I hope the days will last forever when we can express our ideas as freely as I do here.

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    • Thank you, Akio. Exactly, you are right. Speaking , writing our ideas freely is so precious for us. Our constitution should go on for better future…..

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    • Hi Akio, freedom of speech is very important, otherwise you will be living under a dictatorship and the people’s creative ideas will be buried which eventually will effect the development of the country, I hope Japan keeps that constitution, but is there a public approval on returning to the ancient regime?

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    • Thanks Akio for your comment , sometimes we quote famous people as their words or studies can refer to the same point that we are trying to convey 🙂 anyways you didn’t tell us if you are going to spend some time in our imaginary prison but remember it’s only a fictional experience 🙂

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  8. absoultely not..cause the best way to live is discovering what life means..difficulties..problems with the ones we love..discover winning..losing..everthing
    that will give our life a taste of living
    not setting at prison that will be death despite all the luxury inside it

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    • Hi Abeer 🙂 we missed you dear , the two words prison and freedom are so attractive to us because they are so dialectic issues and there isn’t 100% freedom in the actual life .. sometimes we are living in prisons without knowing that or know and accept it , the measurement is sth related to our satisfaction , knowing , understanding of the things around us ^_^

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  9. It is nice to get everything we want but we cannot as happy as we can be when we get something after having made lots of effort to get it.

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    • Hi Keiko ^_^ and welcome to IF world 🙂 …. talking about efforts we make to get sth we want like challenges we take and leave us with great happiness even if we didn’t get what we want or if we didn’t ” win ” …. moving toward something that is impossible , going to the edge of danger whatever if was to us , and trying to break the inevitable even if we were uncertain … in such human deeds freedom lies even if we were in prison our minds don’t stop “to freedom ” 😉

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      • Hi Ghaythaa
        Thanks for your comment. I totally agree with you.
        I think our life will be quite boring if we have nothing to challenge. Having a dream is important. But at the moment the achievement of my work has become my dream because I am too busy just to handle my work and I think this is wrong. Our life is much easier compared to the one in the past but I just feel something is wrong with my life. I will try to find my DREAM again.

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      • Thank you for sharing your idea. As for me I refused to be a slave to my job last year. :p Now I have a lot of time to enjoy with IF friends, haha. Welcome to our site, Keiko, you can enjoy at any time. 😉

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    • Hello Keiko 🙂 I totally agree with you. Even more.. this what you wrote is a part of my life experience because my mother was using this “philosophy” to brought up me when I was child 🙂 When I was getting something “not for free” (e.g. new toy) It gave more happiness and I usually treated this with more respect… When I was young in school times I spent half of my summer holiday in work because I dreamt about electric guitar.. I bought this guitar in that time.. And I have this instrument for nowadays.. And she’s my dearest of my guitars….

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