Exercising your imagination keeps you human.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words; I would rather use one hundred words, and create an infinite number of pictures in the minds of my readers.

The primary purpose of humanity is to create, be it buildings, babies, books or what-have-you. Everything begins as an idea inside someone's head, and through creative and physical endeavour, becomes reality. Imagination is the engine of creative thought, and the more mental detail one can give to a creation that exists only in the mind's eye, the more powerful the creation and the greater impact the creation has once it reaches reality.

Like any skill, imagination works only when it is kept well exercised. However, the more we are exposed to visual representations of an alternate reality, and the more "real" that alternate reality is portrayed, the less our imagination is asked to 'fill in the gaps' to achieve a believable immersion in that reality. The easier it becomes to 'believe' what we are seeing on the screen -- be it TV, movies, or computer games -- the more our imagination becomes stunted and inflexible. We lose the ability to craft that important fine detail on the images within our minds.

Boredom is the hallmark of a dead or dying imagination ... and without imagination, we lose the ability to create. Once we cannot create, we cease to be human. I firmly believe that we have to create regularly -- prose, visual arts, dancing, programming, whatever -- or we go mad.

I read at least one novel per week. I estimate I watch a grand total of six hours of TV/movies per year. I rarely play computer games, and the less eye candy they have, the more I like them -- interactive text adventures like the original Infocom titles are, for me, the high art of gaming.

And you know what? I'm never bored. If I'm not reading, I'll be off visiting like-minded people, or building something, or making music, or writing something of my own purely for the sake of writing. I like being domestic, I like being a social butterfly, I like solitude and the stillness that comes with meditation.

Television tells us what to think and how to think. People who watch television (or any other form of visual entertainment with a high degree of realism) regularly, lose the ability to think -- I mean *really* think -- for themselves, and end up spending too much of their time living inside other people's heads instead of their own.

Be who you are and say what you feel, those that mind don't matter and those that matter don't mind :)