I love old radio shows, and have probably a thousand hours or more of them on disc, tape, or record. Why? Because unlike TV, they require one’s imagination to be fully operational. Listening to a radio show, one can imagine the detective breaking into a home, a car crash, Jack Benny driving his butler Rochester nuts, or Fred Allen going down his ’alley’ and interviewing Senator Claghorn, Titus Moody, or Mrs. Nuesbaum, with their accents. One could just imagine what they looked like, and where they were. With TV, nothing is left to the imagination. It’s all there to see, and of course we now have a partial race of numbskulls with no imagination, from watching TV for endless hours and raising their kids to do the same. How sad! Movies leave nothing to the imagination either, and with the common outlandish ’special effects’ in film, the brain is lulled into inactivity. A classic case is the current film “3:10 to Yuma.” I have the original in black and white, with Glenn Ford, and there is little violence. Just great suspense. Rent the original and compare it to the current one to see for yourself. A current film with no ’special effects,’ is “The Bucket List,” and is superb.
When one has exercised their imagination, they can picture things vividly, and usually come to good actions as a result of their imagining. Example: Imagine the dollar printing presses running night and day, turning out endless, worthless, pieces of paper, backed by nothing. One might be driven to get out of them. Imagine WWII with the Japs beheading their prisoners, the Battan Death March, Kamikaze pilots committing suicide to please their emperor, or the rape of Nanking in 1937, with the Japanese mercilessly killing and raping tens of thousands of Chinese. Imagine the Japanese stealing American patents and paying no royalties, killing a thousand whales this year, plus other things, and it might make one not want to buy Japanese cars or products. Imagine the instant loss of value when buying a new car and driving it around the block, making it an instant ’used car,’ and one might not buy a new car.
Imagine a burglar breaking into your house while you are asleep, and you might want to get an alarm system or keep a gun handy. Imagine what the food or cleanliness of a restaurant might be, if the exterior is messy, in need of paint, or the name or signage is distasteful to you. You simply would seek another restaurant as a result of your mind picturing what might go on inside. When you see a car being driven at high speed and recklessly, you automatically imagine a teenage male, and if you pull along side, you’re probably correct. Our powers of imagination have been dulled by TV, more than any thing else, I really believe. TV has left most people without any imagination at all, and therefore they can’t plan for their future, but live for the present and instant gratification. The failure to plan for the future is what describes our societal class. The upper and middle classes love their homes, children, and areas in which they live, and have beautifully kept homes and lawns. Their kids are well raised, and they are probably church goers and members of service clubs or other volunteer groups which help various worthwhile causes or things. They save for the future and retirement, not counting on anyone but them selves and their abilities and talents for their future, and not governments.
I imagined what it would be like to save 70% on hot water making costs, and I bought a tankless water heater. I imagined saving 20% on electricity by installing the little fluorescent bulbs in 100% of my fixtures. I imagined what my health would be like if I didn’t smoke, get drunk, and took a lot of vitamins and minerals. Reading books stimulates my and others’ imaginations. Life can be ever so good if one uses one’s imagination and stimulates it continuously with things requiring imagination and thought.
Unfortunately, most cannot imagine prices going up and dollar values going down ad infinitum, even though a quick look at history of even a few months or weeks ago would prove that the above is happening. If they had sufficient imagination, and didn’t depend on CNBC or their ’professional licensed advisors,’ they might realize that their dollar has lost 99% of its purchasing power in just a few decades, and saving in them is futile. We have grown up with the dollar, and have used it since childhood, so the thought of it losing value never crosses dull minds. It’s so much simpler to think that prices are going up, rather than that the money is going down. Can you imagine gold and silver with its glitter, beauty, stability, glamour, and timelessness? Can you imagine holding gold coins, and storing them in a safe place in your home as a hedge against money going down and prices going up? Just imagine having your surplus assets in a shrinking measurement, which may ruin your retirement. Financial ruination has happened hundreds of millions of times in earth’s history, and usually because the citizenry refused to imagine or admit that their currencies were becoming worthless, and refusing to get out of them and into something tangible.
The head of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, who many consider to be the most powerful man in America, said in 2002, “The US government has a technology called a printing press, or today, its electronic equivalent, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes, at essentially no cost.” He then said that if necessary, they could “drop hundred dollar bills from helicopters.” He has since been known as “Helicopter Ben.” Imagine endless printing and millions of hundred dollar bills fluttering down, and surely your imagination will visualize them becoming worthless. So why save in them?