Are you a thinker or a dreamer?
Wandering around Shanghai Library with my camera this morning, I asked myself this question after finding two statues: the first was a life-sized, brooding and prominently placed version of Rodin’s “Thinker” and the second was a small, pale, unnamed carving, hidden in an alcove on an upper floor of the library. The latter piece was of a woman clutching a book, eyes closed, not asleep, but dreaming all the same.
Leaving aside issues of gender bias, the sculptures made me think about the relationship between thinking and dreaming – how the two combine to form imagination.
As I looked again at the “Knowledge is Power” inscriptions repeated across the library’s walls, I suddenly realized that I disagree.
Knowledge is important of course, but imagination is where the real power lies. There are limits to knowledge, but imagination has no limits whatsoever, which is perhaps why some cultures discourage it…
