If humanity is being swallowed by a modern primitivism

“If humanity is being swallowed by a modern primitivism, imagination might be the thing that saves us all.” — thus spoke Geoffrey S. Fletcher, and his words resound like a bell tolling across the twilight of the modern age. This is no idle phrase, no mere poetic utterance, but a warning and a hope intertwined. Fletcher saw, as many wise souls before him did, that the progress of humankind is not a steady climb but a fragile balance. Modern primitivism — that paradox of advancement that leads backward — is the dark mirror of our age. It is the loss of depth amidst abundance, the dulling of vision amidst information, the withering of the spirit beneath the glare of our own inventions.

Once, to be primitive meant to dwell in the simplicity of survival; now it means to live amidst machines yet think with the instincts of beasts — reacting, consuming, forgetting to wonder. In this descent, Fletcher warns, lies the great peril of our time: that the very tools meant to free us have become our chains, that our minds are flooded with images yet starved of imagination. When men cease to dream beyond the surface, they cease to be truly human. The ancient philosophers would call this the death of the soul, when vision narrows to mere existence.

But Fletcher, in his wisdom, offers a torch in the dark: imagination might be the thing that saves us all. For imagination is the divine faculty — the bridge between what is and what could be. It is that sacred spark by which we shape reality, the voice that whispers to us of higher things. Without imagination, civilization becomes a shell; with it, even ruin can be reborn into beauty. When the fires of creativity burn low, the world becomes gray; but a single spark of imagination can rekindle it into flame once more.

Consider the tale of Winston Churchill, a man forged in the furnace of war. When Britain stood alone against the tide of tyranny, when bombs rained upon London and despair hung heavy, it was not weaponry alone that held the nation — it was vision. Churchill spoke to his people not with numbers or tactics, but with words born of imagination: “We shall fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender.” He painted for them not just survival, but a future victory that did not yet exist. And through the power of that imagined triumph, they endured until it became reality. Thus, imagination became salvation, transforming weakness into will, chaos into courage.

So too, in every age of decline, it is imagination that revives the heart of humanity. When the arts fade, when thought grows shallow, when society becomes a mirror of noise, it is the dreamers, the poets, the visionaries who call forth a new dawn. They see what others cannot — that technology without soul is but a hollow shell, and that progress without meaning is no progress at all. To imagine is to rebel against despair; it is to proclaim that the human spirit shall not be devoured by its own creations.

The lesson Fletcher leaves is both clear and urgent: guard your imagination as a sacred trust. Feed it not on distractions but on wonder. Read the great books, walk beneath the stars, converse with silence. Create, even if no one watches. To imagine is not a luxury — it is an act of resistance, a flame held against the winds of conformity. Through imagination, the mind rediscovers its strength, and the soul its freedom.

Let this truth echo through the generations: when humanity forgets how to imagine, it forgets how to live. But if we dare to dream anew, if we reclaim the fire of thought and vision, then even in an age of noise and shadow, light shall return. Imagination is not an escape — it is salvation. Let each soul become a torchbearer of this flame, that we may yet rise from the ruins of our modern primitivism and remember again what it means to be human.