It amazes me that someone as genius as Charles H. Cooley, could be so easily overlooked and or readily forgotten by men of so called science. His work as a social scientists/insightful witness to the social psyche, was avante garde, pioneering for his time. In 1902, his two major writings were published as one book "Social Organization and Human Nature and the Social Order".
You see, what Cooley knew was at the heart of all social reality - social imagination. The immediate social reality is the personal idea. Society is a relation among personal ideas. It exists in your mind as a similar group and so in every mind. Given that, there can only be experienced information that is given, shared and agreed upon as to what the world is, the universe and how we find ourselves in it and what that means to each and everyone of us. There is no space, time or any tangible thing outside the human mind. Well, maybe Einstein got it- its all relative, isn't it...
Man in his struggle to have what he/she thinks is the right and or ultimate information, the ultimate social reality of personal ideas falls short of realizing the importance of others in that struggle; for there is no relation unless there is agreement. You see, others are necessary in our relation of personal ideas; in fact, they exist for that purpose.
Perhaps, that is why we desire to control not only our own ideas as if they are property but those of others as well. In that embeddedness, are witness to the fact that others have the same experience though we cannot know someone else's mind, we know from our own mind that there is no other existence.
In order to not fall into a catatonic state, a fatalistic retreat into the darkness of the mind. There is yet built in by nature or rather program (being created by an omnipotent Creator) the desire to see the light at the end of the tunnel and we are able to move out from there. Plato wrote of this in his 'allegory of the cave'. Its not easy, but its worthwhile. The enlightened social imagination can be an incredible accomplishment for those that build it up in the light.
Who is it that holds all things together?The supremacy of Jesus Christ, God the Creator of all things seen and unseen, He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together - COL 1:16-17. He who is at the heart of our personal ideas... or should be! If we started from there as a platform of departure, as many enlightened people have, greater leaps in 'science' ...the social imagination would be made and its eternal capacity would grow into an immortal infinity of the mind - the greater cloud of human information reality.
Unless, we be deceived and return to darkness of oneness; one without light. The key to eternal light the eternal pure (as we were created to be) social imagination 'information reality' is love, "For God so Loved the world, ~ John 3:16. He sent His Son, God became flesh" ~ Hebrews 2:14. And, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another ~ 1 John 4:11. In our heart, mind and soul ...we live by faith, not by sight ~ 2 COR 5:7. In Him, we live, move and have our being! Acts 17:28.
God's children are human beings--made of flesh and blood--the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death ~ Hebrews 2:14.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it ~ John 1:1-5.
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