Many people are able to experience immersive forms of imagination, especially while dreaming. Steven Mithen coined the term ‘cognitive fluidity’ in his book The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science, to explain what causes our imaginative superpowers.
In short, he suggests that while early hominids, like other animals, used different parts of the brain for different aspects of reality (such as finding food, remembering the way to the den and waiting for the rain to stop), our brains developed connections between these areas. As a result, various realities mix, giving rise to surprising and sometimes outlandish combinations and associations.
Below: taken from Mithens ‘The prehistory of the mind’
This theory makes sense to me. I interpret it as our brain being in a perpetual state similar to psychosis, where it is unsure of where things go unless we focus on a clear task at hand, such as grocery shopping. It is amazing and somewhat concerning that we can dream while fully awake and see things that are not there.
This explains why we find it relaxing to watch films, play games or read books: slipping into a fictional world comes easily to us. The effect of cognitive fluidity is a universal human sense of not belonging to just one reality. We need more. These additional realities are not limited to entertainment or art; they can also manifest as an obsession with conspiracy theories or religion.
A portable screen containing a multiverse of content is an open door to every kind of reality imaginable. Rather than reading a book on the train, a commuter can choose to immerse themselves in a variety of videos, online shopping and message boards filled with other people’s fluid realities for the duration of the journey.
We seem to be able to slip effortlessly into a suspension of disbelief. Cognitive fluidity also explains why some people are willing to accept outlandish ideas, including fake news. Fake news may be appealing precisely because it is fake and unreal. It would be interesting to investigate whether people who are easily pulled into fake news or conspiracy bubbles are, on average, less imaginative. Perhaps they compensate for a lack of imagination by searching for it elsewhere, like a fiction fix.
Note: It is possible to measure ‘creative imagining‘)