Imagination and Television

Some people claim TV is good for improving children's imagination and creativity. However scientific studies show otherwise, like this one which studied 400 short stories of kids aged 10-11 year old:
"the ubiquity and ease of access to television and videos perhaps robs today's children of the need to pursue their own thoughts and devise their own occupations". The scientific study also highlighted how children are becoming less creative and imaginative due to tv. ("Television and imagination" by Belton T, in Media, Culture and Society, 2001, 23)

Another good article is:
TV as hyposis

"Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi did a study which appeared in Scientific American in 2002[1]. Participants carried a beeper which beeped several times a day and when it did, they wrote down what they were doing and how they were feeling.When beeped while watching TV, people recorded feeling relaxed and passive. What was surprising was that the relaxation ended as soon as the TV was switched off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continued.

Additionally, the participants had more trouble concentrating after viewing than before, and EEG studies showed less mental stimulation (identified by increased alpha brain wave production) while watching TV. Neither occurrences happened as a result of plain old reading.In other words, we associate "watching TV" with "being relaxed" (so we do relax), but after we finish watching we can't concentrate, feel sluggish, and become as stressed (or more so) than before.

Despite all this, of course, we keep on watching."

Imagination and Islam

The role of imagination in the modern world and Islam is something that is fascinating me recently. One sees the massive increase in the technology of the media leading to improved imagination amongst people. This media includes books, internet, radio, music, tv, movies, games and theatre. They have extended the power of the imagination, and when combined with globalisation, has further enhanced imagination and allowed it to reach more people.

It has allowed different cultures to experience the imaginations and cultures of other peoples, and unified various peoples. You see Hollywood affecting almost every people in the world.

Now people can understand the concept of recording actions, visualise places they have never been to or don’t exist (such as in movies and games and 3D), and learn from the imaginations of others.  They can see humans create scenes of amazing gardens, of different worlds creatures, beautiful things, horrors,  and so on. This has both its positive and negative affects. The negatives outweigh the positives, and include the pornography, the immorality, swearing and so on. But there is a positive angle we can see also.

In the past, people didn't have any technology, so many would have a hard time understanding concepts like recording someone's speech, and hearing it again. Or that shoes would talk (as Nike has done), or that Islam would enter every person's home. But through the technology and media now, we can understand those Islamic prophecies.

The new media technology allows us to get a better understanding of heaven and hell. Obviously we can’t imagine them, but we can come to a better understanding, including of what we want and can be harmed by. We have grown up with images of amazing beauty (albeit fake through make up in the cases of humans generally), of amazing superpowers, of amazing talents and stories. We want to get the best singing voices, the best dance move, the fastest karate moves, and so on.

We have seen the cartoons and the comics, and how creative the authors are and we have deep rooted desires to have those abilities. The movies also show us the complete bliss people can be in, like those movies where you see a young kid playing around the grass with peace everywhere and at the end having a fairy tale ending.

But now we should think, we can actually get many of that stuff in reality, through Jannah (heaven), though we can’t get most of them in this world.  We can fly in jannah, run and teleport fast, and get amazing super powers throwing webs and beams from our hands insha’Allah, if we wish them. We can have our dreams of talents (like singing) and deep, inner desires come true.

On the other hand, movies like the “Day After Tomorrow” have shown us how it is possible that the world be destroyed, and how we could visualise it, whilst other games and movies show how scary hell can be with the various types of tortures.

At the same time we should remember that paradise is much better than what we imagine, and hell is much scarier than what we imagine. Thus we need to strive hard for paradise and in avoiding hell, and we need to obey Allah swt for all that.

NB- I'm not advocating the haram stuff in the media industry, nor how the media shows Islam in a negative way and portrays bad lessons. But we should try to use the media in a positive and halal way.