When we try to describe something to someone else, we use our imagination trying to coordinate the personal inner stream of images and events into a coherent and living picture. There are times when we have to use someone else’s imagination, and we will also use both our own and others mixed together to be sure to get understood by what we are trying to describe in a certain context. But we also have a tendency trying to make them more believable by telling others that they should take them literally.
And we are even saying that since other people do take them literally, we should take them for granted if we want to get listened to, or get acceptance from others without being scorned at.
We are all using our imagination as individuals to express the experiences we have of ourselves here and now in our present environment.
And it is a true nightmare that we use some of them in a literally fashion, and as a collective to reject, or even repress the individuality behind them. We are actually getting shaped into a new internal coherence by our imaginations.
Once we have written ourselves into a particular fantasy with its expectations, typicalities, its character traits, what it offers for recognizing oneself. We then begin to shape our life into a caricature of that imagination.