No Idea : Control, Liberation and the Social Imagination

Almost every change in the history of mankind has come from an idea or vision, which was shared by a small group of people which grew bigger.

This is the social imagination. Almost every one of those ideas was opposed and resisted and almost every one of those people was persecuted or marginalised.

This is the control of the social imagination. While we no longer burn our heretics, they are now caught up in a complex and powerful web of control which discredits and silences them.

A sense of resignation - or even hopelessness - is encouraged in order to suppress new ideas at source.

The result is that we live in a grossly unequal society in a grossly unequal world and yet we have no widely-shared persuasive ideas about how things should be changed for the better.

This book argues that if we can understand the ways in which the social imagination is controlled, we can recapture it.

If we can recapture it, ideas will come and change will happen.