BEHOLD WHAT THE EYES DECIDES TO SEE

Everyone talks about moderation, but few practice it. We seem to prefer the extremes. Take science on one extreme, and imagination on the other. One is a disciplined study of the facts and forces at work; whereas with imagination, there's usually less discipline and far more, well, imagination.

In the case of science, each new day finds new disciplined methodologies for managing our lives [for example, cybertherapy is an emerging field in which science uses planned stimuli to re-plan behaviors]. In the case of imagination, each new day finds another artist, sculptor, composer or writer giving expression to what no microscope or petri dish could ever quite explain.

And yet...!

A closer look at our imagination finds a few habits that are explainable and even predictable:

* We imagine ourselves in ways no one else quite does. Otherwise why so much in-denial embarrassment whenever we see photos and videos of ourselves? "Oh my god, is that really me...?!"

* Celebrities especially imagine themselves as what they and their managers have created. It's why they spend a gazillion dollars air-brushing their publicity shots, and hiring sentries to stuff paparazzi candid cameras

* News organizations are pretty much dedicated to imagineering the news. Straight facts and stats don't sell. Flashy graphics, tabloid lead-ins, and pompous pundits do.

* Film and television studios call them scripts, but what they really are ways to re-imagine the stories and histories they're telling. In Hollywood it began with the 1915 "Birth of a Nation" re-telling D. W. Griffith's concept of the Civil War, Generations later "Gone With the Wind" took a crack at it. Later still, the TV series "Roots" added its twist. The power of the screen easily outdid the power of historians each time.

* Oh, and talking about historians, they often do the same thing; only they have degrees after their name.

Science and imagination -- in some ways two sides to the same human coin. Searching for answers to what we're doing here...