People Compose Stories to Protect People: Literature and Culture as Man's Alternative Security in the Twenty First Century

Abstract

The 20th century was the era of science and technology, wrought with marvelous achievements in industrialization, biological and chemical engineering, as well as space exploration. Ironically, these cutting-edge achievements were realized following a conscious deprivation and disregard for the humanities with dire consequences to the essence of man as a human being. This paper seizes the apparent collision of concepts in the conference title—imagination and security—to launch an examination of modern man's folly in self-destruction through self-denial. Adjudged as God's best creation, man is seen to have been preoccupied throughout the last century in acts of suppressing and denying his essence through his neglect of the humanities and culture in general. The paper explores the numerous symptoms of a virulent disease that has made man delusional and incapable of looking inward to discover himself and the source of his problem. After analyzing, in its own way, the key concepts of Imaginative Arts and Security of the title, the paper proceeds to show that insecurity is largely imaginary and that the root cause of security or lack of it is no other than man's imagination and the vacuum left by culture in his life.