Try to apply your imagination to facts. It can't be done. There once was a time when childbirth was mythologized; now, childbirth is made transparent through Obstetrics, ultrasound, and textbooks. It is simply inconceivable to undo the damage of cold hard knowledge.
Imagination marks the place where ignorance has taken root. If you think about it, "imagination" would be a deceased word if we could achieve omniscience, but luckily (or unluckily), many people are still bespeckled with ignorance, which really just means that many people maintain a modern form of imagination.
The things that we refuse or neglect to explain to our children will be readily snatched up by their imaginations. Race, for instance, is a noun that is often demented and distorted by the imagination. This could be the result of a parent's apprehension towards defining race to their children, or it could simply mean that parents and children alike are confounded by what race actually is, what it means, and how it exists.
The only thing parents know for sure is that genocide and foul play has occurred in relation to this perplexing noun, making it all the more difficult for the imagination to cast the subject of "race" in a positive or even neutral light.
Yet, race will never (or at least not anytime soon) be elucidated by textbooks or microscopes, so all we can do is fictionalize, idealize, mythologize and imagine what is to become of that noun.
Seeing as to how this is the case, I thought I might take the liberty of asking an imaginative question. If us humans knew truly everything and everything truly... and if we were in accordance regarding what that "everything" is, was, and will be... then, what is, was, and will be race?
I imagine a future where everyone realizes that all matter is one universal consciousness. A future where a noun like "race" has become an endearing anachronism, kind of like a typewriter.
The universally conscious matter of the aforementioned future will gather around sustenance tables, tear into some goulash, and reminisce about the olden days when people used to differentiate themselves...and then they'll all have a good laugh.
"Your great great great great grandpappy used to call himself a catholic. Why, he'd shuffle into a building called a church to meet with, but mostly look at, other catholics who were trying to grasp at the idea of god and love and all dem proper things. The majority of them catholics was there because it made 'em feel lighter, and just like your grandpappy, they'd go every week to keep healthy, maybe even sweat off a few kilograms of guilt. The silliest part was that they all felt safe and at peace inside dis here church because they shared common differences as opposed to the seculars. Funny thing is, the whole darn while... none of 'em ever realized that they was always each other."
Part of me wants to be deeply religious so I can belong to a quasi-extended family, but another, more intelligent part of me wants to belong to an existence where differentiation is impotent and obsolete. Clubs, religions, ethnicities, social class, hobbies, cultures, taste in music, and so on and so fourth would all be rendered helpless because they'd be indistinguishable. What a cool extended family that could be.
I realize everything I have just said sounds like some Orwellian nightmare brimming with homogenized asexual slaves, but how bad would it be to be universal and limitless and relatable?
Oh bother. I'm saddened because I'll never be a homogenized asexual slave. So instead of being re-swallowed by the womb, I'll have to go out and get me some petty form of specification and wear it like a Lamborghini.
I'll start to identify myself as a literary-type with good taste in music, who only can afford to associate with people that denounce the Gap. I'll acquire a modest posse from attending anti-puppy-drowning rallies, and in our spare time we'll chortle over the special features of "2001: A Space Odyssey."
All I can say is god help me.
