imagination station

I am madly in love with Jean Jaques Rousseau. When sitting by a lake in Switzerland he had the realization that emotions are first- we feel before we think. By nature, human beings are born equal, and society is organized to deny this true nature.
How has this belief, though of some 3 centuries ago, affected our entire life as Americans? We have the idea that all men are created equal. We're still struggling, but are more advanced than other nations. Democracy isn't inevitable as may well believe and take for granted.
I feel it is important to be an artist. Studying art means not only studying English, but history and politics. We are all inter-related, and I don't think many others studying other disciplines see that.
I love Rousseau because you can trace him down the line and see how his thoughts influenced others, through history like the French Revolution and through English like the Romantics in England or the Transcendentalists in the U.S. He believed that one day the ideal world would exist.

The difference between myself and history majors or political science majors is that I believe change takes imagination. Nothing exists today that was not imagined.