Faith In Imagination

St Anslem, Archbishop of Canterbury 1093-1109,
philosophised that the human imagination
was the measure of how big God is,
his reasoning followed thus; however big
we imagine God to be he is bigger than that.
Thus what our imagination the measure
of where we have not been and might yet go.
which makes reality a history we can only estimate.

So far, so ontological. Nearly a millennium later
belief in God is measured a different way,
how many people say the creeds and how often.
But imagination/fantasy is still ontological;
now it is fed by advertising which in turn is limited
by what can be manufactured to engage us with. 

The selling of 'freedom' inevitably leads to politics.
When George Orwell wrote about totalitarianism,
in '1984' he imagined it as an absolute with no exit,
where every exit was trailed by an agent provocateur.

In real life totalitarianism is always relative
to how we imagine the government to be.
Disguising absolute suffering and privation
on too many people for too long is hard to do
without people who are relatively free
in other countries knowing something about it.

Close to a millennium on from St Anlem
the more material the enquiry the more statistical
the answer, this also applies how relative freedom is.

Read how relatively totalitarian your regime might be here.
If the link does not work in your country, assume the worst.