Autism and imagination

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As someone autistic, I often overthink things and wonder if imagination is really a waste of time, as you obviously can't "see" into an imagination. I've also heard that imaginary friends have been made illegal, thanks to a recent trend in child-rearing that argues that imaginary friends were seen as a sign of mental disturbance.

not so sure about the illegal part, but there might be more concern today than in days past about "imaginary friends". I thought most children went through a phase where this was common. There are so many ways to imagine. Many autistic persons prefer to search out facts and information , but of course that is different for each and every one of us. If you find imagination not useful, you do have alternatives or choices you can make. No laws say you "have to" imagine a thing, ever. (no laws say you can't imagine if you choose to as long as nobody else is harmed in doing so )

This is going to be hard to talk about without me rambling, but here goes...

One of my great passions as someone autistic is Disney, especially Disney parks (Disneyland in particular). One thing I like to do is come up with new parks for other places in the world.

The problem is that I like to be very realistic with my locations, and as an autistic person, that means overthinking a lot, because I'm literal-minded.

I had seen people come up with ideas for parks and just putting them whatever, no matter how fictitious it may be, because they seem to know that their ideas are fictitious, and they decide to just roll with it. The blue sky process appears to be all that matters, nothing else. They might set a park in, say, Germany or Australia, yet they seem to acknowledge that it's not actually going to happen. On another forum thread (on Disney parks, not Wrong Planet), it reads:

Is blue sky a part of the process? Yes. Will the real world manage to hit us in the face every step of the way, absolutely! I am currently in College working for a BFA in Filmmaking and boy am I slapped by reality every day. But when we have an opportunity on something like a discussion board where we aren't constrained by land ownership, or cost of building, why not let our imaginations run [wild]? It's the perfect time and place, and frankly I welcome more of it.
Sure some ideas are outlandish and would never ever be built in a disney park in the real world, but isnt that what makes this kind of blue sky thinking and conceptualization beautiful? You don't need to pay for a ticket to take a ride in your imagination. All it takes is a click of the mouse, a few lines of well-written descriptions, and my mind goes racing. I say, continue to Blue-Sky! Even if you have to force yourself to specify at the beginning that this exists in a parallel universe, keep up the practice!

As I said, though, I'm literal-minded, which means that I like to be realistic.

Based on that comment about a parallel universe, one time, I thought of doing a park entirely fictitious and not tied down to a realistic place. But as I said, you can't "see" into your imagination. The only real way to "see" your imagination is with pictures, whether something like, say, Planet Coaster or even just drawings on paper, but even they can only do so much. In any case, I have a tough time admitting that my ideas do take place in a parallel universe. How would a blue sky disclaimer work with a parallel universe? For one thing, wouldn't you need to explain that parallel universe to others? And if it's set in a real country (such as Germany or Australia), isn't that not actually a parallel universe, but set in the real world?

If it became illegal to have imaginary friends, I would create imaginary friends and tell everyone about them lol

And about mental disturbance: I consider all humans "mentally disturbed" in one way or the other. Your "mental disturbance" may just be less common than theirs. I like uncommon things.

Imagination is not a waste of time, even when it's completely useless. It's a normal function of the brain, and it's good to use it.

That doesn't make sense.

How can one make imaginary friends "illegal"?

In the vast majority of psychological and psychiatric circles, "imaginary friends" are considered an inevitable part of childhood.

It might be seen as something of a "pathology" in adults----but it's certainly not "illegal."

Just where are you getting thin information from? Social media?

My imaginary friend threatened to squeal on me to the heat. Had to grease him!

I once heard about a little girl on TV who had schizophrenia since she was a baby at least, and she had all these "friends" which were mostly different animals named after numbers or days of the week, and at first her parents thought they were just her imaginary friends, but they weren't because she wasn't controlling them, they were controlling her and would attack her and stuff, which is not something a kid's imaginary friends would normally do.

When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s adults were always saying kids had no imagination because TV was destroying it, but now it's like, any kid who uses their imagination really has schizophrenia and needs to be locked up because all schizos are dangerous and psychotic. They're like, Christopher Robin in Winnie-the-Pooh, he's a schizophrenic, so is Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes, ha ha ha I hate this world.

And as Calvin's Uncle Max once said, "Sometimes I think *all* my friends have been imaginary". Also Calvin's Dad said that Calvin's assumption that Uncle Max had been in prison wasn't all that shocking.

Sometimes I have high IQ creations that I wish there was some way to output into real life by mind data transfer.
But if they can read minds they would be able to know if someone is eating their daily dose of ze bugs or not so I am conflicted about this.