Claim Imagination is a more valuable asset than experience Reason People who lack experience are free to imagine what is possible without the constraints of established habits and attitudes

The statement has fallen into a common trap by setting a binary approach between imagination and experience. As we’d have probably heard from elsewhere, imagination is regarded as an abstract and conceptual action that involves solely the activities within the brain, while experience is more or less linked to the physical actions of the body - activating movements in space and time - that happen in reality. Although, it seems reasonable to put a division between the mind and the body as a common sense, there needs to be placed a pause button on that habitual thought since the act of imagination and the act of experience are indeed closely intersected with an endless feedback and constantly influencing one another. In other words, I would like to clarify the claim by suggesting the following question: what makes an imagination a true imagination, and experience a true experience?
In terms of answering the first part of the question, instead of following the given instruction of the mind-body dichotomy which regards imagination as a purely mental activity, imagination indeed may be regarded as a reaction in taking new pieces of information from the exterior of the self. That is, imagination never happens unless you may have enough data of accumulated certain memories about the factors of the surrounding world. The activity of recreating the reality by imagining an abstract system of thought is based on the ability to recollect and reassemble the pieces of what you’d actually sensed.
For instance, we may look into the process of creating a literary work. In order to depict a certain place such as the New York City, one may just get a single plane ticket that bounds to that very place, and randomly start to live there for several weeks. Relying on the memory he or she gained through her living, the author comes back to his place and tries to create a delicate description of the mood and atmosphere of the city with characters that might be likely to live there as well. Meanwhile, there might be also an author who chooses not to go but searches for precedent literary works that had described the city with exactness and liveliness. By looking into thorough archives of documentaries, artworks, researches, and journals, the author will grasp the images among them and would likely be able to depict with as much liveliness as the former one who went there on foot. Thus, even though the given statement lies on the assumption that imagination has nothing to do with experience, fundamental wellspring of imagination stems from personal experiences that consist of not only physical activities done in different places but also those done in order to search for literary works. This, in turn, answers the latter part of the question, thereby blurring the boundaries between mind and body.
Once the dichotomy has been overcome and one admits the constant interaction between imagining and experiencing, we may be able to move to the next step, which is about the established habits and attitudes of a person. Ways of thinking, imagining, and experiencing are likely to be a set of habit, as cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu once noted. As he emphasized that individuals perceive the social world and react to it with ingrained habits, skills, and disposition, both imagination and experience can be shaped by personal history that is placed on a certain social structure. Thus, looking into one’s habitual thoughts and actions leads to an insightful understanding in one’s cultural basis and disposition.
In conclusion, one can appreciate the consideration for imaginative value, but as mentioned above, experience must be construed as equivalent and a mutual effect of imagination, so that through the lense of established habits (which is not anymore a constraint) we might be able to grasp a wider approach on understanding the social structure in which we reside.