Reading this post (parts valid, parts I would argue against) has led to a consideration of dreaming. What do the shared dream ideas say about humanity and existence? about our common experience? about how our minds work? Have these dream ideas been consistent throughout history and across cultures? Does language impact them? And on that tangent, to what degree does language impact our thinking? How does thinking only in english limit me? Does knowing more languages allow for more open thought? more freedom? . . . I get off track so easily. My apologies. So dreams. “Though the variety of dreams is essentially unlimited, there are types of dreams that most of us have regularly: dreams of falling, flying, being pursued, being embarrassed, missing trains or buses, being inadequately prepared, being incapacitated and finding an extra room in the house.” Anxiety, fear, exploration, discovery…easy enough. Makes sense using those processes of thinking we call logical. Hunting and gathering, exploring new environments, being confronted with nature and danger and death. But flying and falling intrigue me. It is like somewhere at our deepest level we are not grounded. We are falling, floating, flying. We are in space, void of the physical. Does this point to something? A desire to be free of this physical world? A fear that the physical world doesn’t exist? A knowledge and understanding that it doesn’t? A tension between the lightness of the mind and the heaviness of our body under the forces of gravity? A past life as a bird? A future life as an angel? The memory of a long fall from a home in the clouds after an attempt at mutiny?
“It’s possible that dream life can be influenced to some degree by shared culture in memelike fashion, but that does not explain shared dream content. Dreams seem to grow from within, like bits of anatomy. Memes are externally formed; dreams are internally formed. So dreams are not memes. They don’t spread from mind to mind by imitation or manipulation.”
Are they because of the hardware? Because we are all wired using the same basic elements? similar neurons and neurotransmitters and synapses and protons and quarks and electrical pulses? Are we more than that? Would knowing that answer change anything?
abstract relations vi 