Dreams
A window into the most beautiful part of our subconscious mind
“We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.”
Carl Jung (The Red Book)
Intro
If you are interested in behavioural science, dreams are fascinating…
Why?
Nobody in the history of humankind, has actually been able to unpack or explain what dreams actually are, or what any of them mean.
This is HUGE.
Why?
Well nowadays there’s an explanation for *everything*, (thanks internet!)
Dreams are the only real privacy that our species have. A window into our soul that transcends time, technology, media and TikTok. It’s a major part of our subconscious and the only thing we should truly respect and protect.
What is a dream?
Everyone has their theories about what dreaming is. Heres mine:
This whole world is most likely a computer simulation
Have you ever stopped and thought ‘where does this all come from, what and who am I, and who is responsible for all this? There must be a creator, and a point to all this, right?
OH HAI RELIGION!
Traditionally, religion was a perfect way to explicate, excuse and understand everything.
But as humans evolved, modern science started to prove that stuff was science-based and nothing else. Religion then was then relied on as a catch all for what science had not yet proved. It filled in the gaps of what we could not explain.
This concept was known as The God of the Gaps
I feel like science has given a logical path to understanding that there is no god, but there is a creator, and that we are a part of a simulation.
If this is true, then we are are a bunch of computers, running an operating system (OS)
This wonderful ‘human OS 1.0’, like every OS, needs to go into sleep mode.
Dreams are our brains screen saver, something passive to keep our system on standby while the body rests. It’s a time to take in the days activities, process and provide some feedback and make you feel human.
Ok I’ll come back to this later x
REM (everybody hurts)
During sleep, the brain enters a deeper sleep mode called REM (Rapid Eye Movement). This is typically when dreaming occurs.
But as you wake, the dream disappears as rapidly as the eye movements. Half your dream disappears five minutes after waking; within 10 minutes, 90% of it is gone. It’s super hard to remember dreams, as it should be.
Jungian Analysis
The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung viewed dreams as valuable sources of insight into the unconscious mind and believed that exploring and interpreting them could lead to greater self-awareness and personal growth.
Jung proposed the idea of dream compensation, suggesting that dreams often compensate for imbalances or conflicts in waking life. For example, a person who is overly rational may have dreams that emphasise emotions or intuition to restore psychological equilibrium.
Do Androids dream of electric sheep?
This wonderfully titled Philip K Dick novel, upon which the movie ‘Blade Runner’ was based on, explores themes of identity, empathy, and the blurred lines between what is human and what is artificial. It raises profound questions about the essence of life and the meaning of existence in a technologically advanced society.
In the book, android Replicants have to pass a Voight-Kampff test, a fictional version of the Turing Test. The machine used in the test measured bodily functions such as respiration, heart rate, blushing and pupillary dilation in response to emotionally provocative questions.
In the context of what is real and what is simulated, I always felt that for a machine to really pass as human, it would need to be able to dream like one. As machines and artificial intelligence become more ‘human’, dreams will become the real Turing test.
So how would a computer ‘dream’? Well computers can’t understand fear, nor do they wear clothes, or have teeth, so that just leaves flying. I think computers dream about being human. Like Pinocchio, they want to be a real boy.
Dreams *can* come true
The mono-ocular songstress Louise ‘Gabrielle’ Bobb once crooned that “dreams can come true”. Dreams are often associated with fantasies, being rich and successful, winning the lottery or whatnot, but in reality our *actual* dreams aren’t about fantasy. They are usually about weird and awkward, situational scenarios that expose your greatest fears…
Teeth falling out
Dreams of losing teeth are among the most if not THE most common anxiety dream that exists. Why? Is losing your teeth really that bad? I’d say shitting yourself on live TV might be worse.
Spiders
Fear of spiders is a legit chronic phobia, so I’m not really surprised by this one. Carl Jung theorized that personalities are divided into the persona and the shadow. Dreaming of spiders crawling on you could be a physical manifestation of your shadow, or the darker side of your unconscious. Jung believed we could not move forward in life without encountering and acknowledging our shadows.
Being naked
Some of my most bizarre dreams have been me in my birthday suit. I’m standing around and during the dream, being naked seems perfectly fine, almost natural. For me this symbolises that our brains operating system has not evolved to understand the social construct of clothing.
Flying
In most of my dreams, I’m flying naked with questionable teeth security. But I like to think that the prevalence of flighty dreams is because we were so evolutionarily close to being a winged species, and being able to fly is pretty much the coolest flex.
Wilbur and Orville Wright are credited as the first crazy bastards to invent powered flight. It’s always been a strong evolutionary desire to take to the skies, and space.
Musical interlude
Fleetwood Mac were an incredibly toxic powerhouse of creativity. They had huge success in the UK, ‘Rumours’ is universally regarded one of the greatest albums ever produced.
As always, in the US, the ‘Mac’ were not so popular.
Of that incredible album, the track ‘Dreams’ was the band's only number-one single.
Amazing but predictable.
It’s not my favourite track on that perfect album, but It contains one of my favourite lyrics:
“Now here I go again
I see the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
And have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness
Like a heartbeat drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost
And what you had
Ooh, what you lost”
The reality of the majority of dreams being not about fantasy, but reality and fear, is a sobering lyric for a rock band.
Oneirology
Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. It’s more the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’. (There’s no panel of PhDs sitting around, theorising about your dreams of flying around naked in the pub, with loose teeth, catching spiders.)
Your dreams are related to memory formation and learning. Trying to find reason in such a complex, abstract, yet simultaneously banal exercise, is pointless.
I truly think dreams help us process emotions.
Simulation theory
The not-so-crazy theory that we are all living in a simulation, is, in part vindicated by dreams, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest this is all a bunch of software, and dreams are part of a daily backup process, a diversion whilst the data is uploaded to the cloud.
Dreams and simulation theory share intriguing parallels, both suggesting that reality as we perceive it may not be the ultimate truth. Dreams create immersive, believable experiences within our minds, raising questions about the nature of reality. Similarly, simulation theory posits that our entire existence could be an advanced, computer-generated simulation designed by a more sophisticated intelligence.
In dreams, our brain constructs intricate scenarios that feel real until we awaken, highlighting the brain's capacity to fabricate entire worlds. This phenomenon suggests that what we consider real might be subject to manipulation. Simulation theory takes this concept further by proposing that our perceived reality might be an illusion crafted by a higher-level consciousness or advanced technology.
Both concepts challenge our understanding of existence, prompting philosophical and scientific inquiries into the nature of consciousness and reality. If dreams can convincingly simulate reality on a smaller scale, it lends credibility to the idea that a more powerful system could simulate an entire universe. This connection between dreams and simulation theory opens up fascinating possibilities about the true nature of our existence, questioning whether our reality is fundamentally different from the fleeting, yet vivid, experiences we encounter in our dreams.
Ok lets finish this off
I wanted to write a lovely article about dreams, and it’s been one of the hardest subjects to write about, as it’s just a bunch of theories on an unexplained phenomenon.
Enjoy!