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Trivial pursuit and human extinction

I was awakened last night by a loud knocking on my door. Fortunately the knocking was not reality but was a dream.

When I “heard” the knocking I sat upright in bed with my heart racing and immediately tried to determine if what I had heard was the real world rather than a dream. I assume such things happen to everyone; such things have happened to me before.

I was unable to go back to sleep. Instead my mind led me into contemplations that have resulted in my preparing this posting thus ending my attempt on going back to sleep.

I am retired and have been using my free time for the last several years studying the human condition. I have been trying to comprehend why humans do the absurd things we do and if there is some way to change the direction our civilization is heading. As part of this effort I have been engaged in several of these Internet discussion forums writing my thoughts about our human propensity to self-destruct.

Circumstances this summer have led me into becoming a bricklayer for the first time in my life. I needed to build a small brick wall in my front yard and I have been engrossed in this project for many weeks.

When I look back on my bricklaying efforts I recognize that I have tranquilized myself with trivia. For many weeks I have narrowed the focus of my intellectual interests to the follies of amateur bricklaying. The loud knocking was my unconscious awakening me from my holiday of trivia. My mind was willing to focus upon the trivia just as before it was focused on the important. But a sense of guilt drives my intellectual activity back to more important matters.

Have you experienced the difficulty sometimes of separating dream from reality?

Do you think that such things as hearing a loud knocking is our unconscious sending us a message?

I've just this moment read your interesting post, and these are my instant 'off the cuff' thoughts.

Regarding the separation of dreams from reality:

Whilst I've never had difficulty separating a dream from reality in the sense of knowing which is which, there is, in my own experience, a very clear link between the two, extending to what is commonly regarded as the paranormal, and including precognition.

During my third decade on this lil blue spot, I had a several extraordinary dreams, and an incredibly vivid hypnopompic hallucination. Only during the past few years have I been able to identify a meaning in the latter experience - and the meaning is unmistakable.

Regarding our unconscious sending us a message, see above, but also:

I suppose that our interpretation of dreams is driven by conscious desires and our analysis of the world and our place in it, i.e., our philosophical perspective. If the dreams themselves are driven by the same factors then it seems reasonable to suppose that the interpretation is on the right track. If, however the dreams result from factors of which we are not consciously aware, then it could be that we mislead ourselves in the process of analysis.

In the case of the 'knocking', although it could have been produced by a cause other than guilt, I think your conscious thoughts about it are important; that is, it causes you to feel guilty about neglecting 'important matters'. In that case, it might be useful to consider not only what you can reasonably do for the human race, but also what you must reasonably do for yourself, including perhaps the occasional 'tranquilising with trivia'. Whilst laying those bricks, you have, I've no doubt, been unconsciously working on other projects, such as healing yourself, and establishing a more coherent view of the world.

Maybe we should all do some bricklaying.

PS: It's not quite clear whether you considered yourself to have already woken at the time of the 'knocking'. Was it a dream that caused you to wake? - or did it occur during the process of waking, in which case it was probably a hypnopompic hallucination, and would have been astoundingly 'real'.

Redewener

Thank you for that well considered response.

I am retired and have developed as a hobby an extensive intellectual life. I pursue questions that interest me and seek to understand why we humans do the things we do. My intellectual life is what I call a self-actualizing self-learning journey which I began 25 years ago. I try to study the writing of the best minds that are relative to the questions that my curiosity has led me to.

In the last year I have spent a good deal of time studying psychology and psychoanalysis. These domains of knowledge are very informative and interesting. I am a retired engineer and had little contact with those domains of knowledge during my working years.

My dream defiantly coincided with a conscious sense of guilt for having divorced myself from the important questions of the day by becoming engrossed with the demands of learning and accomplishing some bricklaying action. Action seems to always be more rewording than study. I also remember reading that Winston Churchill turned to bricklaying as a means for relaxing.

I was defiantly asleep when I “heard” the knocking. I cannot remember the content of any dream that led to the knocking. Perhaps there was no dream until the “sound” of knocking came at my mental chamber door.

I had one dream that was VERY vivid, and actually signicantly contributed to a major life change for me. While I was an officer in the Army during the late 1980s, one of my duties was planning the ordering of training supplies (mainly ammunition) for our unit. This was when computers were a very new thing, and I maintained a fairly complex spreadsheet of what we'd need and when entirely on paper by hand. Getting what we needed without getting too much (which got you in considerable trouble) and keeping all the sums straight was a major task. I once dreamt about filling out this spreadsheet in excruciating detail, making decisions about (for instance) what exact type of .50 caliber ammunition and how much we'd need for training. I woke up, realized I'd been dreaming, thought "weird!" and went back to sleep promptly. But over the next couple of days, I believed that I had in fact done the planning, which was required to be done before a meeting I'd attend soon. I showed up at the meeting, pulled the spreadsheet out of the folder, and proudly displaed a blank spreadsheet! I truly believed I'd filled it out, and was utterly baffled. I eventually remembered waking up and realizing that my "planning session" was actually a dream.

This was a significant contributor to me deciding that the pressure and workload were too high, and that I needed to get out of the Army! (which I did a couple of months later).

I've had the dream of a knocking or phone ringing that caused me to wake up confused for a minute. It may be a common human condition, though if so, I wonder what dreamt stimulus our hunter-gatherer ancestors woke up abruptly to?

MikeBinOK asked, "I wonder what dreamt stimulus our hunter-gatherer ancestors woke up abruptly to?"

A lion growling?

I would believe we are hard-wired, genetically programmed or whatever is the correct term, to respond to the sound of a young baby crying in distress. It is NOT possible to sleep through it!

Mike

Yours is a very interesting experience.

As I understand the psychological theory of dreams is that the ego is constantly repressing the unconscious attempt to interject something into the conscious that will lead to anxiety of some nature. The ego constantly stands guard to suppress such happenings. While we sleep the ego does not stand guard and the unconscious is free to display all sorts of things in our dreams that would otherwise be repressed by the ego.

Psychology informs us that repression and guilt are part of human nature. There is a constant conflict between the conscious and the unconscious and the ego suppresses much of what tries to bubble up into consciousness. Knowledge begets responsibility which begets guilt. The ego does not like the anxiety of guilt and constantly represses what our unconscious wants to tell our conscious. It is all very mysterious and interesting. Often some of us go mad as a result.

Psychology theorizes that myth is basically the same thing occuring to all humans. The primitives have created a complete structure in which they have drawn conclusions regarding reality. If one studies mythology one will gain insights into the very nature of human psychology.

Coberst, I've heard similar claims, though also seen claims that dreams are just a byproduct of your mind processing the experiences of the day and putting them into permanent memory. Of course, both theories might be happening!

Coberst, as for your bricklaying, I wouldn't fret too much about it detracting from your deeper studies. The exercise is probably good for you, you're building something of lasting value, and doing something other than profound studies is acceptable, and even good. Especially if you enjoy the bricklaying!

If you want to feel guilty about something, I'd suggest this--What are you doing to improve the world with the insights you've gained from the study of the human condition? Are you coaching young people in what you've learned? Being politically active in whatever direction your studies and conclusions indicate is wise? Or even "just" using your engineering background to serve as a tutor for high school sicence and math students?

Just some food for thought!

Mike

Psychology informs me that the ego represses the unconscious but as we sleep the ego evidently sleeps also. The ego cannot repress the unconscious while we sleep and the unconscious bubbles up to the surface of consciousness through dreams. Dreams are evidence of the unconscious and the unconscious is a cornerstone of classical psychology.

I try to follow in Socrates’ example. I try to awaken the self-critical intellect of society. I try to convince readers to ‘get a life—get an intellectual life’. That is my mission. I had allowed my bricklaying activity to totally block this mission for many weeks. Bricklaying as a diversion is healthy but it can be the trivial pursuit that stops serious purpose and thereby unhealthy.

Coberst, you've created for yourself, perhaps from the tenets of your personal ideology, a particular goal that defines as 'excessive' the attention you've given to bricklaying.

It may, however, be useful to consider that as worthy and commendable as the pursuit of the 'intellectual' life may be, one may 'get a life' in many supposedly more mundane activities. There may be many purportedly trivial activities that are consistent with the well-being of the mind. I suppose there is a zen of bricklaying, and a zen of peeling potatoes.

I hope and trust that the 'serious purpose' will not itself become 'unhealthy'.