The ‘K’ is not silent

re: #1…studies show that we dream about two hours a night whether we remember our dreams or not. Unless we’re attentive to our dreams or happen to encounter something that jogs our memory during the day, the majority of our dreams go unremembered.

re: #4…when I was five or so, I began seriously wondering if my life was not just a dream, and someday I would wake up and everything would be completely different. Eventually I developed a trick to tell if I was dreaming: my dreams would, with varying frequency, have third-person camera angles in which I was looking at myself. If I was looking out of my own eyes for a sustained period of time, I could tell that it was genuine waking life. I suppose this is related to #2 too.

By Jackson on May 1, 2008

re: re: re: #1
Yeah, I’m not really playing Devil’s Advocate here or anything–or if I am, I’m playing the role pretty poorly. Even if you remembered all your dreams, the appellation of “reality” would most sensibly be given to the prevailing mode, especially in view of the other items you listed.

re: re: re: re: re: #4 re: re:
Pretty much the weirdest dreams you have are the ones where you are going surfing with Homer Simpson and somehow this is perfectly normal behavior.

Oh, yeah. And there is also this.

http://xkcd.com/203/

By Jackson on May 1, 2008

Jackson has something there, with attempting to find a way to distinguish, from within, whether something is waking-life or dreaming-life. The trouble, for me, is that I can’t find any reliable way to distinguish between them.

The crux of the matter is this fact: I remember that sometimes, I have an experience, and during the experience, I sincerely don’t see any reason to think I’m dreaming - And then it turns out to have been a dream. That’s fact #1. Fact #2 is this: Right now, I sincerely don’t see any reason to think I’m dreaming.

In short, I have memories which speak against assuming that just because I sincerely don’t see any reason to think I’m dreaming, I’m not. In fact, I may wake up from this experience and find that it was all a dream - It’s happened to me before.

Since I find that I say “I am not dreaming” with exactly as much certainty now when I’m not dreaming (I think) as when I actually am dreaming, I must conclude that my own ideas and reasoning about whether or not I am dreaming are unreliable. My thoughts about whether or not I’m dreaming at any given moment seem to be no better than guesses. Maybe pretty good guesses - But a pretty good guess is not certainty.

The fact is that a dream is a kind of illusion that our minds present to us while asleep. However, dreams are not the only illusions that we’re subject to here on Earth. Charlatans trick us, con men deceive us, politicians hoodwink us, friends lie to us, the devil whispers evil little lies to us - And worse! our own pride makes us lie to ourselves. No matter how clever any of us are, some of these illusions will work on us - And there’s no way of knowing when you’re under an illusion! (If you knew it was an illusion, it wouldn’t be an illusion anymore, would it?) So that even if you weren’t under any illusions, it would be foolish to think so, since you should know that you won’t necessarily know what illusions you’re under.

Our philosophy of life should take into account that reality is never exactly what we think it is. We should only trust Jesus, who calls Himself the Truth.

In short, we should treat all of life as though it’s a kind of dream, where “we see as through a glass, darkly”, but from which we hope to someday be saved, then to “know, even as we are known”. Amen.

Sorry for the long post. I tried to fit both a philosophical treatise and a sermon into it.

By Matt on May 3, 2008

I had an interesting dream last night. I’ve had a few over the last few months (and these are usually only part of a larger dream), in which I’m picking up pennies or quarters off the street, and I usually end up accumulating a substantial amount of money with it. Then shortly after I wake up (I’m usually still a little groggy), I’ll think to myself, “Whatever happened to all that money I picked up off the street?”, and then I realize it was a dream (after all, the money isn’t there).
Last night, however, I was dreaming, and in accordance with the formula, I started finding pennies and picking them up. After picking up a couple though, I thought to myself, “Wait, this is a dream, and when I wake up, they won’t be there. This is stupid! Why am I wasting my time with this?”, so I stopped picking them up and went off to do something else. I did not wake up though, and the dream continued on to other things.

By David Ferrell on May 5, 2008