Trivial pursuit and human extinction

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?

It could be a message like a reminder. Our mind’s version of a post-it note.

What is freaky is when you clearly hear a person’s voice that you know is dead. That has happened to me in my dreams. Its wierd being given instructions or orders by a dead family member.

I have had difficulty with seperation only when the dream is so vivid that it becomes impossible to tell that I am asleep because I am actually me in a dream and dreaming I am in my home. that is wierd.

Coberst, where have you been? I’ve missed your posts. My mind often does rebellions about too much thinking or too little thinking. Perhaps these rebellions find articulation in dreams or in exhaustion from physical or mental excesses. I’ve had vivid dreams in which a hand actually touched mine. I believed I was half-awake when that happened. Who knows what it means. Are dreams full of omens, portents, etc., or do they just register the physical/mental situation? I told my wife once that dreams might be a way the mind empties garbage so as to maximize the next day’s opportunities. I could be wrong. In any event, I see nothing trivial in a good sweat or a good read or debate.

Ierrellus

I have been studying a lot of psychology in the last year and psychology places a great deal of importance on the unconscious and upon dreams and myth. They consider dreams are one means wherein the ego cannot suppress the unconscious and therein the conscious can gain some insight into the unconscious. Likewise myth serves the same purpose of all humans. In other words we discover some universal truths hidden in myth and we find some hidden truth hidden away by repression by the conscious mind.

I got all involved in my bricklaying task. I had placed on hold my discussion activities and intellectual life for several weeks.

Definitely missed, the quiet and subtle wordings of coberst.

Generally, I don’t hear “a knock”, although that has happened upon occasion.
Normally, I am stirred out of my sleep by the “sound” of my wife or daughter calling my name … they being entirely asleep.

I’m not certain what it is, but the sensation of alarm you describe is consistent with my experience; i.e. change in heart rate, instant alertness, sense apprehension.

For myself, there has been no suitable explanation to this point. My apologies, I suppose that means I am not adding to your thread.

Usually I hear my name being yelled in a dream and I wake up.

Did you ever wake up and get out of bed, but you wake up again to realize you were still dreaming?

That really sucks when you need to get ready for school/work.

Psychology puts a great deal of importance in dreams. I find that sometimes it is easy to read my dreams and other times I haven’t a clue.

Coberst, mon ami, I no longer feel welcome here at ILP, not from any considerate threads and postings such as yours. Carry on. You have much to say!

It’s been many years since I’ve had recollection of a dream after waking, occasionally some sense of something ambiguous, but no real imagery. Not certain why, I keep my system properly hydrated and memory function is solid …

Perhaps your triviality is the case, the mind so consistently twisted by the absurdity of the phenomenal, it ties itself to the trivial for a rest … ?

My experience leads me to conclude that the brain constantly works on the matters that concern us. I say this because often an idea just flashes that presents a solution to a matter that I have been working over. Because we have this great brain constantly working for us I consider it a waste when we seldom give it any thing to work on other than our mundane day-to-day problems.

I do not understand. Could you elaborate on the problem. If you prefer you might send a private message.

Hi Chuck. Here is a picture of a wall I built a couple summers ago. There was nothing trivial about this pursuit. This summer my wall building was a bit more modest. However, any project that shows progress helps after a bad dream.

In my most frequent recurring dream I see myself naked in a crowd. It occurs after a day of “hitting the wall” in my efforts to explain in yet another way our “propensity to self-destruct” is due to the walls we build around us. I have no difficulty interpreting this dream.

To some degree, sure. Usually right after waking. But I can be in a bad mood from a dream for the entire day sometimes, if that’s what you mean.

Seriously, I do think there are some positive aspects of dreams in relation to survival. I find that I often dream of things that I don’t want to happen, that may be starting to happen in reality. That often is a wake up call for me, and is sometimes the primary event that causes me to make changes in my life.

This is not uncommon either, especially when I wake frequently during dream cycles, it can happen perhaps weekly. Meaning to me, not coincidence. For example, if I hear of a burgler in the area, I may dream of getting robbed, and wake up to more fully understand that it’s NOW that I need to check the home security, etc. Just another example. I am certain it has nothing to do with future/precog, or any other such nonsense. But I do think it may be a helpful, developed trait that we have. Sometimes we get so busy that even though we know something, we don’t act on it. Sometimes our dreams may show us our imagination of what happens if we ignore it. As you pointed out, daily life is so muddled sometimes that priorities get lost or covered up.

It may be that our dreams, aside from keeping our consciousness going, spun off to also help us make decisions/survive. It fits, and evidence I see supports it.

-Mach

Doug

That wall is a beautiful piece of work, I am impressed. That technique of using the mortar bag is unknown to me. Could you just elaborate a bit? You have a beautiful looking garden landscape!

Mach

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.

I’ll elaborate in the Rant House. Sorry for putting this in your thread.

eu contraire. You have much insight.

Coberst, is your bricklaying irrelevant to your grasp of philosophy? Did Picard of the Enterprise like archaeology just as a hobby irrelevant to his success as a captain? Or did Einstein weave in circles on his bicycle just to waste time between his important work?

And what metaphore can bricklaying bestow? Is your Jeungian archetype an architect? Do you believe in building up rather than tearing down?

Isn’t it surprising how much of a difference you get in the strength of the foundation, when you not only put into account the bricks laid out but also the way in which they’re built and the mortar which binds it? Ie: Not just the “blocks” of rules- but their bonds in culture and their layers of acceptance.

Then again . . . Amontillado knows the dangers of building without wholesome intent.

This brought a smile of resignation. I am afraid you and I will remain separated by a gap of misunderstanding. I created a philosophical structure that includes my walls and you want to talk about my mortar bag.

Anyway, the bag is similar to those pastry chefs use to decorate cakes only the mortar bag is about 2 feet long. You put into the bag a shovel full of mortar the consistency of goose shit then squeeze it into the joints between stones, rock, slate or whatever that has already been set in mortar. Once the soft mortar has set somewhat you tuck it tight against the stones with a pointing trowel. Had I not used the bag to do my wall I might still be pushing mortar into the joints. I didn’t use the bag this year but I bought a good pair of rubber gloves and tucked mortar into joints between the stones with my fingers.

Gentlemen, that being Coberst and Doug respectively, let’s keep it civil. Mr. Barr, Coberst is American, and you are Canadian (believe me when I say there is a world of difference), so those misunderstandings should be worn as a badge of honor.

Coberst, been a while. I’m currently working through some dreams and I found your findings fascinating. Good stuff.