It’s useful to know why something is troubling. If I feel too hot I might need to move out of the sun. If I have a headache I might need a glass of water. These kinds of problem are different from psychological ones like why do I behave like this? Why did he do that to me? Pandora’s box opens the moment we begin looking for meaning in our motives, or for motives in our actions – especially ones where we don’t intend something to happen. More often than not looking for this kind of meaning is a ticket to Stucksville.
Getting somewhere
Don’t get stuck. Look at what you may be able to follow, the effects of something, and you’ll retain some kind of momentum. You may go off on a misleading track … but you’ll be getting somewhere. Looking for meaning, on the other hand, can grind things to a halt. Looking for meaning means possibly getting it wrong, or flying off on flights of fancy that have more to do with how you see things than how anybody else might. You’ll end up in a fantasy.
This brings me to dreams. If you see dreams as production lines for meaning you’re lost in the fantasy of productivity that a certain 2024-USA-UK version of capitalism seems prone to propagate. We must make something of our lives … even if that something operates more in our thoughts concerning what gets passed around electronically between our electronic devices.
Our friend electric
The brain is of course also an electronic device but fortunately one that remains, to an extent, un-hackable. If things were otherwise I suppose I might be out of a job. AI, as far as I am aware, would have a problem going crazy like a person: which is one way of thinking about how human intelligence might always be able to come up with a way of thinking about something that a robot-thing can’t.
Dreams: something AI may never have.
Your dreams are your dreams
What can we make of dreams? Well, let me suggest that you try to learn how you dream. Not so much what you dream of and what that may symbolise but something about the ways your dreams move. Your dreams will always feel like your dreams and they can tell you something about how you think. I wouldn’t suggest trying to be too specific about this … or if you want to try then find a decent psychotherapist … but just to imagine you might be able to get a feel from your dreams that might be like the feeling you get when you see someone approaching you from a distance and recognise them from the way they are approaching you. They have a dynamic: a way of moving through space that sets you up for greeting them (or avoiding them) before they reach you.
Follow your dreams
If you learn to follow your dreams you may come to recognise something before you might ordinarily, consciously, when you are awake, realise it. Dreams cannot tell you the future but they can tip you off rather like someone who follows race-horses’ form. Why am I unhappy? It will be about how I do things: a question of form, something aesthetic, rather than about what I do.
How is the real measure of who.