Let sleeping dogs lie

What are dreams? Do they have a purpose, and do they have a significant meaning?

Existing theories are the Freudian theory that attributes disguised meanings to dream content, and the Hobsonian theory that reduces them to experiences of disordered brain activity. The Freudian theory gives dreams hidden meanings, and the Hobsonian theory denies that they have any significant meaning at all. Y

Yet our immediate intuition about dreams is that they are little movies that we experience and take part in. If dreams are movies, do they have producers and script-writers and directors and all the other personnel required to make one?

Dreams are normally non-lucid. Dreams are often bizarre and incoherent. And finally, most of them are completely fforgotten bt the time we awake.

We can compare those characteristics to those of a cinematic movie. The creation of a cinematic movie is a purposeful activity. We can ascertain an overall purpose, which is something like: to give the movie-goer an exciting, emotional, disturbing or satisfying experience.

Can we ascribe a similar purpose to dreams?

The possibility that dreams are purposefully constructed by a dream-maker suggests an alternative interpretation of non-lucidity: dreams are non-lucid because this intensifies the experience.

One specific phenomenon that is given an interesting interpretation by this theory is that of realizing that you are dreaming and then dreaming that you are awake…. Dreaming that you wake up is the same thing as no longer realising that you are dreaming.

If there is a dream-maker, who or what is it ? If we are not to believe in supernatural beings accompanying us in our sleep, the dream-maker must reside in some part of our own brains. Presumably it is found in some or all of those regions specially active during dreaming.

What is the overall purpose of the dream-maker's dreams? I have given some reasons why we can believe that dream-making is a purposeful activity, and whatever the purpose is, it is one that requires dreams to be experienced as if they were real. Unfortunately I can only speculate as to what this purpose actually is. It may for example be some sort of testing or rehearsal

Careful study of dream content may shed more light on this question. Better understanding of the mechanisms that hold the dream-maker accountable for the success of its dream-making may also give some clues.

But all of us need dreams and the need to dream. They are the first stage to satisfying our innate hopes and desires. Desires, which one may be embarassed to express in front of others…

As indicated earlier….if there was a dreammaker, things would have been very convinient. But since we still have yet to identify one, what does one do.

We watch movies, cinemas, serials, and identify the themes, the stories the actors and actresses enact with our unsatisfied desires, thus being able to fill that void

Now there is an advantage for this as well….. it also fills that void for those real-life dramas, one is unable to enact with the reel-life ones, and which can be filed and enacted at any stage with a definite result. There is satisfaction for both sides, hopefully, we never know….. but at least they are being paid for it…..

We might have some disagreement here, but every cinematic or a serial plot has some link to some real-life drama who knows where…… but it’s better that neither the script writer nor the innocent role-players who enact that drama are unaware about it….. mainly because, it is the connection that the viewer makes during the movie, that make the movie more exciting, and that leaves a sense of déjà vu behind…….

Basically, it keeps the wheels of the society churning…. In other that separates a good scriipt writer from a bad one….

Fortunately, by the time a script is written, edited and made into a movie, the drama process for the role player would have changed considerably…otherwise it could have devastating efffects

He dreams about his hereoine, his perfect woman and likewise the woman, her perfect charmer and the process goes on…..

If not for them, where would we be……

The proverbial masturbators

Recently, stole this from a blog which I took a fancy to…..

The last day I was goin through the articles and news reports on violence in Bangalore at Rajkumar's death. Due to a quirk of fate, Salman Khan got released from jail on the same day too. The reactions of common people to these 2 news got me quite uncomfortable - people were willing to risk their lives and security for some person they see in a cinema hall.

But thinking a bit more in detail about the issue made me realize that its not the hero they are willing to sacrifice their lives for, its the character he plays and the dreams he helps the audience to dream.

Entertainment is all about a willing suspension of disbelief, of helping the audience to be what they could not be in real life. So when Rajni, an auto driver becomes a crorepati one day in a movie, the audience laps it up with full fervour. We do not see Mohanlal as a person, we see Dasan, we see Induchoodan and we see Mangalasery Neelakantan. This is also true with Amitabh Bachan in north India.

But how ethical is this dream weaving? I started thinking along these lines because a couple of weeks down the line, i will be doin the same thing for a living. Use a deo and patao a girl; use a cream and u can make a career; use a soap and u can be like a movie star.....

All these ads might seem like useless to the educated audience like us [hopefully]... But think about a farmer or a daily wage labourer.. who uses these products and spends that much extra money which he could have spent for his kids or family... Are these companies doing the right thing by creating these "emotional and experiential attributes" for products and selling them at a premium?

However this issue has an other side too... It is definitely true that the customer has the right to choose. More importantly the issue is that products like these and films like that of Rajkumar or Rajnikant help the poor farmer to become a crorepati or an Aiswarya Rai by spending 5 bucks or 10 bucks.

Every individual has a right to dream irrespective of the living standards he is in.. and as society moves towards a materialistic one, products and services like these help the poor to satisfy their dreams within their limitations... Something worth discussion??

No let sleeping dogs lie……