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coberst 09-7-2007 04:35 AM

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?

devonin 09-7-2007 04:57 AM

Re: Trivial pursuit and human extinction
 
Edit, No, let me actually respond to this.

Quote:

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.
While some more cynical writers in the philosophy of human nature like to define existance in such a way (nasty, brutish and short anyone?) I hardly think that there is sufficient proof that self-destruction is an integral part of "The human condition" even if a reasonable percentage of humans seem to exhibit that behavior.

Quote:

The loud knocking was my unconscious awakening me from my holiday of trivia.
While that might be how you're choosing to interpret it, you simply woke up from a dream due to a noise in your subconscious dream fantasy occuring to your conscious mind as one that ought to be loud enough to wake you up. I have a "You thought you were awake but weren't" story that tends to freak people right out, but I know enough about how dreams and the subconscious work to not read too much into it. You seem to be implying that your unconscious is capable of "independant" thought and action, that some motive force inside it actively decided to alert your conscious, and I just really don't see that happening.

Quote:

But a sense of guilt drives my intellectual activity back to more important matters.
A sense of guilt is what led you to interpret an otherwise meaningless dream coincidence as being some dedicated attempt by your unconscious to inform your conscious mind to change where it was putting emphasis...

Quote:

Have you experienced the difficulty sometimes of separating dream from reality?
You can make a pretty strong argument that you -always- experience a difficulty seperating dream from reality. So far as I'm aware, the concept of Lucid Dreaming is about the only mental state where you are "sure" you know whether you are dreaming or not, because you can effect the world around you in ways that your mind and memories tell you are impossible to do in the waking world. The rest of the time, awake and dreaming, you have no real objective way to tell the difference.

Quote:

Do you think that such things as hearing a loud knocking is our unconscious sending us a message?
not a chance. While the purpose of the distinction between conscious and subconscious seems to be to highlight that there are many actions and processes that occur in the body without our deliberate decision for them to happen (The human propensity to blink, to breathe, to manage to walk without falling over) I don't believe that any of those actions can have a sufficient self-motivation to "decide" to happen on their own.

coberst 09-7-2007 08:06 AM

Re: Trivial pursuit and human extinction
 
Devonin

I would point to the wars of the twentieth century, the development of our destructive technologies, and to our cavalier attitude toward the earth as strong indications that we have a propensity for self-destruction.

You mentioned that you “know enough about how dreams and the subconscious work”. I would be interested in reading further about this knowledge and why and how you are familiar with this subject. I assume you place little value upon psychology’s valuation of the importance of dreams.

Kilroy_x 09-7-2007 11:30 AM

Re: Trivial pursuit and human extinction
 
Classical psychology might interpret dreams as important. Modern psychology tends to interpret them as a peculiar byproduct of a number of other processes. In fact one of the dominant understandings of dreams says they don't even have meaning, they're just random streams of gibberish information put together as a result of some sort of unconscious sense data sorting process.

Coberst, I would suggest you read "The Social Contract" by Robert Ardrey.

coberst 09-7-2007 12:00 PM

Re: Trivial pursuit and human extinction
 
A book about the social contract does no appear to me to be one that would have anything to say about dreams and classical psychology. I am somewhat familiar with this concept as elaborated by Rousseau.

Kilroy_x 09-7-2007 12:43 PM

Re: Trivial pursuit and human extinction
 
It does have something to do with your interest in human beings and their destructive tendencies. It seems to me that if you really thought your dream was meant to guilt you into serious focuses again, you wouldn't be wasting time analyzing the dream.


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