WEBVTT - From the Vault: Dreamfall into the Dark, Part 1 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.960 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.799 is Robert Lamb. We're doing some vaults this week as 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.880 we are on a little bit of a summer break, 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.400 so we want to give you the dream Fall into 0:00:18.440 --> 0:00:21.279 the Dark series. This is going to be part one 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:26.640 and it originally published six fifteen, twenty twenty three. Enjoy. 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.080 If dreaming really were a kind of truce, as people claim, 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:34.960 a sheer repose of mind, why then, if you should 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:37.919 waken up abruptly, do you feel that something has been 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.320 stolen from you? Why should it be so sad the 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:45.920 early morning? It robs us of an inconceivable gift, so 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:49.879 intimate it is only knowable in a trance which the 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:53.920 night Watch guilds with dreams, dreams that might very well 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:58.800 be reflections, fragments from the treasure house of darkness, from 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.240 the timeless sphere, that it does not have a name, 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.240 and that the day distorts in its mirrors. Who will 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:08.639 you be tonight in your dream Fall into the Dark? 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:10.680 On the other side of the wall. 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:18.080 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:26.479 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:27.120 is Robert. 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:28.920 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:33.039 That was, of course a dream by Jorge Luis Borges, 0:01:33.240 --> 0:01:36.640 an author that we cite and refer to with some 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.480 degree of regularity on the show, because he was fascinated 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:42.760 with many of the things we're fascinated with on Stuff 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:50.720 to Blow Your Mind, Mirrors, dreams, strange creatures, stabbings sometimes 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.600 that sort of thing. And in this episode we're going 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:58.120 to be discussing the dream world a bit more. This 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:00.640 is a topic that we also come back to with 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.760 some regularity on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and for 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:07.320 good reason, right because there is a universality to dreaming, 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:11.680 and it constitutes an altered and highly subjective mental state 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.640 that runs the gamut from the mundane and the frankly 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:19.400 boring to the other worldly, from the specific to the ineffable, 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:23.200 and from the comforting to the just absolutely terrifying. It's 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:26.040 at once entirely shut off from the waking world and 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:30.440 yet can greatly impact it. And we've spent a considerable 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:33.360 portion of our conscious history as a species trying to 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:35.360 make sense of it and to figure out to what 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:38.280 extent these two worlds are connected or to what extent 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:43.200 they're disconnected, and the enigma in many respects still remains now. 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:43.440 Rob. 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.160 When you first told me you wanted to talk about this, 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:48.880 it was in the context of looking at a specific 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:53.840 mythical monster, I believe one from Japan, right, Yeah. 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:55.200 That was kind of I guess the White Rabbit that 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.680 I followed into all of this because it's an interesting 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:02.240 monster and it ties in with so of practices and 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:07.120 superstitions concerning the manipulation of dream on our side in 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.840 the Waking world, and I think we are going to 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.079 get back to that monster, perhaps in a forthcoming episode. 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.800 But as I was reading about this creature from Japanese tradition, 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:21.280 I started reading more about how some of these ideas 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:24.680 extended back through Chinese tradition as well, and so I thought, well, 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.240 I should maybe go a little broader and looking at 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:32.839 the larger slice of Sino Japanese thought concerning dreams, and 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.720 I ended up picking up this really fascinating book titled 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.520 The Dreaming Mind and the End of the Ming World 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:43.000 by Lynn A. Struve, published in twenty nineteen by the 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:46.480 University of Hawaii Press. It's an incredible book, and I 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:49.480 was particularly taken by Struve's discussion early on about the 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:54.640 mystique of dreams in various global cultures across time, with 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:59.840 particular times and places in which the focus of intellectual 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:05.080 and or theologic sections of the populace are just particularly 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.000 focused on the dream world and what is going on 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:10.440 in dreams, and what we should draw from dreams, and 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.480 how much of our waking effort and time and thought 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:15.400 should be dedicated to dreams. 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:17.880 So you mentioned in the title of the book, it 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.960 makes reference to the end of the Ming world. She 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:24.200 seems to draw attention to the especially the late Ming 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.800 period in China, as a time when there was a 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.359 lot of writing produced about dreams and focus on the 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:34.400 meaning of dreams, compared to maybe the same region of 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:36.880 the world in earlier or later times. 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:39.760 Exactly. Yeah, And this is something I had never really 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.719 thought about before, because obviously, to some degree, it's like 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:46.159 everyone is fascinated with dreams. If nothing else, you're going 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.839 to be interested in your own dreams, and then any 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:51.160 given culture is going to have some degree of ideas 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:53.120 about what they mean or what they don't mean, and 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:56.280 then you know, there's going to be sort of a 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:01.799 global trend towards you know, modernization and rational interpretation of dreams. 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:04.200 But I'd never really thought about this idea that there 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:06.680 are going to be times and places where if you 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:09.159 are looking at I don't know, some sort of a 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.440 mechanism that was giving you the readings. All right, this 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.760 is what dream fascination is looking like. Oh we have 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:17.840 a spike. Why is it spiking it certain? Or does 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:20.599 it seem to spike at certain points? And so Struve 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:23.839 is making a point largely for this period of time 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:27.479 at the end of the Ming dynasty and it's decline, 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:30.200 as it's about to fall an end and another dynasty 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:34.640 is about to come to power. But this argument that 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:37.279 there are some other places as well where all the 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.279 elements are just in proper place to sort of push 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:46.960 people inward, and particularly to push intellectuals of the day inward, 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:52.159 those who have more time to devote to these matters, 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:55.000 and then also you know, the ability to write about 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:57.479 them and have their words passed on to subsequent generations. 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.000 So in the book she naturally discusses the subjective nature 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.360 of dreams, their wide variety, and how the quote deficit 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:09.039 of logic and rationality unquote in dreams has inspired both 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:14.360 suspicion and celebration, which is this duality will come back 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:18.320 to several times in this episode. Also key to all 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.120 of this, of course, is that dreams arise unbidden. Certainly 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.799 we have no power over what other people may dream, 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.320 but generally we lack control over what our own dreams 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.799 are going to consist of. And this can prove again 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.720 a source of great inspiration, even divine inspiration. You know, 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.600 look what the dream world has given to me, Look 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:41.800 what the powers beyond the dreams have given me. But 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.640 in some cases and some worldviews, it may also be 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:49.160 seen as threatening or truly terrifying, especially within worldviews where 0:06:49.400 --> 0:06:53.160 rigorous control of thought, desire, and emotion are key. You know, 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.640 it's like, perhaps you're a person and in your religious 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.719 devotion you spend a lot of time denying yourself say 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.400 lustful thoughts, and then you enter into the dream world, 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.719 and there are no guarantees that those lustful thoughts will 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:10.920 not arise there and take on forms that may seem 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:13.480 at odds with what you're trying to do with your 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:14.280 waking self. 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.680 Yes, and of course that can be threatening and unsettling 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:19.680 to people. But coming back to the first half of 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:23.119 what you said about dreams being an inspiration and having 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.640 a kind of power or authority. I think that is 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:32.000 linked to the fact about them seeming to be unbidden, 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.320 the fact that they seem to come from somewhere other 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.960 than your own thoughts. I mean, you could say that, 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:41.520 we'll wait, where do your waking thoughts really come from? Those, 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.360 if you examined them more closely, might come to seem 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:48.200 as unbidden as dreams. But at least we have a 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:50.920 sense more like our thoughts in our waking state are 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.000 more under our control, and our thoughts in the dream 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:56.960 world are not, And because they feel like they're not, 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:00.640 they're less under our control than thoughts in the way state. 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:04.400 They can take on a kind of third party authority. 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:07.440 So it's like you can report the contents of your dreams, 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:11.400 or even just contemplate the contents of your dreams, without 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:15.080 the sort of self doubt and anxiety that you might 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:18.160 have about if you were just, say, like, offering your 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:21.840 personal opinion about something. When it's a dream, it's like 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:25.440 you're reporting something you read in another source. It has 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.760 a kind of third party authority. And often because dreams 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:32.720 are ascribed to gods or literal powerful figures or ancestors 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.480 or other you know, beings that have senses and information 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.200 and powers beyond what we have in waking life. The 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:43.120 contents of dreams can be interpreted to have power and 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:45.800 authority over other people like you, I can tell you 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:49.600 my dreams, and that might have a message that you 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.000 think you should pay heed to, because I'm not just 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.960 saying my opinion. I'm reporting what was revealed to me 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:56.960 in a dream. 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.640 Yeah, it's it's interesting to sort of self analy over this, 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.720 Like if either of us were to tell our spouses 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:06.880 to report in the morning, Hey, I had a dream 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.480 in which I was wearing this green suit. It's weird. 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:11.720 I don't own a green suit, and then you kept 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:15.280 reporting this same dream over and over again, Like how 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:18.640 would they interpret it? How would you interpret it? Like 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:21.080 at some point would you just be taking it apart, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:22.760 trying to think of what does green mean to me? 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:27.920 And like where is this coming from? Or they might think, well, 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.920 maybe my spouse really needs a green suit. Maybe that's 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.760 what the root of this is, like deep down they 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:35.720 desire it. Like there's so many ways to sort of 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:37.400 tease it apart and try and make sense of it 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.360 when ultimately, like the signal itself is irrational. 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.600 Of course, it gets even more complicated when the dream 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.760 is interpreted to include an exhortation or some kind of 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.559 guide to action, because consider the contrast between a couple 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:53.280 of other things. What if, on one hand, I just 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.240 say to my family, I think I'm going to shoplift 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.520 a green suit out of the clothing store, and I 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:02.520 just present that as my idea. It seemed like a 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.440 good idea to me. Versus I say, I have a 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:08.440 dream in which I take a green suit out of 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.760 the clothing store without paying for it, and I keep 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.520 having this dream. Well there, it kind of seems like, look, 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:17.439 it's not It wasn't my idea. You know, it came 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:20.680 to me from the dream. So it's like somebody else 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:22.199 is telling me I need to do it. 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.520 Yeah. This idea that there's something about the dream that 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.080 does not seem to fully originate in ourselves. This is 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:32.880 a This is a theme that we'll return to again 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.280 and again here, and something that various interpreters of dreams 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.400 and sort of dream theorists over time have latched onto. Now, 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.800 coming back to Lynn A. Struve's book, she says that 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:47.160 while in some rare cases, dreams have allegedly and allegedly 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.880 is important because the nature of other people's dreams is 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:53.400 always alleged, and even our own accounts of dreams that's 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:58.040 subject to interpretation, remembrance and reporting and so forth. In 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:02.040 some cases you have dreams of allegedly directly informed history, 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.319 but otherwise, like what does it matter that people are 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:10.240 having dreams and reporting them and focusing in on them. 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.600 There's sort of like two major areas that she looks 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.520 out at here. One, as we'll explore, is like what 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:19.200 happens when you're fascination with dreams kind of like bubbles 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:25.320 over into making decisions about the waking world. But the 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:27.360 other one that she touches on has to do with 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:34.120 ultimately with like how a given society viewed consciousness, how 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.760 a society views its dreams, Especially in highly intellectual and 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:42.160 authoritative cultures. You know, you can look to the surviving 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:45.920 writings on dreams dream journals, and they can ultimately reveal 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.720 much about that culture and the individuals doing the dreaming 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.400 and the writing, as well as the inner workings of 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:55.079 the mind. She writes, I submit that dream writing can 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.520 indirectly contribute to a history of consciousness, not in the 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:00.960 sense of what people were conscious awe of over time, 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:03.760 such as class identity, but in the sense of what 0:12:03.840 --> 0:12:08.520 people thought consciousness was and how they experienced it. Delving 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.080 into this can illuminate how they felt and understood themselves existentially, 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:16.960 which underlay other actions and endeavors. Consciousness at its most 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.160 primal is a sense of being an observant entity, and 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.719 it builds and modifies selfhood by the agency of narrating 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:28.120 what is observed. Attempts to narrate that most ineffable kind 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:32.000 of observation of what occurs to us in dreams expose 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:35.839 this process at the most elemental level that is accessible 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:39.560 to others and therefore on which self interacts with society. 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.920 So dream talk can give us valuable information on how 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:47.160 people probed awareness itself, under what circumstances they were moved 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:52.120 to do so, and how their evolving selves negotiated narratologically 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:54.319 with their sociocultural milieu. 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.400 Okay, this is interesting. So Struve is making the argument 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:03.880 that even if you don't have people, say, writing philosophical 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:07.960 treatises on what they believe the nature of consciousness to be, 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.840 you can infer a lot of things about what certain people, 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.800 at certain times thought believe the nature of consciousness to be. 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.000 By reading their reports about dreams and how they talked 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:24.400 about dreams, because in a sense, dreams are a dreams 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.920 are relating an experience of consciousness separated from action and 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:30.040 waking life. 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.520 Right right, Yeah, it provides this this sort of distance 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.960 on inner thought process. That's and again I never really 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:39.719 really thought about this either. It's easy to sort of 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.240 think of of accounts of other people's dreams as either 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:47.320 you know, interesting or boring, or interesting only to them, 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.000 or perhaps interesting in terms of like exactly how it 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.840 is interpreted based on everything else and all that's valid, 0:13:53.880 --> 0:13:57.400 but this added level of like, yeah, to some degree, 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:10.080 these are accounts of people thinking about their own consciousnes. Now. 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:13.959 In this book, Struve ultimately dives into the particularities of 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.840 Late Ming Dynasty China during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.040 but she also highlights other times in places that seem 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.920 particularly focused on the power of dream So, you know, 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.320 it's all interesting, I think, coming from our current place 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:29.840 in the consideration of dreams, sort of the tail end 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:34.240 of what she classifies as an accelerating Western decline in 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:39.480 the belief of prophetic and oracular dreams. And she argues 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.760 that this decline has been accelerating, at least among the 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:46.400 educated since the seventeenth century. I mean, we're still obsessed 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:48.800 with our dreams. We still talk about our dreams, right. 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.400 They still have the power to fascinate us, terrifies and 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.760 all that, but we're generally more inclined it seems to 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:58.960 me anyway, to dismiss them as nonsense or the scrambled 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:03.720 remnants of waking experience, thoughts and feelings. I remember David 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:08.720 Eagleman when I initially interviewed him the interview before last, 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.520 he said that he mentioned the he always thought of 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:14.080 it as sticking his head in the night blender, which 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.320 I thought was rather apt. You know, this idea that yeah, 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:18.480 this is what you this is what you get. You know, 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.160 these are just the mental leavings from the previous day, 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:23.680 and you can pick through them. You can, you know, 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:26.360 maybe you'll find something useful that is, you know, you know, 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:29.520 provide some inner reflection. But ultimately the thing itself has 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:31.640 no meaning. It is like a waste product that is 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:33.120 extruded from the mind. 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:33.640 Well. 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:38.600 Yeah. Eagleman's particular theory about the adaptive function of dreaming 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.960 was that it is a defensive action of the visual 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.240 center of the brain to prevent takeover of that tissue 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.560 in the brain by other senses during the dark period 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:51.760 and the night, so that when you know it's nighttime 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:53.920 and you have your eyes closed so you're not using 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:56.880 the visual centers of your brain, those brain cells don't 0:15:56.920 --> 0:16:00.040 start to get recruited too much by other functions of 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.600 the brain because our brains are very plastic. And part 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:05.080 of the evidence he produced for that was that there 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.520 seems to be across the human life span and across 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:13.200 different animals, there appears to be a negative correlation between 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:17.640 the plasticity of brain tissue and how much dreaming you do. 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.200 Yeah, so it was an interesting hypothesis that he came 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.680 to after initially seeing it as the night blender. But 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.120 you don't hear someone like David Eagleman talking about dreams 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:32.640 being the vehicle or the instrument through which God is 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.480 speaking to him or to us, or to random people. 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.880 I mean, you will find it in the modern world, 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.280 but for the most part, we don't really lean into 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:43.400 that on the whole. 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:46.240 I mean, I guess technically, I want to say those 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.920 are two separate scientific questions. One would be what is 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:54.200 the adaptive function of dreaming in the first place, Like 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:56.600 why do we dream? And I think that's the main 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.120 question that Eagleman was answering when we talked to him 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.240 about that. The purpose of dreaming is to prevent the 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.360 nighttime takeover a visual tissue by other functions. But there's 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:08.560 a totally separate question, which is what determines the actual 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:12.399 contents of dreams. And you could have a you know, 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:15.000 in a way that's kind of unrelated to the other theory. 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:17.399 You could just say, well that you know, the fact 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:19.720 that we need to prevent the takeover of that brain 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.560 tissue means you've got to have something going on in there. 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.359 What's going on in there? What kinds of stuff you 0:17:25.400 --> 0:17:27.840 see and imagine in a dream? I mean, it could 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.480 be anything. So why do we see the things we see? 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.119 And that's an interesting psychological question that seems somewhat separate. 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:36.920 Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I mean, certainly 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.959 you could have a situation where if the Eagleman's hypothesis 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.639 was correct, that you could still have God speaking through 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:47.879 the content of the dreams, because it's like the brain 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:51.560 just needs something to keep the to keep things visually 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:55.320 powered up, but it doesn't particularly care what is in there, 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:57.840 and then yeah, you could have God or God's slipping 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.000 a message in to the stuff. In the same way 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:02.160 you might be able to cut up open the entrails 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:06.040 of an animal and supposedly determine the future based on 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:06.840 what they contain. 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:07.560 Ah. 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.520 Yes, so it's technically there's no conflict between you being 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:13.920 able to read the future in the in the guts 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.520 of a chicken and the fact that the guts of 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.000 a chicken are used for digestion by the chicken. 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:24.960 Yes, all right. Coming back to these different periods in 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.760 times where there's been an uptick in interest in the 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:31.080 contents of dreams and this idea that there's something meaningful 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.919 there to really latch onto. One of the periods that 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:38.680 Struve touches on is the Romantic period in Europe, particularly 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.359 late eighteenth through early nineteenth centuries. Truve writes that the 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:47.400 quote felt limitations of an Enlightenment rationalism and mechanism, especially 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.479 as a concerned the human body and the inner workings 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:52.080 of the mind, led to a kind of increased interest 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:54.800 in the non rational and the mysteries of the self 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:59.720 consciousness and the unconscious mind. She writes, quote with growing 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.320 interest in dreaming as a medium through which to link 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.600 these compulsions. Dreams came to feature prominently in natural philosophy, 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:10.320 medical thought, the budding field of anthropology, art in art theory, 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.760 personal notes, and especially creative writing and literary criticism. This 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:18.920 occurred as intellectuals responded with elan and or anxiety, hope 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:22.719 or dismay to the epical French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:27.760 rising nationalisms, and socio environmental changes attendant on the Early 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:29.240 Industrial Revolution. 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:32.880 If I understand Struve's argument correctly, this seems to fit 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:36.240 with the pattern of the late Ming period in that 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:41.960 I think she understands an increased focus on dreaming among 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:45.960 the people producing writing as a common feature of periods 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:48.439 where there is a lot of where there is a 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:50.640 lot of strife and rapid change. 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.159 Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think that's one 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:56.359 of the main reasons that the Romantic period here is 0:19:56.400 --> 0:20:04.480 such a nice parallel exam Now, in bringing up Romanticism, 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:07.560 the mind instantly goes to particular authors of that period, 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.840 say Samuel Taylor Cooleridge, who lived seventeen seventy two through 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:15.720 eighteen thirty four, whose work often explored dreams, as well 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.000 as those visions brought about through the use of opium. 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:20.960 So I wanted to look at like another text that 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.440 dealt with this topic, and I ran across a very 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:26.600 interesting book from nineteen ninety eight titled Coolridge on Dreaming 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:30.840 by Jennifer Ford, and it explores this naturally in the 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:33.600 specifics of the poet's work, but also in the larger 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:37.880 context of eighteenth and nineteenth century dream fascination in the West. 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:40.120 You see examples of this in the work of other 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.720 notable Romantic authors as well, like Lord Byron and Thomas 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.840 de Quincy, who of Cose, of course, also famously imputed opium. 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.959 Ford writes that there was no consensus concerning the nature 0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:54.560 of dreaming at the time during the Romantic Romantic period, 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.520 with opinions are really centering on the big three interpretations. 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:02.720 So one potentially vine visions you know, could be could 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:05.480 be God sneaking in a voice or a message there 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:10.240 or some you know, supernatural entity with our interests at heart. 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:12.600 I guess you could also look at that is too, 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.040 a font of creativity and inspiration, a natural place for 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:18.439 the poets in the writer's mind to go, in the 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:24.359 artist's mind or three dreams as residue or byproduct, which is, 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:26.160 you know what, We've been discussing this idea that maybe 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.800 dreams are nothing but just sort of the reassembled contents 0:21:29.840 --> 0:21:32.320 of things we thought about or observed, et cetera during 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:35.680 the course of our day. Now, Coolridge was much inspired 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:38.879 by the writings of Antiquity on the matter, considering the 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:43.600 idea of prophetic dreaming especially, but he also consumed contemporary 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.199 writings that included both serious attempts to understand dreaming from 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:51.320 the vantage point of of current medicine and physiology, as 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.000 well as magical and mystical strains of thought. Now this 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.520 is kind of an aside here, but one of the 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:00.120 things that Ford points out is that one of the 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.840 off is that he would have, of course read from Antiquity, 0:22:03.920 --> 0:22:07.119 would be Homer, and who in the Odyssey describes the 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:11.040 two gates from which dreams may arise quote four. Two 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.480 are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:18.880 of horn, and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.280 through the gate of saun ivory deceive men, bringing words 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.120 that find no fulfillment. But those that come forth through 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:28.359 the gait of polished horn bring true issues to pass 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:30.600 when any mortal sees them. 0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:32.760 Well in a way that belief is not very helpful. 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:36.840 So it's like some dreams could contain prophetic content and 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:40.560 other dreams are there to deceive and misguide you, but 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:42.720 you can't you can't know which or which. 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:45.400 Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of the ideas 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:47.840 presented by the gomork and the Never Ending Story, you know, 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:50.480