Abstraction of the dream
Because it is so unnatural for humans to be removed from the dream, we will keep finding our way back to it, despite attempts to keep us trapped in here.
Recognizing this, they permit us, as a contingency, to have a little piece of reality but in an impure form; namely, they will let us have a dream of the dream, but not the dream itself. Art, and in particular the theatre,1 are examples of compromised dream-pieces. Another example is dreaming itself in the literal sense, and specifically when understood according to the materialist view, viz. that dreaming is something that happens inside the brain which exists inside the world. (It would not be an example of the abstracted dream, but of the dream itself, however, if we could understand dreaming to be primary with respect to the world in here.) Likewise for what is called “daydreaming”.2
This abstraction of the dream is related to, but distinct from, mass media—because the latter is an example of a substituted dream, whereas the abstract dream originates from the real dream but in a reduced form. For the same reason, abstract dreams may still be trustworthy, to a degree, since they can bring us closer to reality, whereas false dreams are always untrustworthy, wherefore a sense of unreality tends to accompany them.
- Cf. also on “the theatre and the dream” from Death is Just Around the Corner, e.g. episode 253 ↩
- And there is a connection here to the notion of a “fantasy of a fantasy”. Something like: I imagine myself to be the sort of person who thinks in a certain way, imagines certain things; but somehow I do not consider those fantasies to be my own, even though I wish they were. See: Personality in dreams. ↩