Dreams and Dreamers
I’ve been thinking lately about how many cultures have some reference in their history and their mythos that describes “dreamers.” I’m not thinking of the daydreamers. I think we’ve had those as long as we’ve had minds that wandered. I’m thinking about the ones who dreamed the world around them.
In some, they were credited with having foresight, the ability to predict things. In some they were credited with creating the future by dreaming it. They were healers, mysterious people who spoke to the spirits, shamans and warleaders. They were viewed with a level of fear and reverence that most modern cultures don’t comprehend. They lived alone in some places, almost ostracized because the people around them couldn’t come to terms with the worlds they walked in. In some cases they lived alone because they chose to, perhaps because the people around them annoyed them? In some, they lived in the middle of their villages, a part of the culture and clan they were born to.
I wonder how it is that we came to live in a world without these people. Rather, how we came to live in a world in which they are not recognized except as charlatans who work on psychic networks or who prey upon the gullible. They are still among us. They hide themselves, cloaked in jobs that utterly hide their true natures. Just as often as not, they hide from themselves, denying their power for fear of being ostracized or worse, simply belittled by people who fear them. Being feared is not, by the way, anything exciting or empowering. It’s rather disconcerting and leaves one feeling a bit like they’ve come to pull the thorns from the lion’s paw and instead were invited to dinner; as the main course!
I know that we do not live in a world without dreamers, because I am one. I know that they walk among us because I know others. I do wonder though, given the stories, if we’re living up to what we are. Do we discount our own power just because we have been taught to? Why don’t the dreamers of today, dream? Why don’t they create the world through their dreams as they are said to have done at one time? Were we all raised to hear, “It’s just make-believe,” one time too many?
What kind of world would I dream if I could?
What kind of world would you dream?
There seem to be two primary camps of thought here. One is a world that is mostly agrarian, or at the least utopian, where man and nature live in perfect harmony. This world often resembles something along the stories of the “noble savages.” Another is a technological world where man and machine blend together into super beings where one can no longer exist without the other.
The world I would dream is somewhere between the two. A world where man lived in harmony with, and awareness of, the earth and the flows of energy through it; while also living in an advanced sort of harmony with machine. I see no need for one to preclude the other. Why not have cybernetic implants that enhance the ability of a human to grow plants for food, or pleasure? Eye implants that bring to light the bacteria that destroy a crop, or the health or readiness of a plant for harvesting? What about one that would allow someone to see the energy flow between humans, plants, animals, and machines?
Strange, perhaps, and I’m not so certain about the implant idea, but why not balance both and find harmony and health in doing so? Wouldn’t it be better than having to either let technology run your life, and separate you from nature, or separating yourself from it completely? Why can’t there be a balance?
I keep my dreams to myself for the most part. Especially the real dreams, the ones that would frighten people around me, most wouldn’t want to hear them anyway. I do wonder sometimes though, what would it take for dreamers to unite and dream a new way?
I wonder…
And I sleep, perchance… to dream?
