Plundering Around in my Subconscious

 

Probably best to start this rambling mess of words with a friendly disclaimer.

Just like one of the characters in the movie Inception stated, dreams, at least for me, have no real beginning. The way I remember my dreams is like waking up in the middle of a movie that has been going on for some significant period. I know something in the form of a plot is going on but I have no idea what caused the “characters” to behave the way they do.

Secondly, I absolutely do not believe dreams are supernatural in origin. That means I do not believe dreams are windows to alternate universes nor glimpses of the past or future. And I absolutely do not believe metaphysical beings contact us through dreams.

Dreams are just the unconscious human mind sorting through the bits and pieces of conscious reality and stringing them together. If someone has a dream about their Aunt Sally winning the lotto and that actually happens at some point in the future that was pure chance. For me, deja vu could well just be random pieces of memory that dropped into a dream with that individual experiencing it accidentally repeating those actions in a similar location.

I do believe dreams are elements of a person's psyche and can be related to their fears, hopes, and how they view themselves. Which in my case could mean I'm losing what little piece of my mind that works

With all that out of the way, I had a wild dream recently that I want to relate because it was so weird.

It began with me among an unknown group that I couldn't see nor really hear. All I knew was that they were pissed at me for some reason. I have no idea why they were upset but I understood, at least I think I do, that it involved me personally.

Typical dream stuff that didn't have any real basis in how others see me. Over the next several days, I began to theorize it was just my subconscious playing with my deepest fears. Nothing too awful weird, and given the times we live with economic uncertainty a normal component of life, probably typical.

It was the final segment of the dream that was really different. Don't ask me how I knew the following but I after left behind the unknown group I “bumped” into God.

Now get this, in the dream God was a short, fat white guy. Sort of like Danny Devito, Buddha, and the Boss Hog character from the Dukes of Hazard television show back in the early 1980s. And yes, he was smiling and giving off this feeling of love and warmth that was quite weird for a dream.

Now the really weird part begins, God was wearing a mustard gold Starfleet Command uniform from the original series complete with the flying delta symbol on the upper left of the blouse. My one distinct memory of the dream was being utterly surprised to see God wearing such a costume.

The dream ended right there, or at least that's all I remember. All things considered it was pretty cool and left me with a good feeling for most of that day. Now clearly understand this, I DID NOT have a personal one-on-one encounter with the Almighty. Technically, it's still best to classify me as an agnostic, although I freely say humans don't know as much about the universe nor reality as they think they do. It just takes real, verifiable evidence to prove things exist that would be classified as metaphysical.

Like one character in Star Trek: The Motion Picture stated near the end of the film: “We all create God in our image.” I guess my subconscious wanted to relieve the collected societal pressures in my head and constructed a God I could relate to in the best possible way. What's weird was that my subconscious put God in an Original Series uniform. I relate far more with Star Trek: The Next Generation and I could easily see Sir Patrick Stewart playing God in a movie.

But I can deal with a Danny Devito, Buddha, Boss Hog combination making up a friendly God. Yeah, all that stuff in my head is a mess. Speaking hypothetically, it would be beyond cool if God was a Trekkie.

Irritating Forays Into My Subconscious

Giving myself a little credit here but my imagination is one of my few developed talents. So much that my creativity even extends to the dreams my subconscious weaves at night. The source of this creativity during both my waking and sleeping hours can almost certainly be traced back to all the science fiction novels I've read and the physiological and thriller movies I watched over the years. Many have left such a huge physiological impact that for years my nightmares hosted a bizarre array of terrible characters.

For example many of my dreams have hosted a collection of murderous xenomorphs from the Alien film series. In my dreams I usually find myself trying to allude the creatures whose only purpose is to find hosts for the parasitical “face-hugger” so more of them can be reproduced.

Joining in for the fun were the Borg from Star Trek, a polyglot of many alien species forcibly assimilated into a militaristic hive mind. During these dreams I find myself recoiling at how they violate the mind and body of captured individuals during the assimilation process.

One of the more curious participates in my nightmares were the Draka, a creation of the author S.M. Sterling, someone described as the H.P. Lovecraft of political science. See, in the world of these Draka the Americans loyal to the British Crown fled to South Africa instead of Canada at the end of the Revolution. This change in history led to the creation of a “super Nazis” society dedicated to the literal enslavement of every human on the planet. Spoiler here, but at the end of the Draka trilogy they end up in control of Earth and the entire solar system.

Those are just my dreams where familiar characters take part in playing with my anxieties. They're a disturbing bunch but I take some small amount of relief in having some truly evil phantoms running around my head. Where things take an abrupt turn to the surreal is when my brain begins to piece together random elements into something that leaves me wondering where the dream ends and reality begins.

Way back in the early 1980s when I was living on the coast, I had a particularly disturbing dream that left me confused for days. It all began during a late night summer thunderstorm with me “waking up” during the worst phase of the lightning and thunder. Somehow the lightning and thunder turned into someone desperately knocking on the front door. It was the kind of pounding knock of someone that in movies was fearing for their very life.

Since I lived in the middle of a fairly dense neighborhood, the idea of someone actually at the door in the middle of a thunderstorm didn't make any sense. In reality, I believed I turned over in my bed and went back to sleep. When I did truly wake up, possibly hours later but before sunrise, I went to the door to look outside. I saw nothing and went back to bed. The weirdness came when I later stepped outside to get the newspaper.

There was a woman's shoe on the front porch. I have no idea where it came from and while I'm mostly sure the late night knocking on the door was a dream, I've got to admit it took days for me to shake off the feeling I might have missed something real.

Over the intervening years I've had what I hope are the usual, normal amount of those strange dreams. But relatively recently I've had another that tends to replay itself with no apparent rhyme or reason.

The actual events in the dream are consistently fuzzy but they all revolve around the main point that I have forgotten an important piece of vital information. Sometimes during this dream I feel I might be on the verge of remembering that lost piece of information, but it metaphorically slips away again. I then wake up and have the irritating feeling that my subconscious was actually trying to send me a message. By the middle of the day I've shaken off that strange feeling but it really bothers me that the dream will return at some point.

Well, that dream did return last week and it has evolved a new level of complexity. I was once again trying to remember something I had forgotten but this time I attached a name of a person to this missing knowledge. Just to make the situation more puzzling, the name now associated with the dream is unknown to me. Yes, my assumption is that my subconscious has reached into the cosmic grab bag and pulled out a name from nothing. That explanation is reasonable and highly probable but it still doesn't feel right.

I've gotten to the point now that I'm starting to miss the xenomorphs and the Borg, but not the Draka, those bastards are really bad.

Embracing the Darkness

Those who have never worked the night shift for an extended period of time will never know the incredible frustration of trying to sleep during the day when the vast majority of their fellow human beings are going about their daily lives. More importantly, people who work normal daytime jobs will never know the warm and comforting embrace of the night as the darkness guides them to a much needed deep slumber.

I really don't want to think about how many years I have now been working night shift but I will tell you that it all began right before President Obama took office. The circumstances of my nocturnal exile are unimportant but with Fate's fickle finger being what it is I have long since accepted both the good and bad aspects of my assigned working hours. The one thing that is different is how I now view the all encompassing blackness of the night.

I'm not sure how this will sound but not too many years ago I was the type of person that needed some form of nightlight to keep sense of my where I was in both time and space. It had nothing to do with being scared of the dark nor the fear of any mythical boogeymen that are suppose use the night to their advantage. The best way I can describe my past predicament involves an event back when I was in basic training at Fort Bliss, Texas. My unit was in the closing days of basic and we were out in the field learning the practical applications of many basic soldiering skills. One of them was sleeping in old fashioned army pup tents.

For the sakes of all unfortunate soldiers, I pray to an inattentive god that those things have long since been replaced with something at least slightly more advanced. But army pup tents were essentially two pieces of canvas--generally called shelter-halves-- snapped together and supported with six wooden poles, a couples short pieces of rope, and a few stakes to keep it all in one place. Once erected and secured in place pup tents theoretically would provide shelter for two full ground soldiers and their gear. The general design of the pup tent has been around since the nineteenth century and if you took in consideration how badly the damn things leaked when it rained you would assume that was also when all of then were made.

Despite the insistent leaking and a troubling inability to shelter anyone from a cold wind, once the sun went down they were pitch black inside when all the snaps were together. That was the situation really early one morning when my training unit's Drill Instructors went on a mad rampage. They wanted everyone up and ready to move out in some ungodly short period of time way before the sun's edge even peaked over the horizon. I had no problem waking up, the trouble came as I tried to determine which way was up and down, left and right since I literally could not see the hand I had placed just an inch in front of my face.

The other young trooper sharing the tent with me did have a problem waking up so he wasn't any help. Long story short, yes, I was lost inside my small tent and pretty much destroyed it trying to get outside. Through the years there have been a few other instances of me suffering through darkness-induced spatial disorientation but except for a few painful stumped toes and one collision with the bathroom door during a local power outage but nothing like that time at Fort Bliss. Mainly because I always had some small light on to keep me properly oriented.

Of course, there isn't any possibility of suffering through a darkness-induced spatial disorientation episode for those of us who have the glorious privilege of working at night. The truth of the matter is that you don't really sleep during the day, with normal humans going about their daily chores the best a third-shift worker can hope to accomplish is to take extended naps. Now I admit during the winter months the situation borders on the tolerable with the sun coming up later and most yard work related activities having ceased because of the cooler weather. The difficulties during the summer months run the gambit of overactive neighbors using lawnmowers. leaf blowers, weed whackers, and my favorite high-pressure washers. This last one just doesn't just make a hell of a lot of noise, if the acoustics and ground conditions are just right pressure washers can transmit vibrations. I write from experience because I have a work-at-home prick for a neighbor who pressure washes his cement driveway once a year. Now throw in delivery trucks with a bad muffler, the occasional evangelical nutcase who knocks on the front door desperate to save your soul, and of course telephone calls and you can understand why I say night workers just take extended naps.

All that is why I have come to embrace the all-encompassing darkness on my nights off. Just this Friday night I went to bed around nine o'clock pm after having opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan to draw in the cool night air. What first hit me was not the darkness but the near utter silence. Except for the sounds of a few nocturnal insects and a distant set of wind chimes moving with the breeze it was so silent it seemed surreal. Neither my wife nor my daughter have ever had the issue with total darkness that I did so when they go to bed all the lights in the house are turned off. That is when the darkness seems to engulf me and I slowly sink into a restful oblivion.

It doesn't quite end there, see when your body's circadian rhythms are screwed up you can't really sleep completely through the night. I myself wake up at least three times a night but after looking at my alarm clock and realizing the time the darkness quickly rolls back in to comfort and lull me back to sleep. It is during those times that I dream. I have no idea about the mechanics of dreaming or the different levels of sleep but on those nights when I am home I even seem to dream differently.

When Sunday morning arrives all I can do is prepare for the return to my normal work schedule. Which means around noontime I have to lay down for a nap to get ready to start my shift. Returning to work is an utter waking nightmare, that first night even thinking is hard making mundane tasks seem like solving equations for quantum mechanics problems. About the only thing that gets me through the week is the knowledge that the coming Friday night the darkness will welcome me again.

Bastions of Hope and Reason in the Vast Wasteland

As anyone who has ever worked the night shift knows you simply do not come home and go to bed after getting cleaned up. There has to be a certain period where you decompress, or unwind. For me this usually involves about an hour sitting in front of the television. Yes, I could read, and sometimes I do, but if I am tired I have a hard time enjoying it and often cannot remember whatever happened.

The problem with watching television in the morning specifically and anytime in general is that it is dominated by what at best can be described as lowest common dominator programming. I have Dish Network as a satellite provider and there are times I can surf the scores of channels they offer and find absolutely nothing worth watching. Cable networks like the History Channel, Discover, and several others which were formed to provide a higher level of broadcast entertainment, or even dare I say intellectual stimulation, are in fact bastions of near moronic reality shows that never stray from a simplistic formula involving an equally dimwitted cast of reoccurring personalities.  

Way back in 1961 the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a Newton M. Minow called old fashioned broadcast television a vast wasteland. I can only imagine what he might think of if he saw Honey Boo Boo, Chumlee, or any of the myriad of other reality show characters that suggest American culture is an empty intellectual husk about to collapse under the weight of its own banality.

Before anyone starts flinging hateful emails at me saying I am a delusional elitist snob let me state that I am all for mindless escapism, I have my own shows that allow me to leave this crappy reality behind and reboot my mind. It is just that it seems a line has long been crossed where escapism is not only the norm but that the producers of such shows are in competition to reach the very bottom of idiotic and banal behavior.

The one oasis in all this is the various categories of TED Talks the internet video streaming company Netflix offers. TED Talks are conferences where various experts on such subjects as science, culture, politics, and just about anything else give short speeches in an attempt to spread ideas or information. Always insightful and very often profound these videos open brand new worlds to anyone who can access them through Netflix or free from the TED Talks website.

In an blatant attempt to induce anyone I can to these videos I offer three of my recent favorites. The first is Isabel Allende speaking on passion, not the sexual kind but how women from around the world stand up and make a difference for their families and others. If you do not come away from this video wanting to do more for the world you have no soul.






The second is by a man named John Hunter. He is a teacher who engages his elementary school students to think in ways that are simply astounding. One such very young student quotes Sun Tzu about war and appears to have a grasp on human's favorite pastime that far exceeds the vast majority of our glorious elected leaders.

  

The last is by Richard Preston who speaks on the giant redwoods of California whose complexities have been overlooked until very recently.





Be very careful, after viewing these videos you could actually come away thinking that if we had more of these outstanding people involved in public life the human race might have a chance at surviving.  

Cosmic Questions of Alien Mice and Men

One of the joys I had growing up in Georgetown, South Carolina that extended well into the 1980’s was the ability to go outside and see the stars of the Milky Way scattered across the sky at night. Of course these very impromptu observations were before both urban sprawl forced a huge jump in nighttime illumination for safety reasons and damn suburbanites developed the narcissistic need to show off their carefully tended lawns with landscape lighting. Such is the nature of childhood I guess that something so simple and pure can literally be lost in the glare of what some call progress. Truthfully, I cannot blame progress all that much, while my hometown was a very pleasant place to live it would have only been a matter of time before one of the newer neighbors called the sheriff on my ass accusing me of being a peeping tom.

It would be a supreme understatement of criminal proportions to say those quiet nights watching the stars were awe inspiring. In truth I actually felt privileged to be able to see the majesty of creation wheel before me. Couple that with Carl Sagan’s show “Cosmos” that aired about the same time and there were times I could stand outside looking at the stars and almost hear his words describing the birth of the universe.

One of the problems of being overly curious is that you cannot stand outside looking at night sky for any length of time and being to wonder if their might be sentient creatures like us living on alien planets circling those distant stars. The next natural step, fueled by science fiction both good and bad, is wonder if maybe these other intelligent species might be advanced enough to travel the almost unimaginable distance and come visit our small but hospitable world.

Saying that such journeys would be difficult is a monumental understatement and to be fair there are a number of respected scientists that say manned interstellar travel is simply impossible given the energy requirements needed to accelerate even a relatively small mass object close to the speed of light. For them any possible interstellar community would be restricted to a galactic internet with various species broadcasting radio messages to each other, then waiting the centuries, if not millenniums, for a reply.

Of course this stay-at-home attitude ignores such possible propulsion technologies as nuclear pulse, fusion engines, antimatter drive, and the really wild ideas for surfing space-time itself which, some say, would allow us to break Einstein’s law about not traveling faster than light. Except for nuclear pulse, which was actually tested on a very small scale in the 1960’s, all of those possibilities are for the foreseeable future just theoretical curiosities. Yeah, it bugs the living shit out of me.

Not surprisingly there is intense debate among the stay-at-home crowd and those like me who would jump at the chance to “explore strange new worlds.” The former likes to bring up Fermi’s Paradox which says that given the high probability that there are at least a few other intelligent species in the galaxy if interstellar travel was possible even a relatively slow starship, say going just ten percent the speed of light, should have visited already. In other words, even at an interstellar snail’s pace it is possible for an adventurous species to explore the entire galaxy in just a few million years. Yes, the rocket scientist boys and girls have checked the numbers on that one.  

The obnoxious stay-at-homes also like to point out that Earth was prime carbon-based lifeform real estate for billions of years and should have been snapped up by at least one colonizing species. Furthermore, given that complex life has existed on this planet for millions of years if any alien Jim Kirks had stopped by they should have left examples of their visit in case intelligent life ever evolved. Now the stay-at-home get vague here, and never really state what type of evidence any possible aliens might leave. Just off the top of my head some of the junk they might have left behind could be a few burned out warp drives, mounds of alien trash including poo, and just maybe the occasional crewmember left marooned on an airless moon because it would not stop farting on the bridge.

Frankly I am in the Star Trek camp who believes all the stay-at-home are unimaginative poopoo heads. Interstellar propulsion technology is not even in its infancy and while it will obviously be too expensive for nation-states to pursue alone there is simply just too much promise to abandoned research when the human race could end up with the chance to explore the galaxy. Unfortunately, even if we get the chance to “seek out new civilizations” the basic principles of evolution preclude the possibility of someone playing James T. Kirk and bagging some smoking hot green-skinned Orion babe. Yeah, you can probably begin to imagine what my childhood was like but don’t go there.

Now there is sort of a bridge between the Star Trek types like me and the aforementioned unimaginative poopoo heads. The idea is that even if manned interstellar travel is impractical bordering on impossible an adventurous species could send self-replicating probes on the long and very slow journey. Once these robotic emissaries arrive at a promising star they radio back what it has found and then go about building copies of itself which in turn begin the journey all over again.

From Phy.org, posted July 19, 2013:

The robotic probes could explore our galaxy and self-replicate themselves from interstellar dust and gas, after which the parent and child probes would each set off for a different star, where they would look for signs of life and then self-replicate themselves again. The probes would therefore disperse themselves radially across space.

In all the scenarios the scientists looked at, exploration timescales were reduced when the probes were self-replicating, and they concluded that a fleet of self-replicating probes could travel at only 10% of the speed of light and still explore the entire Galaxy in the relatively short time of 10 million years. This is a tiny fraction of the age of the Earth and the scientists say the results reinforce the idea of the "Fermi Paradox."

The Fermi Paradox, proposed in 1953 by physicist Enrico Fermi, suggests there is a contradiction between the high probability that civilizations exist elsewhere in the Universe and the fact that there has been no contact between ourselves and other civilizations.

Dr Forgan said that the fact that we have not detected or seen any evidence of alien probes in the solar system suggests there have been no probe-building civilizations in the Milky Way in the last few million years or that the probes are so hi-tech we are unable to detect them. Another possibility is that probes could be programmed to make contact only with civilizations that pass a set measure of intelligence, which could be the ability to detect the probes.

Now even this compromise opens up its own can of alien face hugging worms. If alien robotic probes are hanging around our solar system wanting to make contact with us hairless primates what are they waiting for? The disturbing idea I cannot shake is that they do not consider us an intelligent species, and who in this great big wide cosmos would blame them? Even hamsters know not to make a mess of where they live and do not get me started on humanity’s other sins.

Secondly, it only takes one Nazi-like alien species suffering from paranoid delusions to send out fleets of self-replicating destroyers whose only purpose is to listen for other intelligent lifeforms leaking out television broadcasts of their versions of The Tonight Show or I Love Lucy then drop by their home planet and nuke the living daylights out of them. Think I am crazy? First, my mother had me tested and second even Stephen Hawking has said pursuing alien contact might be a very bad idea.

In my opinion humanity making first contact with another intelligent species might be the best thing that ever happened to us. It might just be what is needed to make the bulk of our species realize there is more to existence than just our civilization’s perpetual idiotic games of empire building, destroying the environment for a buck, and some nation making an attempt at global domination.

The incident that sticks in my mind though happened to me on was on one of those star gazing nights back in my hometown. It was during one summer night after a particularly bad thunderstorm had knocked out power to the neighborhood. The storm cleared out quickly leaving my backyard almost pitch black and the stars an unimpeded stage. Looking through my granddad’s old army binoculars I had gone into serious geek mode after catching the sight of Jupiter and at least three of its Galilean moons.

My reverie was destroyed when out of nowhere I heard someone shout, “What the Hell are you doing boy?”  Out of the darkness emerged a man I called “Uncle Boo”, he had heard someone talking to themselves and came over to see what sort of fool was outside after a thunderstorm. Uncle Boo literally scared the Hell out of me, it was like he came out of nowhere. Once I explained he went back home and got his own telescope and we spent about an hour looking up at clear night sky before the lights came back on. While these days nighttime illumination prevents me from seeing the stars like I use to but I still look up and like Enrico Fermi, who was one of the smartest men of the twentieth century, wonder where in the Hell everyone is, or if  they are lurking somewhere out in the darkness watching us, or if maybe they are all hiding from something. 

This is for those damn Stay-at-Home shitheads.

Just for poop and giggles, a little good news.

Personally I'm more than sick with the state of the world and the fear we are not only fed on a regular basis but surprisingly wallow in as long as it confirms our worst expectations. Answers abound to the problems we face as long as there is a desire to work towards the goals to solve them but it would help at times to know people all over the world are actually working on them instead of trying to blow something or someone up. But that's the kicker in all this, if you watch the main stream media on a regular basis you get plenty of debate on whether a pig can wear lipstick or if the wearing of an American flag lapel pin signifies whether someone is a true patriot. If that isn't enough journalists on the news channels spend a great deal of time chasing some washed-up pop diva, actor or other celebrity with no describable talent other than a huge family trust fund and a good public relations agent.

Now one thing that would definitely curl my toes would be the opportunity to tell the American oil companies, several members of OPEC, and a few other oil rich countries to take a flying leap into oblivion. So whenever I see anything that pushes us in that direction I feel a little better. Funny, had to find this article from a source outside the United States.

New fuel battery may ditch gasoline for good

LONDON: Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Boston have come up with a new idea of combining electric power with a combustion engine, which they say may enable electric vehicles to store more energy than gasoline in the same volume, and extend their range.

They say that electric power storage that is part battery part chemical fuel cell may ditch gasoline for good.

Stuart Licht, who conceived the new design along with his colleagues at the university, says that it can store energy more densely than petrol.

Much of what we do these days is just trend water and try like hell to keep our credit card financed lifestyles from consuming us like a rabid hungry bear. We usually don't have time to even think about how other people live in parts of the world where the leftover food we regularly send down the garbage disposal would be thought of as a blessing from God. Several times I have half-jokingly written how I don't believe humans are an intelligent species that we can't or won't move to overcome our pre-wired million of years old programming that sees anyone outside our respective nations, tribes, social setting, or religion as evil or corrupted. Happily there are those that give me some hope that humans might indeed be worthy of higher regard.

Meet the New Heroes
What is a hero? The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word as "a person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life."

The heroes you'll meet on these pages and in these films are different from those in the pages of most history books. They are not famous politicians or legendary soldiers — yet they have improved the lives of MILLIONS of people and made the world more secure. Their 'arsenals' are not of weaponry, but of creative ideas, dogged determination and a deep belief in their power to change the world. Also known as "social entrepreneurs," they develop innovations that bring life-changing tools and resources to people desperate for viable solutions.

Please do not get the idea that I think things will all be peaches and cream in the end. Huge forces that inspire to the lower, baser levels of the human mind like greed, the lust for power and control, and envy want things to stay the way they are since any change will not directly benefit them. My main reason for doing this post is just to spread some word that there are some out there working for the betterment of the entire mass of curious hairless primates that can’t seem to pull its collective head out its collective ass. Good night and good luck.

Faith of the Heart

The past few years have been a series of disasters and sorrows that threaten to engulf us all. The chance of peace, liberty, and the general betterment of humanity that appeared at the end of the Cold War has either been squandered by greedy and narrow minded people or given the nature of Homo Sapiens was just a mirage from the start. But still, hope lingers for a better world and can never be quite extinguished. What hope? The hope that at some point all people will realize that we either stand together or will surely fall separately. That liberty and justice denied at the expense of some will in time come to mean liberty and justice denied to all. That enjoying security and prosperity while denying it to others is evil but that wallowing in ignorance and apathy and blaming others for it is just as bad. The hope that at some point the we will realize that the promises offered by those willing only for power and prestige are hollow and that we ourselves are the best agents of change for a better world. That true leadership seeks not to make history but to inspire others to work for a common good. The hope that at some point we will recognize that our differences make us stronger as long as people respect the beliefs of others who disagree with us and hold fast that in the end we all want to see our children grow up in peace.

All that is a tall order with nothing these days appearing to offer any chance of us seeing anything like that soon. But still we have to work toward those goals, hold fast to our courage and desire to see better days and have a little faith of the heart.