Saturday, April 9, 2011

Dreams and evil.

Last night I've had this horrible dream. I rarely have nightmares in general and even if so it's usually caused by oral exams in French that people prepare for for 6 months and I start studying a night before or half a gallon of chocolate ice cream. These days however I try to moderate my chocolate ice cream intake (really, one third of a gallon is a maximum) so I was perfectly surprised by the striking occurrence of this dream. It's not even important what it was about, it was like a mixture of The Shining and my first days at work plus dead chickens hanging from the ceiling. There were also some normal bits and this was the weirdest. Why?

You know, in some books or movies when a character realizes that some events are just a bad dream and he/she decides to wake up, usually using some hypnotizing mantra like "it's just a dream, pinch your arm and everything will be alright". It's never that way in real life! I always tell myself that when I'm asleep I'll try to wake myself up on purpose, or just being aware of the fact that I'm asleep - do things I wouldn't normally do. Like jump from the roof of a 10-story building. Cause it's not like I would die anyway, right? But I never realize that a dream is a dream and live it like it was reality (only slightly crazier).

However this time it was different. From the very beginning I was perfectly aware that it was a dream. I wasn't scared of the things that were going on, I just kept on saying things like "Guys, come on, unnecessary blood spill is unnecessary! I've stained my pajama!" I think that at one point I decided to profit from this dream and started doing those things I would never ever do in real life, being aware that it's just a dream and no one would mind since no one here really exists. I'm not talking about jumping without fear of breaking your backbone or being inappropriate (well...). I'm talking about being literally mean to other people. Of using them. Of utilitarianism.

I think that when I figured out that I was the only one there to really be I started perceiving people around differently. Suddenly it was okay to disdain, to command, to perform physical hurt or even sentence to death. Those people looked like people, acted like people, they seemed to have a lot more that just a body - they thought and they were scared. Only the assumption that my world was real and theirs was just an image in my head permitted me to think that they were mine, that they belonged to me. I was sure that everything was just happening in my head, that I could do everything I fancied with people, just for my own pleasure or benefit.

And I am thinking, in a situation where we're not limited by social position or we don't care what others will think about us, do we let our real selves show? Is someone who would keep his moral code in a situation of un unlimited power what we call a good person then? Would more humane of a behavior prove the real value of someone? Or maybe the internal triggers towards evil are just a natural thing?

And another side of the story... I wonder if people who reigned thanks to terror and unlimited power thought the world the image in their own heads. Did they perceive themselves as the creators, a crucial component of this machine? If so, I think I can finally understand fascism.

I wanted to write this post as an anecdote of a "guess my dream last night" kind but it made me a bit depressed. So on a more positive note:

Song of the day:  Hey Jude - The Beatles

No comments:

Post a Comment