Rarity
| "We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up, sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming." |
| — Ludwig Wittgenstein |
During most dreams, sleepers are not aware that they are dreaming. The reason for this has not been determined, and does not appear to have an obvious answer. There have been attempts by various fields of psychology to provide an explanation. For example, some proponents of depth psychology suggest that mental processes inhibit the critical evaluation of reality within dreams.
Certain physiology studies suggest that "seeing is believing" to the brain during any mental state. If the brain perceives something with great clarity or intensity, it will believe that it is real, even when asleep. Dream consciousness is similar to that of a hallucinating awake subject. Dreams or hallucinatory images triggered by the brain stem are considered to be real, even if fantastic. The impulse to accept the experience as real is so strong the dreamer will often invent a memory or a story to cover up an incongruous or unrealistic event in the dream. For example, "That man has two heads!" is not usually followed with "I must be dreaming!" but with something like "Yes, I read in the paper about these famous Siamese twins." Other times there will be an explanation that, in the dream, makes sense and seems very logical. However, when the dreamer awakes, he/she will realize that it is rather far-fetched or even completely absurd.
Read more about this topic: Lucid Dream
Famous quotes containing the word rarity:
“Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical human forces.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)