The Short Version

Lucid dreaming versus normal dreaming versus everyday reality: Tom Clark has an excellent article on this subject, which I just got around to reading, and it reminded me of a TED talk by David Perry, “Will Videogames Become Better than Life?”

If you’ve read or listened to much of my stuff, you’ll know that one of my major interests is in how the brain constructs our reality, and how understanding that can affect the way we think of ourselves and who we are. Tom’s piece fits right into that interest and brings in the dimension of lucid dreaming that I haven’t talked about. Anything that erodes our conventional, erroneous view of human reality is right up my alley of course, and Tom fleshes out this idea in his usual clear and engrossing way. I highly recommend reading the piece. He includes other references that are also well worth pursuing.

Here is a teaser that states my main focus:

“As people learn about lucid dreaming, an interesting fact about the brain will become known: it is a virtual reality generator. But an even more remarkable fact is waiting in the wings: waking experience is virtual reality too.”

The Perry talk brings in still another point of view: the reality of video games versus the reality of real life. I wrote a comment on it for the TED site which I’ll reproduce here with additional comments. Some of the ideas are borrowed from Tom Clark’s article and his references:

Video games are not the only source of virtual reality in town. As Highland said in the video Perry showed, a good insurance commercial can create experience real enough to bring tears to those of us who become easily immersed. The same is true of books and movies.

The difference between these kinds of virtual reality and physical reality is that we can step away from the video game, movie, or book, and become aware of the technology that produced the experience. It is impossible, however, to step away from the brain, which is the technology producing our experience of “physical” reality. All our experience happens in the brain, and the only difference in the varieties of experience is the kind of technology that provides the brain with it’s material–books, TV, movies, video games, or none of the above.

Some people can read a book and maintain awareness of the author’s style, intent, vocabulary, etc., while they’re reading, and some people can watch movies or play video games with a similar level of awareness of the technology that’s controlling their sensory inputs. It is more difficult to experience dreaming or ordinary waking reality with the same level of awareness of how the brain is translating its inputs into a model of the outside world. 

Our experience of the physical world is as virtual as anything else, except for the kinds of constraints involved. In a novel, we’re constrained by the author’s skill and our own past experience–the emotional and physical repertoire we bring to the book. We’re constrained by the technology and programming of the video game and movie as well. In our everyday virtual experience, we’re constrained by the limitations of our sensory apparatus, and by the stimuli the physical world gives our brains to work with–we can’t see magnetic fields; we can’t see through walls.

Although we can never experience reality directly, we can become more aware of the technology that produces the virtual reality that we live in–our brain. We can become more aware of its limitations–optical illusions can baffle it–and we can become more aware of how our history has programmed our brains. Our parents, schools, friends, culture, etc. have instilled ideas about what is real and important. The sciences of sociology, psychology, and neurology can  help us gain perspective on the forces that have produced our current reality, and offer ways of enlarging on prior programming.

Tom Clark brings up an extreme version of seeing through the mechanisms of our brain’s reality models, the example of Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in protest of the Vietnam War:

“Possibly their monastic training had permitted them to attain the direct realization that waking experience, in particular the experience of self, is indeed a construction, such that they were no longer controlled by pain or the thought of death. Perhaps they had awoken, at least to some degree, from the “dream” of the waking virtual world.”

I have no interest in being capable of self-immolation, but I do make an ongoing attempt to be aware, from moment to moment, of the brain processes producing my experience. I would like for my everyday experience to be lucid in the way that dreams can be; to be aware, as it happens, that my experience of reality, including my self, is virtual. 

Techno-Dream

	Enter your search terms
	Web www.rentine.com Submit search form

“If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

That’s from Rudyard Kipling’s poem about the first world war, quoted by Roger Cohen in a great column in today’s New York Times. If you look at how we got into the war in Iraq, you’ll see that things haven’t changed much in the last century.

In another of Kipling’s poems from the same period, we see that the origins of financial crises haven’t changed much either:

“In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul:”

Cohen’s theme is the difference between reality on the one hand, and fiction, fantasy, and wishful thinking on the other. When we lose sight of reality, the result is mayhem and suffering of one kind or another. He concludes the piece with a call for realists in the White House. 

I’d like to add that an increase in the number of realists in the general population is not a bad idea either, and for proof of that–if you need any–you should certainly see Bill Maher in “Religulous”. (A great interview with Maher and the director, Larry Charles, is here.)

In spite of Maher’s wonderful sense of humor, I didn’t find myself laughing much. The extent of fantasy, fiction, and wishful thinking in most religions has too many unfortunate consequences for levity, and trying to show believers how out of touch with reality they are is a hopeless task, as Maher’s efforts in that direction demonstrate. His only offer of hope is that, in this country, there are 16 million people who are non-religious, and given the success of other, much smaller minorities in securing their rights, there is reason to think that non-believers might advance their own rights as well–if they got organized.

One of the major difficulties in short-circuiting the deleterious consequences of religion was illustrated in an interview with two young former Mormon’s who fully appreciated the fantasy elements of that religion. When Maher asked why more Mormons didn’t reject these fanciful beliefs, the answer was that to do so was social suicide: rejection by family, friends, and community. 

Therein lies a great difficulty in trying to inject reality into any religion. Renouncing the religion you were raised in often means a loss of social identity, as well as the personal sense of who you are, and that is a difficult prospect to face unless life has prepared you for it. Perhaps our greatest cause for hope is that the march of science and technology will prepare people for this transition to a new identity; educate them in ways of thinking critically, with a greater respect for the constraints of reality. 

Science implies the connectedness of everything, although unfortunately that connectedness is not emphasized as often as it could be. In our interdependence with everything else through the dynamic processes that move the universe, it is possible to forge a vision of ourselves, an identity, that unites all of humankind rather than dividing us into opposing sects as religions do. 

Tom Clark does a great job of presenting that kind of reality-based view of ourselves and of our relationships with each other and the encompassing universe. Here is his introduction to a wealth of resources on the subject:

“Although naturalism may at first seem an unlikely basis for spirituality, a naturalistic vision of ourselves and the world can inspire and inform spiritual experience.  Naturalism understands such experience as psychological states constituted by the activity of our brains, but this doesn’t lessen the appeal of such experience, or render it less profound.  Appreciating the fact of our complete inclusion in nature can generate feelings of connection and meaning that rival those offered by traditional religions, and those feelings reflect the empirical reality of our being at home in the cosmos.” 

Among those resources are several that refer to Buddhism or enlightenment, which points up Buddhism’s lack of supernatural fantasies compared to most other organized religions. Perhaps that and the fact that Buddhists are not advocating anyone’s annihilation are why Maher’s film makes no reference to them.

Science, technology, education, and communication–more of these could diminish the fictions, fantasies, and wishful thinking that lead to wars and financial crises. 

A Real Beauty

	Enter your search terms
	Web www.rentine.com Submit search form