11mo ago

How do you tell the difference between dream and reality?

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If you’re talking about lucid dreaming, try looking at your hands or to read some text.
- I can read text in games. But games are dreams. So that's something.
  
  The fuck?
  
  Not OP but games aren't real life, they're often a power fantasy or a simplification of the world.
  If the two categories we're considering are dream or reality, I'd put games into dream.
  I dunno, the comment made perfect sense to me.
  
  Our so called reality contains lots of dream stuff. Movies, stories, abstractions... even science. Some dreams are "mere entertainment". Some are useful (science, abstract description).
  And there are links between sensation and dream. Look at a cat and your brain automatically, with no conscious effort on your part, refers to to the term "cat" and a bundle of associated thoughts.
  So the line between dream and reality is fuzzier then people think.
  
  Most cultural institutions exist in imaginary space but have incredible power over people. The state, god, heirarchy, status, identity. I definitely think the unreal is way more present in our lives than people normally accept.
  
  I'm in art.
  Almost invariably, you show them a piece, they ask "what is it?", "what does it mean?".
  (Sometimes they even want an explanatory essay pinned to the wall next to the frame)
  Because the meaning, the dream-manifestation, is more important to them than the actual experience.
  For most of us, dreams are realer than reality.
  
  the meaning, the dream-manifestation, is more important to them than the actual experience.
  I'm going to be thinking over that for a while.
  Back home I used to go to the annual exhibition of the top high school art students. The explanations were often long-winded, pretentious, not always super coherent. Fair enough I was too in high school. But there was one I loved. It was a very industrial looking metal sculpture of fish skeleton made of rusty engine parts, all teeth and gears. Maybe 3'x3'. The explanation was: "A fish. A big fish. A big scary fish with a motor!"
  
  Entirely a guess, but maybe they're implying they believe dreaming is a simulation in the same way a game is?
  
  Or they meant to say “games aren’t dreams?”
  
  Maybe they're already dreaming.
  
  That's probably more likely.
  
  A game is a guided dream.
  
  I think you and I may have different definitions of the word dream
  
  He means you wouldn't be able to in a dream. Same for counting your fingers, most people end up having more than five when they are dreaming.
  There are things your brain on dreams doesn't do well and you can take advantage of that fact.
  
  If you go down that reasoning road then everything is a dream. You are never not dreaming.

90 comments