Dream Interpretations

Recently, I have been having very strange dreams; my dreams have been so absurd that I have started recording them moments after waking up, before all of the memory is lost. The most farfetched of them all was a dream about the apocalypse, an end to the world in which a group of people were taking over society. These people were dressed in red polo shirts, decorated with a small symbol that I cannot remember. We were given 24 hours to make a decision: live, or die. If we chose to live, we had to abide by the new rules; this option was for everyone who valued the idea of life more than actually living it. The second option, death, was to be executed by a form of radiation delivered in a glass box, where a metal sheet would descend from the top of the glass and zap your forehead, killing you instantly. We were given 24 hours to make a decision, but we had to avoid the red shirts, or we would be dragged to the glass box and forced to make our decision instantly. I remember searching for my family, only to find them with an hour left on the countdown. My father, a man I truly look up to, decided to die; however absurd and frightening that may be, I understood his decision, because who would want to live in a world where you are told how to live? My mother, the kindhearted person she always is, decided to live; she values her life more than how she lives it, even in the present world. I had decided to die, like my father. For some reason, I was separated from my family once more, and was dragged to the glass box by a woman in a red shirt. After exclaiming my choice of death of life, I was placed in the box and the metal sheet came down. I was zapped, but, for some reason, I lived. My memory then skips ahead a little while in to the future, where I eventually find my mother again. When the officials discovered I had lived through the radiation, they let me have another chance to make my decision. Again, I chose to die; again, I lived. At some point I must have found my father, because I was shocked to discover him alive. My father, however, was not the man he used to be. In this new world, he was cold; he ignored my mother and I, without even a head nod of recognition. Later I realized that some people were given the option to live, regardless of whether they had originally chosen to die, and would continue out their lives in splendor, granted they follow a set of rules given to them by the administration. My father was forced to live, but had to deny any relation to my mother and I.

This dream was a very frightening and vivid nightmare, and I have tried to analyze it every day since that night. In Chapter 3.3 of Scientific Perspectives on Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, the second paragraph reads, “Today most scientists view dream interpretation as a pseudoscience that can produce inaccurate and potentially harmful results.” At first, I didn’t understand that line. After relating it back to my dream, however, I have realized just how dangerous these interpretations can be.

See book:  Scientific Perspectives on Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (Chapter 3.3).