Inception and Thoughts About Dreams
When the movie Inception came out, there was a lot of chatter about it. But most of it seemed to me to be of the "Wasn't that cool?" type. I didn't encounter much discussion about the actual concepts in the movie (but then, I also didn't go looking very far for such).
Extracting information from dreams is of course an ancient practice. Interpretation of dreams has been with us for as long as we've told stories. In the Bible, in Genesis, Joseph gets in and out of trouble because of his skill at interpreting dreams.
The idea of introducing concepts to our dreams is less developed in Western society. But it too is done, for our brains are rather flexible organs, flexible and responsive.
I've long been intrigued by how our brain functions, and that includes what our brain is doing when we dream. It has been determined that much of our dreaming is just the brain sorting through recent impressions. Or even older things.
When I was growing up, I would occassionally have a very disturbing dream. I would classify it as a nightmare, but really it was more disturbing than frightening. The key thing about this dream was that it was particularly visual. There was a sense of reddishness that would melt into darkness and then back. But what affected me more was the auditory and tactile sensations of the dream. Sounds would alternate between very odd impressions -- as if someone was whispering but I was hearing it as if it were shouting and then shifting into sounding like someone was shouting, but it was very far away and tiny. Coupled with that was a tactile sense, as if I held tiny grains of sand between my fingers but they felt huge, and then having large things in my hand but they slid away like sand pouring away. Especially when I was quite young, the distortions disturbed me so much I would wake up. But my explanations of why seemed to make no sense to the adults.
One day in my teens, on an afternoon at camp on the beack, I was relaxing on my towel on the sand, idly letting sand run through my fingers. Which called up memories of that dream. As I considered the aspects of the dream while playing with the sand, it occured to me that the sensations of the dream would be what it would be like to experience as the baby the contractions of birth delivery. Once that thought occured to me, I could feel my brain going "Ah ha! That's what that piece of sensory data is! Now I know where to put it!"
I never had that dream again after that.
Sorting.
But I also think that the brain uses dreams to have the subconscious tell things to the conscious brain: issues we need to deal with, things we've been thinking about that are becoming important to us. These are the dreams that we know are "important" when we wake up, even if we are not certain how to interpret the imagery.
Knowing these two aspects of dreaming leads me to regard the story in Inception as "mere science fiction" in, yes, the derogatory sense. Because I don't think it can be done, the invasion of other psyches into our dreams in such a fashion that we do not know outsiders have come in. But that is because I beleive I have experienced that as well in dreams.
To establish that statement, I have to say, yes, I believe in a spiritual dimension (of which we do take part) that is inhabited by spiritual entities including what we would call angels and demons. Let's not get into worrying about their visual depictions. I'll just say that I have experienced a discernable difference between benign entities and hostile ones, and this while awake.
Having experienced these presences while awake, I could identify them in dreams. Several years ago I had a series of three dreams that were nightmare edged, and I could tell they were different from bad dreams drawn from my own psyche and subconscious. Something alien had come in and tried to frighten and alarm me. My own spiritual defenses were strong enough to rebuff the "attacks." But when I woke, I did some serious evaluation of the dreams -- because I did want to be sure they were not from my subconscious.
Having gone through those particular dreams, I think our brains, even when dreaming, would indeed know when outsiders are invading our dreams in the way depicted by the movie. Oh, we might go along with the dream construct, but I think we would still know. If we're going to talk dream movies, I think Dreamscape depicts something closer to what interactive / shared dreaming would be like: we would know, but go along with the interaction.
Because of all these personal considerations about the nature of dreaming, I didn't in the end, find anything particularly deep about Inception.
The film did however, send me off on a trail of word questing, just from its title.
"Inception," the act or process or instance of beginning, a commencement. It's a Latin based word, using the prefix in- and the verb capere, which means "to take." So, using that, "inception" would be to take inside.
Continuing with related terms, based on their Latin origins, that led to "deception," to take down from or opposite from something. So, we're trying to take or lead someone away from a focus when we decieve. Hmmm. "Reception" means to come into possession of something -- are we taking it back (re-)? How about "exception"? We're taking that out. "Conception" (and the related "misconception") would be to take something with someone; the English meaning is to cause to begin, whether it's a thought or a baby. "Perception," to observe thoroughly, takes some thought (now, I'm playing). But it should be a "precept" for us that we take thought before we get into "interception," to take among or between. We could seize upon these things.
What has all this word play to do with the movie? Just that I recognize aspects of each word in the story -- or at least attempts to include each. I'm not going to fault the attempt in the writing, I just don't think it all succeeded. Perhaps I should just say that my reception of the film's intention wasn't all the filmmakers desired.
Extracting information from dreams is of course an ancient practice. Interpretation of dreams has been with us for as long as we've told stories. In the Bible, in Genesis, Joseph gets in and out of trouble because of his skill at interpreting dreams.
The idea of introducing concepts to our dreams is less developed in Western society. But it too is done, for our brains are rather flexible organs, flexible and responsive.
I've long been intrigued by how our brain functions, and that includes what our brain is doing when we dream. It has been determined that much of our dreaming is just the brain sorting through recent impressions. Or even older things.
When I was growing up, I would occassionally have a very disturbing dream. I would classify it as a nightmare, but really it was more disturbing than frightening. The key thing about this dream was that it was particularly visual. There was a sense of reddishness that would melt into darkness and then back. But what affected me more was the auditory and tactile sensations of the dream. Sounds would alternate between very odd impressions -- as if someone was whispering but I was hearing it as if it were shouting and then shifting into sounding like someone was shouting, but it was very far away and tiny. Coupled with that was a tactile sense, as if I held tiny grains of sand between my fingers but they felt huge, and then having large things in my hand but they slid away like sand pouring away. Especially when I was quite young, the distortions disturbed me so much I would wake up. But my explanations of why seemed to make no sense to the adults.
One day in my teens, on an afternoon at camp on the beack, I was relaxing on my towel on the sand, idly letting sand run through my fingers. Which called up memories of that dream. As I considered the aspects of the dream while playing with the sand, it occured to me that the sensations of the dream would be what it would be like to experience as the baby the contractions of birth delivery. Once that thought occured to me, I could feel my brain going "Ah ha! That's what that piece of sensory data is! Now I know where to put it!"
I never had that dream again after that.
Sorting.
But I also think that the brain uses dreams to have the subconscious tell things to the conscious brain: issues we need to deal with, things we've been thinking about that are becoming important to us. These are the dreams that we know are "important" when we wake up, even if we are not certain how to interpret the imagery.
Knowing these two aspects of dreaming leads me to regard the story in Inception as "mere science fiction" in, yes, the derogatory sense. Because I don't think it can be done, the invasion of other psyches into our dreams in such a fashion that we do not know outsiders have come in. But that is because I beleive I have experienced that as well in dreams.
To establish that statement, I have to say, yes, I believe in a spiritual dimension (of which we do take part) that is inhabited by spiritual entities including what we would call angels and demons. Let's not get into worrying about their visual depictions. I'll just say that I have experienced a discernable difference between benign entities and hostile ones, and this while awake.
Having experienced these presences while awake, I could identify them in dreams. Several years ago I had a series of three dreams that were nightmare edged, and I could tell they were different from bad dreams drawn from my own psyche and subconscious. Something alien had come in and tried to frighten and alarm me. My own spiritual defenses were strong enough to rebuff the "attacks." But when I woke, I did some serious evaluation of the dreams -- because I did want to be sure they were not from my subconscious.
Having gone through those particular dreams, I think our brains, even when dreaming, would indeed know when outsiders are invading our dreams in the way depicted by the movie. Oh, we might go along with the dream construct, but I think we would still know. If we're going to talk dream movies, I think Dreamscape depicts something closer to what interactive / shared dreaming would be like: we would know, but go along with the interaction.
Because of all these personal considerations about the nature of dreaming, I didn't in the end, find anything particularly deep about Inception.
The film did however, send me off on a trail of word questing, just from its title.
"Inception," the act or process or instance of beginning, a commencement. It's a Latin based word, using the prefix in- and the verb capere, which means "to take." So, using that, "inception" would be to take inside.
Continuing with related terms, based on their Latin origins, that led to "deception," to take down from or opposite from something. So, we're trying to take or lead someone away from a focus when we decieve. Hmmm. "Reception" means to come into possession of something -- are we taking it back (re-)? How about "exception"? We're taking that out. "Conception" (and the related "misconception") would be to take something with someone; the English meaning is to cause to begin, whether it's a thought or a baby. "Perception," to observe thoroughly, takes some thought (now, I'm playing). But it should be a "precept" for us that we take thought before we get into "interception," to take among or between. We could seize upon these things.
What has all this word play to do with the movie? Just that I recognize aspects of each word in the story -- or at least attempts to include each. I'm not going to fault the attempt in the writing, I just don't think it all succeeded. Perhaps I should just say that my reception of the film's intention wasn't all the filmmakers desired.