One book I think about a lot is Charlotte Beradt's long out-of-print Third Reich of Dreams, which pores over hundreds of dreams she collected during the years 1933-1939 in Germany, mapping the psyche under totalitarianism, and setting out to disprove from the first page its epigraph, an NS-Reichsorganisationsleiter’s musings that "the only person in Germany who still leads a private life is the person who sleeps."
Jan 7, 2022·edited Jan 7, 2022Liked by Eliza Mondegreen
This makes me think of how a fast-paced life and constant engagement with technology impacts our ability to lead inner lives--to have private thoughts, musings, dreams, and to make up our own minds.
The book sounds absolutely fascinating. I wonder, if we collected stories of the dreams dreamt by women in our hyper pornified, misogynistic society what we would see.
I believe that dreams are our brain’s way of trying to make sense of the world and distill our experiences and feelings into a manageable concept.
Yeah, I'd be very curious. Also about dreams girls have around adolescence. I had a recurring nightmare where I'd be running away from something and my body would harden into a statue as I ran...
Also wanted to say it totally made me happy to see you reading and liking my posts and going way back in the archive yesterday!
It's been pointed out before in other fora (just to make it clear that I'm not taking credit for the idea) that we are living in a world ripe for totalitarian control:
Mobile phones that can be tracked down to very specific locations, with microphones that can be accessed remotely without your knowledge, and who you have been with or near;
Cars that report how and where you have been driving;
Cameras in shops, streets, vehicles;
The Internet, where actions, comments, and thoughts going back for years are stored, seemingly never lost;
Financial transactions that are tied to your identity.
Those dreams of inanimate objects speaking against us have become just a thin veil away from reality. The question is when they be used.
It’s actually pretty terrifying when you think about it. Sure it’s neat when the police can use someone’s phone to find a murderer but how long will it be before they use our phones, or that facial recognition software, to track people down for [insert new crime here].
There was a video a few months ago, which was tagged as “humour” where a young woman, walking down the hallway of her dorm, said “Alexa play Yellow Submarine by the Beatles” and one by one “Yellow Submarine” started coming out of everyone’s dorms (the song wasn’t Yellow Submarine, I can’t for the life of me remember what it was). It was eerie and terrifying to me rather than funny. I don’t like the idea of Jeff Bezos’ minions listening to every word I say.
Those totalitarian dreams make me sad, not because they're awful but because I feel like we've lost the ability to have such clear and conscious horror at the daily intrusions into our lives. We live in an era in which total surveillance is arguably more possible -- and closer to reality -- than ever before, but I and everyone else I know sleeps untroubled. Somehow we've eroded our sense that we shouldn't subsume ourselves into the group-mind, or had it eroded for us, and it's been done in such a way that we aren't horrified.
This makes me think of how a fast-paced life and constant engagement with technology impacts our ability to lead inner lives--to have private thoughts, musings, dreams, and to make up our own minds.
The book sounds absolutely fascinating. I wonder, if we collected stories of the dreams dreamt by women in our hyper pornified, misogynistic society what we would see.
I believe that dreams are our brain’s way of trying to make sense of the world and distill our experiences and feelings into a manageable concept.
Yeah, I'd be very curious. Also about dreams girls have around adolescence. I had a recurring nightmare where I'd be running away from something and my body would harden into a statue as I ran...
Also wanted to say it totally made me happy to see you reading and liking my posts and going way back in the archive yesterday!
Eliza, I think have should be having. “Are you have bad dreams, too?” Love this piece and you are my new favorite truth teller. Aleks
Lol, yes, it should be. And thanks!
It's been pointed out before in other fora (just to make it clear that I'm not taking credit for the idea) that we are living in a world ripe for totalitarian control:
Mobile phones that can be tracked down to very specific locations, with microphones that can be accessed remotely without your knowledge, and who you have been with or near;
Cars that report how and where you have been driving;
Cameras in shops, streets, vehicles;
The Internet, where actions, comments, and thoughts going back for years are stored, seemingly never lost;
Financial transactions that are tied to your identity.
Those dreams of inanimate objects speaking against us have become just a thin veil away from reality. The question is when they be used.
It’s actually pretty terrifying when you think about it. Sure it’s neat when the police can use someone’s phone to find a murderer but how long will it be before they use our phones, or that facial recognition software, to track people down for [insert new crime here].
There was a video a few months ago, which was tagged as “humour” where a young woman, walking down the hallway of her dorm, said “Alexa play Yellow Submarine by the Beatles” and one by one “Yellow Submarine” started coming out of everyone’s dorms (the song wasn’t Yellow Submarine, I can’t for the life of me remember what it was). It was eerie and terrifying to me rather than funny. I don’t like the idea of Jeff Bezos’ minions listening to every word I say.
Those totalitarian dreams make me sad, not because they're awful but because I feel like we've lost the ability to have such clear and conscious horror at the daily intrusions into our lives. We live in an era in which total surveillance is arguably more possible -- and closer to reality -- than ever before, but I and everyone else I know sleeps untroubled. Somehow we've eroded our sense that we shouldn't subsume ourselves into the group-mind, or had it eroded for us, and it's been done in such a way that we aren't horrified.