305. why we dream, a hypothesis
Other than memory consolidation, it is hypothesized that a large part of why we dream is to work through our daily experiences in a safe environment. Research into this topics suggests that the phase of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) is used by the brain to relive stressful experiences without arousing the hormonal cascade associated with real-life interaction, so that those traumatic moments don’t have a long lasting affect on how we interact with the world. In essence, dreaming strips the emotion away from the memory, providing us with a fresh start to the new day.
This hypothesis arose from studies comparing those with and without PTSD. In those without PTSD, REM dreamstates were reported with a significant reduction in stress-related hormones, whereas people who reported with a history of PTSD were not correlated with a lowering of stress hormones. When most people go to sleep, they dream in a very low stress state, which allows them to work through their stressful experiences over and over until they eventually lose their power to influence their daily lives. This doesn’t happen in those with PTSD because their stress is so high even in dream states that they aren’t able to work through a traumatic experience.
It’s interesting to think about all the adaptive mechanisms the body has. We’ve been dreaming for thousands of years, yet there hasn’t really been a good explanation as to why. As far as I’m concerned, this makes a lot of sense.
167. messages of fear
The voice of the media has usurped science over the past year. There seems to be a concerted effort to take over the global narrative, constructing it in such a way as to limit its authorship to a select few who seek to control the human experience through messages of fear. However, this is nothing new.
Since the Vietnam era we’ve been subjected to a narrative that has amped up fear and danger in the minds of the public. Subsequently, our culture, built upon fear, provides little room for the masses to give a true examination of the motives behind the message we continue to hear.
Without introspection we become susceptible to the “run for your life” narrative being espoused. Fearful, most of us act on those messages with little thought, going along with the directives seen on television or social media. All the while, this focus on keeping us safe has never made us safer, nor healthier, but has seen a creeping degradation of both our civil liberties and overall health.
If anything, COVID has become a supreme example of how the mechanism of fear can be used against a diverse population, to homogenize their diverse backgrounds, ideas, experiences, and belief systems into a narrow response that doesn’t serve our collective wellbeing. At what point do we overcome the fear based narrative and begin to collectively question the system that continues to fail us.
106. answers are meant to be questioned
We’ve been told to “fake it, til we make it,” and in the process have become experts at faking it, all the while distancing ourselves from the ability to tell the difference. Whether it’s due to ego or ignorance, a lot of what we “know” simply isn’t accurate, and the danger is that it often isn’t easy to tell what parts are lacking real evidence. Mastering the art of stating an unfounded opinion as fact, the “experts” are found smiling and bluffing their way through an answer. They rise in the ranks because we value chest thumping and answers, that match our opinion, delivered with conviction over an honest “it depends.” Yet, the majority of us have invested little more than a sound bite worth of time or a few minutes worth of googling in an attempt to become knowledgable on an issue. “In our certainty obsessed public discourse,” As Ozan Varol says in Think Like a Rocket Scientist “we avoid reckoning with nuance” and prefer baffling people with bullshit, instead of realizing that our answers are meant to be questioned. So we march forward pretending to “know“ what we think we know, oblivious to any fact that may contradict our beliefs simply because our discussion is allowed to proceed without a rigorous system for discerning facts from fake news.