The thing with feathers

 A few weeks back, there were plenty of things I wanted to post about. The (now successful) UAW strike. A major win on child nutrition.  But after the terrible events of the last month, they seemed out of place and tone deaf and I couldn't think of any appropriate thing to say. 

A saying of the Buddha's kept running through my mind: "Better than a thousand empty words is one word that brings peace." Since the market seemed pretty saturated with empty words I paused.

Then I had a dream. 

Although the latest scientific research seems to suggest that dreams are the brain's way of processing memory and recent events, and some are clearly just plain static, I still think they can often bring deep insights from the unconscious. There's a reason that meaningful dreams occur throughout the Bible and many other sources, myths, and legends.

I don't go all the way with Freud or Jung...but I do go a good bit with both. This dream seemed to have something to say about the state of the world and I've shared it with several people.

It went like this:

I was in a city at war with a real life friend and comrade. No other context given. In the waking world, several years previously we were part of a delegation to the West Bank and Gaza that left a huge impression on us both. In the dream, we were part of the underground resistance to an unnamed invader.

In the beginning, we were running through battered streets, trying to avoid being killed or captured, we passed a beautiful bird that appeared to have been damaged by a vehicle crash or explosion. It seemed to be dead or dying. Since we were being pursued, we didn't have time to stop. Besides, we didn't know what else to do aside from making sure it was out of its misery.

After a number of encounters, we ran back the way we had come. To our surprise, the bird was on its feet and starting to flap it's wings. We looked at each other and said something like, "Holy ****, the bird might actually recover!"

I woke up and immediately this well knwon poem by Emily Dickinson came to mind: 

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

My takeaway: the thing with feathers really might recover. 

 

The dream cure

Healing temple of Asclepius at Kos, by way of wikipedia

The ancient Greeks had some interesting ideas about healing illnesses. One of these was the custom of using dreams to find cures. It worked like this: the patient would visit  and sleep in an Asclepeion or temple dedicated to the semi-divine physician Asclepius, son of the Apollo. The dreams of the patient would be used as the basis of the treatment.

I've always been interested in dreams and tried to pay attention to them. Sometimes they're just static, sometimes funny or scary, sometimes transparent wish fulfillment a la Freud. But sometimes, as Freud's renegade disciple Carl Jung argued, they're very deep. They can represent the insights of our unconscious mind, the oldest and biggest part of our mental apparatus.

I had a pretty good one last night that speaks to our current situation. In it, I was working to repair the roof of a house pretty far from the ground, something I'd never be able to pull off in real life. The slope of the roof was steep and I was in danger of falling off.

It occurred to me that I needed some kind of supporting connection, like a rope tied to something secure to keep from going over the edge. There were images of different kinds of knots--bowlines, square knots, slipknots and others I've long since forgotten from my volunteer firefighting and scouting days. Obviously, the knots and connections represented relations with others.

I think that's a pretty good metaphor for the social connections we need during this outbreak to keep from going over the edge, even if they involve social distancing or occur over long distances. Even if they're just remembered.

I'll take that. Thanks, Asclepius!

Camino dreams

It's kind of hard for me to fathom that less than two weeks ago I was slogging along on the last legs of my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago Compostela in Spain. To be specific, I was slogging back towards Santiago on a rainy and chilly day after walking to "the ends of the earth" at Finisterre and Muxia.

I think it's literally the case that I've dreamed about the Camino, more or less realistically, every night since returning. One dream involved laying out extensions of the path to the frozen north. Another involved walking endlessly uphill towards a destination on it...wait a minute...that could be a memory not a dream.

Anyhow, by coincidence, NPR ran a feature about the Camino this past weekend (thanks to a friend for the heads up).

I'm still trying to consciously process what that 640 mile trek meant to me--and it looks like my unconscious mind is doing the same.

Looking back, I kind of wish I was more grateful and less grumpy some days. On the other hand, that evil water bird backpack/torture device was really nasty. And those endless hills...

Good though.

Restraining hands... or paws

Since the passing of Arpad the Magnificent this summer (pictured above), predators have already started moving in. A couple nights ago, we were awakened when an unknown critter attacked Pearl, our aging peahen. Last night she disappeared. This would have been unthinkable in Arpad's heyday.

It makes me think that all our lives would be a lot less safe without the often unseen restraining hands (or paws) of those who, without fanfare, keep things from being as bad as they could be.

I've more than once quoted the last lines of George Eliot's (Mary Anne Evans) Middlemarch here:

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

(Note: not all of the good guys who faithfully lived a hidden life were as glorious or beautiful as Arpad. They probably didn't bark as much at night either. Come to think of it, I visited Arpad's tomb tonight and poured him a libation of goat milk. But the point remains I think.)

OFF TOPIC. Here's a final digression of grieving for a dog. After he died, I dreamed that I climbed a mountain and looked down. There was Arpad and some other dogs I knew who had passed running around and having a great time. I tried to climb over the mountain to them but it was too steep and I couldn't cross the line.

I think that may have been a classic Freudian albeit nonsexual wish fulfillment dream of good dogs living forever. I wish it was real. Or that, in the Buddhist spirit, Arpad had been reborn in the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, where he could work towards ultimate Nirvana under the most favorable circumstances. Or that I could ever be as cool as he was.

The young and the (really) restless

Lots of young people have Bernie Sander's back. Photo taken at his Huntington WV visit.

Vermont senator and US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visited Huntington WV yesterday. The Spousal Unit and I went to check out the scene (at which a certain unnamed person repeatedly boasted of her Vermont origins). The thing that struck me was what I've heard about all over the country: his appeal to young people.

The line to get into the Huntington civic center went on and on--some might even say it was YUGE-- and it was full of young people in one of the oldest states. I was amazed that I recognized so few people, although I guess you'll have that when 6,400 or so show up. We talked to some of them and were amazed by their enthusiasm and awareness.

On reflection, it's probably no wonder. This demographic group has been treated as a throwaway generation with throwaway jobs and many of those lucky enough to get a higher education are saddled with debt which they won't be able to throw away. Still, it was a surprise to see this article, which says that a majority of Americans between 18 and 29 are not fans of capitalism.

Of course, capitalism, which has been around for a few hundred years, has taken many forms in different times and places and still does today. But it probably is safe to say the the latest version of it around here hasn't done them a lot of favors.

They definitely have a dream. I wonder whether and to what extent it will be deferred. In any case, there is a YUGE amount of energy for change out there if a way can be figured out how to channel it.

A strong dream

I had a great conversation this weekend with a co-worker about dreams. We both agreed that some dreams are just like mental static, as in maybe the brain doing its filing or routine paperwork. Other dreams, however, knock us on our butts and speak from a very deep level.

My friend, a real lover of peace, had a dream that told her that working for justice where we live really is like being in a war, even though we don't hurt anybody. I totally agree.

My dream went in a different direction. It went something like this: as a practical joke, I and several other people convinced someone as that they needed to go through an elaborate ritual that we just made up. The person agreed in good faith and those of us in on the joke pretended to carry it out, even though we laughed so hard that we fell down at times.

At some point, though, I realized that however absurd the ritual we concocted was, the person in question took it seriously and really needed it and derived some real benefit from it. So I knew we had to stop laughing and carry out the ritual (the nature of which escapes me) as if it was real with all the dignity we could.

I guess the take home message from that one is that even though some things people believe seem like nuts to me, I need to realize that they need them and derive some benefit from them.

Insist on yourself

For a good little stretch the theme a Goat Rope has been the life and thought of 19th century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here's one last bit of advice from his signature essay Self Reliance:

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?  Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare  Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

JUST DO IT. Yesterday, nearly 200 West Virginians gathered to urge Governor Tomblin to expand Medicaid coverage to low wage workers.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's Krugman on the same topic.

PERCHANCE TO DREAM. Scientists are making progress at decoding dreams. Where will this end?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Feverish dreams

Sustained high fevers do strange things to the brain. My body has been cooking itself for most of the last week and my dreams are random thoughts are becoming really elaborate.

In fact, one myth/parable/koan came to me in sleep or somewhere between waking and sleep fully formed It went like this:

There is a special rosary or mala (as the Buddhists call them) which has the powers to convey benefits on those who recite prayers or mantras with sincerity. However, the mala will only work its magic if it had the precisely correct number of beads. Any more or less and it would have no effect.

In addition, a charm had been placed on it from the beginning that kept anyone from counting the number of beads. Before one made the full circuit, one would always loose count.

As soon as I confronted this image, it occurred to me that the only thing to do was to use it in all sincerity as if one was certain it was the real thing (provided you didn't neglect ordinary means).. I think it might be this fever's version of Pascal's wager or even a tribute to the placebo effect. Or it could be an uncharacteristic call to faith in the face of doubt.

That's what the virus said anyway.

I'm too busy cooking myself to look for links.

I have, however, managed to continue trolling, which lifts my spirits immensely, about which more later.

The power on the page

Juno is a serious reader.

On my current pile of books lately is a gift from a friend titled A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel. It's a pretty wide ranging tome, interspersed with quotes from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

While reading it, I stumbled on some eloquent lines about the power of literature to help people deal with life and all its injustices and challenges. Here goes:

There may be no poem, however powerful, that can remove one ounce of pain or transform a single moment of injustice. But there may be no poem, however poorly written, that may not contain, for its secret and elected reader, a consolation, a call to arms, a glimmer of happiness, an epiphany. Something there is in the modest page that, mysteriously and unexpectedly, allows us, not wisdom, but the possibility of wisdom, caught between the experience of everyday life and the experience of literary reality.

Him write pretty but me think him right.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. I've blogged a lot this summer about the need for Congress and the Senate in particular to pass some additional fiscal relief to the states. Yesterday, the measure finally passed with a vote of 61-38. The House will be called back into session probably next week to finalize the bill.

The downside, as I mentioned yesterday, is that the package includes a rollback of expanded food stamp or SNAP benefits from the Recovery Act which will take place in 2014. But we can fight that one out another day.

ANOTHER UNLIKELY AGREEMENT. Things are really getting weird. Now I'm agreeing with former Reagan budget director David Stockman on letting Bush era tax cuts expire.

UPPER BIG BRANCH UPDATE. Here's an interesting item from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo about the latest twist in the investigation. This item from AOL News suggests that Massey's aggressive defense tactics have not been too well received.

DREAM ON. We all do it. But should we try to manipulate our dreams?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lions and tigers and...

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

...bears--oh my! El Cabrero is not an overly superstitious person (aside from spilling salt, not rocking a chair with nobody sitting in it, knocking on wood, etc.). However, in the event that anything really weird happens around here involving our ursine friends, here are three odd things that have happened lately:

1. I had a dream about seeing a bear on a hill near the pond on Goat Rope Farm;

2. My daughter had a dream about a massive bear attack on the farm a week later; and

3. The next day, she read in a post on this blog that a neighbor told us he saw a bear on our road in the middle of the night.

(The record should also state that said daughter, La Cabrita, has all kinds of delusions about bears as incredibly malevolent creatures who plot at every opportunity to do harm to humankind. A Freudian might say bears in this case represent repressed aspects of the unconscious.)

My theory is that bears are pretty harmless creatures who couldn't be much worse than some of the dogs on this hollow--including ours.

But if anything really bearish happens around here, then yes, Virginia, there is a Twilight Zone.

VETERAN'S DAY. Here's a civilian salute to the veterans of past and present wars. And here's hoping there will be fewer veterans who have to serve in combat in the future.

HOW BAD IS IT? Here's an article about the collateral damage of the current recession, including an increase in suicides.

THE LABOR MOVEMENT is becoming more diverse, according to a new report. Women are getting closer to outnumbering men.

LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN. WV coal industry leaders and elected officials met yesterday about concerns of increased regulation of mining from the Obama administration. This could mark the beginning of another ruling class hissy fit.

PERCHANCE TO DREAM. Some researchers believe that dreaming is less a psychological event than the brain warming itself up for daily life.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Information and improvement

This conversation improved and entertained both participants (although the one on the right has since shuffled off this mortal coil).

Goat Rope has recently been spending time in the company of Benjamin Franklin. Well, actually with his autobiography, but you get the idea.

Franklin achieved remarkable success in many of his endeavors thanks in no small measure to his skill in dealing with other people. As noted in yesterday's post, he made it a habit to avoid not only arguing with and directly contradicting others but also to state his own views in a modest and unassuming way.

If, as he believed, conversation is about informing others and being informed in turn and pleasing and being pleased by others, then stating opinions in a dogmatic way tends to shut things down. He said,

For, if you wish to inform, a positive and dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may provoke contradiction and prevent a candid attention. If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modes, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or to persuade those whose concurrence you desire. Pope says, judiciously:

Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot...

Many years before Franklin, Lao Tzu put it like this:

A good soldier is not violent.
A good fighter is not angry.
A good winner is not vengeful.
A good employer is humble.
This is known as the Virtue of not striving.
This is known as ability to deal with people.
This since ancient times has been known
as the ultimate unity with heaven.

GOT THE DIPLOMA. NOW WHAT? This isn't the best of years, economically speaking, to graduate from college.

HUNGRY COUNTRY. The nation's food banks may need a bailout if things continue as

DREAM ON. Research suggests that people interpret their dreams selectively.

RELIGION ON THE BRAIN. Adaptation or accident?

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. Blenko Glass plans to resume limited production after closing earlier this year.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Dream weaver, Penelope, the bailout and more

Along with links and comments about current events, Goat Rope is winding down a long series on the Odyssey of Homer. Much of the series has focused on the misadventures of Odysseus' homecoming and how these shed light both on ordinary life and particularly on veterans coming home from war.

One character who has not received her due here has been the faithful wife Penelope, who in her own was was as crafty as her husband. Incidentally, Margaret Atwood wrote The Penelopiad to tell the whole story from her point of view.

With Odysseus gone and presumed dead, her status was unclear. There was little or now place in that society for an independent woman of child-bearing years. Now that her son Telemachus is coming of age, she is under enormous pressure to remarry. Over 100 suitors are basically camped out at her home and are devouring the family's estate. They even plot the murder of Telemachus.

To gain time, she says she must complete her duties by weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus' father Laertes, which she secretly unravels at night until her secret is revealed by a treacherous maid.

In the epic cycle, she is seen as the ideal wife, in direct contrast to Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon who murders her husband on his homecoming to revenge his sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia (although there are many here among us who would say Agamemnon had it coming).

My favorite scene with Penelope in the Odyssey is her discussion of the nature of dreams. As you may have noticed, some dreams make sense and some don't. Here's her explanation:

"Ah my friend," seasoned Penelope dissented,
"dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things--
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass...
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them..."

The problem is it's kind of hard to tell true dreams and false ones apart sometimes, whether we're awake or asleep.

WELFARE FOR WALL STREET UPDATE. The House is likely to vote today on the Wall Street bailout. Here's an action alert and analysis from the American Friends Service Committee.

SCAPEGOAT. Right wingers are trying to blame the Community Reinvestment Act (and minorities) for the Wall Street meltdown. That would be another dog that don't hunt.

URBAN PLOWBOY. Here's an interesting item on the future of urban farming.

SCORE ONE FOR SIGMUND. A new medical study finds that old school psychodynamic therapy works as well as other treatments for certain mental disorders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: WHO KNOWS?

Strapped to the mast, the siren song of the Wall Street bailout, and more

"Ulysses and the Sirens" by John William Waterhouse, courtesy of wikipedia.

"Siren" is a word that entered the English language from the Odyssey although the contrast between the real ones and the mythological ones is pretty stark. Sirens on emergency vehicles and loud and aversive, nothing that most people would like to listen to day in and day out.

The mythological sirens are mysterious female beings whose beautiful singing lures sailors to certain death. Their song is irresistible.

Odysseus, forewarned by the goddess Circe, puts beeswax in the ears of his men but is--of course--too driven by curiosity to miss out. He has his men tie him to the mast with strict orders to ignore his entreaties to let him go.

This is a great image. I've always found it compelling and have been in situations where I hear things that are tempting and distracting but have to focus on the task at hand or the journey home. It's a kind of universal thing. But, as with many places in the Odyssey, the danger of the sirens has a special meaning for a combat veteran like Odysseus trying to get home.

What did they sing? Here goes:

"Come closer, famous Odysseus--Achaea's pride and glory--
moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song!
Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft
until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips,
and once he hears to his heart's content sails on, a wiser man."

Of course they are lying. But what makes them so dangerous is their subject:

"...We know all the pains that Achaeans and Trojans once endured
on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so--
all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!"

The danger they represent is the danger of getting stuck in the past, of going over the scenes of war over and over again, of obsessing over what "really" happened, of missing out on the present. As Jonathan Shay puts it

The "voice" of the Sirens, scholars tell us, is the "voice" of the Iliad, the voice of a wartime past experienced as more real and meaningful than the present.

If Odysseus is going to make it home, he as to put the drive for kleos or glory behind him. (Note: kleos specifically means living in such a way as to be remembered in song after one dies.) This was also the theme of his encounter with the ghost of Achilles in the underworld in last Friday's post. Part of what he has to put behind him is the romantization of death and war as something romantic and glorious.

Next time: Scylla and Charybdis.

SPEAKING OF SIRENS--the US Congress would do well not to listen to the Bush Wall Street bailout plan/siren song. Short version:

*No blank-check bailout for Wall Street. Any plan to save the economy must put Main Street first.

*Congress should not blindly rush to pass bad legislation. They should take their time and get it right – even if it means a delay in adjournment.

*Putting Main Street first means, at a minimum: a) much more oversight, control over and regulation of financial institutions; b) limitations on CEO compensation; c) an economic recovery package to get the economy moving again; d) provisions to protect people facing foreclosures.

By the way,here's Dean Baker on the elements of a progressive response.

THIS WOULD NOT BE COOL. LITERALLY. Abrupt climate change is a distinct possibility.

MISMEASUREMENT. This Boston Globe commentary highlights the obsolete official federal poverty measure. This might be good to update since it looks like lots of us are going to get poorer unless things change.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, pleasant smells can make for pleasant dreams.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DREAM ON

A good dream can help you get out of--or into--the woods.

The theme at Goat Rope this week has been dreams. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts. There's also stuff on current events.

To wrap up, I'm going to lay out El Cabrero's theory of dreams. Here goes...

First, I have no idea what dreams really are or even whether they are things we experience in sleep or construct when we wake up. However, I do think they provide a viewpoint from another part of ourselves. Our minds and brains are bigger, wiser and weirder than we often think they are. They work even when we're not aware of it. Sometimes a dream teach you a lot about what's doing on inside or even outside.

Second, not all dreams are created equal. Some just seem to be random static. Others evaporate like dew. Some are obvious examples of wishes, like dreaming you've already gotten up so you can sleep a little longer. But some dreams are strong and may be worth attention.

When I have a strong dream, I try hard to remember it before it disappears. Sometimes I write them down. Then I ponder the story. As Freud and others suggested, sometimes it's good to break them down into component parts and see what thoughts or feelings are associated with them to try to find the latent dream thoughts.

Some of the best advice I've ever got came to me in dreams. Here are some examples.

*At a low point in my life, I had a real sense of being treated unjustly. In a dream, I dug up an old casket full of bones that proved my point. I carried the casket with me wherever I went. At some point in the dream, it occured to me that I had lots of things to do and places to go in life and I couldn't do it carrying around a box of dead bones. Message: let go!

I'm not saying God speaks in dreams, but if that were the case, it might just be a message like that.

*At another stressful point in life, I dreamed that Cheng Man-ch'ing, a legendary master of the martial art of tai chi chuan, came to the town I was living in and was giving lessons. In real life, he had been dead for more than 20 years. I woke up determined to learn tai chi, which has a lot of health and stress benefits. It helped get me over the hump and I've practiced it most days for the last 10 years.

*Another time, I dreamed that an older person I was close to had died. I felt really bad that I had not been very attentive to this person lately while they lived. I woke up determined to be more attentive to this person while I could.

So here's my advice: dream on--and pay attention! You just might learn something.

TURNING THE WHEEL. Buddhism is growing in popularity among China's middle class.

RECESSING. Business Week asks about how real the prosperity bubble was. Some may ask "What prosperity bubble?" Also from Business Week, here's an item on fixes for the economy which suggests infrastructure investments and questions the wisdom of a corporate tax break as a stimulus measure.

NEW NOTES. Here's the latest version of Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree, complete with crosses, Civil War talk, color, and hanging chads.

ALL THINGS IN MODERATION--including happiness, according to new research.

JUDGE MASSEY BLANKENSHIP BENJAMIN made the Wall Street Journal's law blog.

MAN BITES DOG. The notoriously anti-union NLRB is petitioning a federal judge to issue an injunction which would make Benjamin--I mean Massey Energy rehire union workers and recognized the UMWA as bargaining agent. Will wonders never cease?

HOW PHILANTHROPIC. Big bank BB&T has been giving away millions to promote the "philosophy" of Ayn Rand. Marshall is the latest mark.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DEEP DREAMS

Image courtesy of fromoldbooks.org.

The theme for this week's Goat Rope is dreams and what they may mean. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Carl Gustav Jung is something of a cult figure these days, which might not altogether be a good thing. He had a tendency to take dips into what Freud considered the "black tide of...occultism." Still he had some interesting ideas about dreams and it would be hard to leave him out of a discussion of them.

Jung is remembered today for several of his ideas, but one of the main ones is that of the collective unconscious. Freud admitted the existence of a personal unconscious, but Jung argued that there was a deeper layer of instincts and archetypes, which are inborn images and motifs which we inherit.

Fittingly enough, Jung claimed that a dream helped him develop this concept. As described in Memories, Dreams and Reflections, he dreamed of a house he recognized as his own. It was a little old fashioned, but OK otherwise. But when he went down a flight of stairs, the rooms were much older, darker and medieval. A stone stairway led to a cellar dating from ancient Roman times. When he lifted a slab on this floor, it led to an ancient cave with scattered bones, broken pottery and two human skulls.

Here's his interpretation:

The ground floor stood for the first level of the unconscious. The deeper I went, the more alien and the darker the scene became. In the cave, I discovered the remains of a primitive culture, that is the world of the primitive man within myself--a world which can scarcely be reached or illuminated by consciousness. The primitive psyche of man borders on the life of the animal soul, just as the caves of prehistoric times were usually inhabited by animals before men laid claim to them.

Elsewhere, he wrote that

The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend... All consciousness separates, but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral.

El Cabrero is no Jungian, but sometimes dreams are too deep and weird to fit any reductive scheme. I remember one I had as a young adult that stuck with me. I stood on a hill watching my home town being devastated by a horrible flood. We got flooded a lot for real, but this was way worse and way different. It was a disaster of biblical proportions.

I remember looking in the water and seeing a drowned woman floating upside down. Suddenly she turned face up and I was horrified to see that she was clutching a drowned baby to her breast. That was bad enough, but then I heard a voice say, "Alas, poor baby. We could give you everything but peace."

I'm still trying to shake that one off.

STRESS AND TRAUMA. A new study suggests that stress may be more of a factor in the problems of some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan than brain injury. If that proves to be the case in light of further research, that would be good news. Stress-related problems are easier to treat than neurological ones.

WE'RE AN INSPIRATION! The WV Supreme Court goat rope just keeps getting better and better. The latest twist is novelist John Grisham's latest effort was inspired by the (largely Don Blankenship-funded) election of Brent Benjamin to the state supreme court in 2004. Here's an extract from a conversation between Grisham and Matt Lauer about his new book on the Today Show:

"Basically, it involves a chemical company,” Lauer said. “They contaminate the water in the community. There’s a cancer outbreak. People die. And there’s a $41 million jury award against this company. And the head of the company says, I’m not gonna pay it. What I’m gonna do is avoid paying it by stacking the court that’s eventually gonna hear the appeal on this case. Far fetched?”

“It’s already happened,” Grisham said. “It’s already happened.”

“It’s a long term calculation,” Lauer said. “You have to be pretty sure about the money you’re investing in this.”

“Well, it’s happened,” Grisham said. “It happened a few years ago in West Virginia. A guy who owned a coal company, got tired of getting sued. He elected his guy to the Supreme Court, it switched 5-4 back his way. Now he doesn’t worry about getting sued. So it happens. It’s already happened.”

And here's more from WV Public Radio.

CRUMBLING ECONOMY, CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE. There's a connection.

HIT THE ROAD, JACK. If you want to stay strong as you age, that is.

UNEMPLOYMENT. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute illustrates why a boost in unemployment benefits is good for workers and the economy.


GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SOMETIMES A TRAIN IS JUST A TRAIN

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The theme for this week's Goat Rope is dreams and what they may or may not mean. You will also find links and comments about current events. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

No discussion of dreams would be complete without spending a little time with Old Man Sig. Freud's Interpretation of Dreams made a huge splash in 1900 and is still worth a look all these years later. He also wrote a shorter, more accessible book titled On Dreams in 1901.

Freud's basic idea here is that dreams are more or less disguised wish fulfillment's usually originating from unconscious desires. Sometimes this is all too obvious and the desires are too, as when hungry people dream of food or lonely people dream of company (take that any way you want it).

In other cases this isn't so obvious. Some dreams seem scary or just senseless. He believed that dreams have both a manifest and a latent content which together make up what he called the dream work. The manifest content of a dream might involve say a house. The latent or hidden idea behind this image could mean something else entirely, for example the body.

The process of interpreting dreams for him involved breaking down the manifest or obvious content into its component parts and analyzing the things the dreamer associates with them. Dreams are tricky critters and employ a number of ruses, including metaphors and similes, condensation, substitution and other ways of disguising their meaning:

The dream thoughts which we first come across as we proceed with our analysis often strike us by the unusual form in which they are expressed; they are not clothed in the prosaic language usually employed by our thoughts, but are on the contrary represented symbolically by means of similes and metaphors, images resembling those of poetic speech. (On Dreams, ch. 6.)

Why bother with all the imagery? For Freud, people have unconscious desires, often of a sexual nature, which are repressed most of the time. When we sleep, the repression eases up enough for the varmints to get out, but they pass through what he called a "dream censor" which disguises them so as not to disturb sleep or the sleeper. A nightmare is a really disguised wish in which one part of us wants something the other parts would be creeped out by.

For Freud, dreams aren't the only way the unconscious pokes out, if you'll pardon the expression. Slips of the tongue, mistaken actions, and symptoms are other ways.

Later in life, after studying the nightmares of many World War I veterans suffering from what we might now call post-traumatic stress disorder, he came to partially modify his theory in the book Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In that 1920 book, he developed his theory of the death instinct.

Even if we can't go all the way with Sig, he does deserve great credit for getting the study of dreams on the agenda of psychology. The problems with his theory is its reductionism. Some dreams really are Freudian, but others not so much.

I remember once waking up after a classic Freudian dream--flying, trains, tunnels, all that--and wanting to write a nasty letter to my unconscious saying "How trite! How cliched! Couldn't you come up with something a little more original?"

THE MISSING PIECE. Washington Post columnist Marie Cocco states the obvious about the need to expand unemployment benefits in a recession. Stating the obvious is necessary in these 2+2=5 days.

SMIRK OF THE UNION. More comments and links about the recession and the receding state of the union can be found here.

ANOTHER BAD IDEA would be extending the arms race into space.

YOUNG VOTERS, already saddled with debt and worried about health care and a declining middle class, are the subject of this Business Week article.

LEGISLATIVE PARADOX. Any time someone proposes that the WV legislature proposes some action benefiting working folks, they can expect to be asked "How are we going to pay for it?" Fair enough. But not too many of them seem to be saying the same thing about proposed cuts to corporate taxes.

WV INSPIRES GRISHAM. Popular courtroom novelist John Grisham's latest novel--about a rich businessman who buys a judge's election--was inspired in part by WV's 2004 Supreme Court election when Massey CEO Don Blankenship spent millions of his own dollars to elect the politically unknown Brent Benjamin.

On a similar front, Benjamin has consistently refused to recuse himself from cases involving Massey (he's usually on their side), including a pending lawsuit for $220 million. Chief justice Spike Maynard, who was photographed vacationing with Blankenship did recuse himself from the case in the wake of recent publicity.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

DREAM WEAVER

Image credit: fromoldbooks.org.

Aside from the usual assortment of links and comments about current events, the theme of this week's Goat Rope is dreams and what they may or may not mean. If this is your first visit, please click on yesterday's posts.

When I was a little kid, I had an odd dream that stuck with me until the present. In it, I was sitting alone at night among old stone ruins. Though it was dark, there was some light from the moon and stars. The odd thing is that I wasn't afraid; awe might be a better word.

That dream kind of set the tone for me. I've always been drawn to things that are ancient or at least old enough to withstand the tests of time. While it's important these days to keep up with current events and the latest in science and research, I don't look much to the present for wisdom. I find all I can handle--and more--in Greek tragedy, Homer's epics, myths, the Bible, and ancient Western, Buddhist and Chinese philosophy.

Speaking of which, there's probably little in human history more ancient or universal than a fascination with dreams and what they mean. Dreams play a part in the folklore of many cultures and are mentioned in many ancient texts from places as diverse as Egypt, ancient Greece, Mesopotamia and China.

Dreams are prominent in several biblical stories, with several major ones in Genesis. During a time of troubles, the patriarch Jacob dreamed of a ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending. A little later in the book, dreams and their interpretation both get Joseph into trouble with his brothers and into the good graces of Pharaoh.

The prophet Daniel was also portrayed as a great interpreter of dreams--even when he wasn't told what the dream was. It was written that God appeared to King Solomon in a dream offering him anything he wished. Famously, he chose wisdom.

Dreams are also frequently discussed in the Talmud, a collection of rabbinical writings and commentaries. One rabbi said there that "An uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter" and another that "A man is shown in his dreams what he thinks in his heart."

Dreams play a major role in the early chapters of the Gospel attributed to Matthew. Joseph is warned in a dream to accept Mary as his wife though she is with child; to fly with his family to Egypt to avoid the wrath of King Herod; and to return from Egypt when Herod dies. The "wise men" were warned in dreams not to tell Herod of the child. Later in the gospel, Pilate's wife has a dream about Jesus and warns her husband to have nothing to do with him.

In ancient Greece, dreams were a major part of healing. In a practice known as dream incubation, a patient would sleep in a temple of the healer Aesculapius and the dream they received there was used as the basis of treatment.

In the second century BC or BCE, a Greek named Artemidorus wrote five volumes about dreams in a work called Oneirocritica, which described and attempted to interpret 3,000 different dreams. Although his interpretations strike us as odd today--for example, the thought it was good luck to dream of having a well-shaped nose (Holy Tristram Shandy, Batman!)--the work is still in print.

Of course, even in ancient times, there were those who dismissed dreams as stuff an nonsense (which admittedly many are). The Roman politician, writer and orator Cicero wrote

Let us reject...this divination of dreams...For, to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all nations, and has oppressed the intellectual energies of all men, and has betrayed them into endless imbecilities.

Whatever the case may be, we get one or more free indie movies every night.

COMMENT ON THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS: Whatever. That was mine. Here's The Nation's.

ALGORITHMS OF LOVE? Has a mathematical computer program figured out compatibility? This would have vastly simplified Pride and Prejudice.

MATH AND GOD. This is a fun one on religion and mathematicians, complete with this great line from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg:

With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion.

TORTURE AND DEMOCRACIES have often co-existed.

HEGEMONY CRICKET. Here's a long one from the NY Times magazine about the changing status of the US in the world during the Bush disaster.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PERCHANCE TO DREAM

Dreams are a perennially fascinating topic. It's pretty amazing that each night as we sleep our minds produce such wild images, stories, and ideas--or at least it seems that way when we wake up. Some animals even seem to do it.

El Cabrero is not an expert on sleep or dream science, but it seems like the latest research indicates that dreams play an important mental function connected with memory and the processing of the information and stimuli of waking life.

Freud shook the scientific community with the publication of his The Interpretation of Dreams at the turn of the last century. His ideas that such phenomena were meaningful seemed ludicrous to materialistically oriented scientists, but in fact it concurred with the opinions of pretty much all humanity throughout pretty much all history. Dreams probably influenced the development of a lot of human myths and religious beliefs and practices--including the belief in life after death as people dreamed of encounters with the departed.

Some dreams seem to be just residual static from the previous day's events, but others appear to have a clear or disguised meaning. Occasionally, some are downright deep.

I've always been interested in this subject, but dreams really got my attention when I discovered the ideas of Freud and Jung in my youth. I'm not an orthodox Freudian or Jungian now (though I lean towards the former most days), but I agree with their main idea that these creations of the unconscious have a lot to tell us.

I take dreams pretty seriously, especially strong ones, and they have even influenced some of the most important decisions of my life. It's not that I think they are messengers from beyond--although some sure seem that way--but rather that they express a lot of the mental activity, thinking and feeling that go one beneath the surface of our ordinary awareness. They have triggered insights and creativity from scientists as well as artists.

Dreams will be the guiding thread through this week's posts.

Speaking of which, here's a funny dream I had when I first read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, which argues that they are basically wish fulfillments. I wished I was able to interpret dreams--so I dreamed I could. Pretty cute.

DEALING WITH RECESSION. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on what it would take to provide a strong stimulus to a slowing economy.

TIME FOR DISASTER POPULISM. Here's Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, on how the right is great at cashing in on bad news and how the rest of us need to dial in.

MINE SAFETY. Ken Ward had a good one in the Sunday Gazette-Mail about how many coal companies ignore fines for unsafe conditions.


COMBAT TRAUMA is increasingly a factor in courtrooms around the country in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MEAT. More and more people are rethinking carnivorous habits, or at least the ways we satisfy them.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHO'S CALLING WHO A PIRATE, ANYWAY?

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

Welcome to Pirate Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on yesterday's post.

Many people have been entertained in recent years by the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, although for El Cabrero's money Errol Flynn's Captain Blood is still the pick of the litter.

For a good look at what real pirates were like in "the Golden Age of piracy," check out Colin Woodard's book, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man who Brought Them Down.

The Golden Age lasted for around 10 years between 1715 and 1725 and was based in the Bahamas. Many pirates got their start in "legitimate" ways, as sailors or privateers in the European dynastic wars in the early 1700s.

Although the ruling classes did their best to stoke up anti-pirate hysteria in those years, they were actually folk heroes to many ordinary sailors and subjects. And for at least some good reason--compared with the rapacity of the ruling classes of the period, the pirates were pretty mild and pretty appealing. Here's Woodward:

They ran their ships democratically, electing and deposing their captains by popular vote, sharing plunder equally, and making important decisions in open council--all in sharp contrast to the dictatorial regimes in place aboard other ships. At a time when ordinary sailors received no social protections of any kind, the Bahamian pirates provided disability benefits for their crews.

Back in the day, they were a multinational and multiracial band and there were even some prominent women pirates.

Aaarrgghh indeed!

SPEAKING OF PIRATES... this op-ed by Holly Sklar is worth a look. Here's the lead:

When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.

And here's the punchline:

Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now.

The middle is worth checking out too.

BAD MOON RISING. Former Marine and UN arms inspector Scott Ritter will be visiting El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia this week. Here's his latest piece preventing war with Iran.

YOUNGER EVANGELICALS have some different priorities, according to this item from the Dallas Morning News:

For many conservative evangelical Christians younger than 30, family values mean more than the issues of gay marriage, abortion and prayer in school. Poverty, health care and the environment are also matters of faith.

CENSORING CONROY. It's deja vu all over again in the case of the efforts to ban the use of Pat Conroy's novels in AP English classes.

FIREFIGHTERS are cool. Alas, El Cabrero never got to revive a cat during his short and inglorious career as a volunteer firefighter.

SLEEP ON IT. As this science item from the NY Times suggests, it'll probably help.

PERCHANCE TO DREAM. This accompanying piece suggests that a possible function for bad dreams is to help the brain process fear.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

Caption: The cat is analyzing the dog's dream.

This is day 3 of Goat Rope's official Fun With Freud week. Please scroll down to earlier posts if this is you first visit.

For the record, El Cabrero is not a Freudian. I think he was probably wrong, sometimes spectacularly so, on lots of things, but some of his big ideas hold up pretty well (or at least look that way from Goat Rope Farm).

One trademark idea of Freud's that I think is a keeper is the whole idea of the unconscious and the role it can play in our lives. He believed that the conscious part of the mind was only the proverbial tip of the iceberg and that there's a lot more going on than we often realize.

Like goats on the farm, the critters in the unconscious pop out whenever they get the chance in the form of dreams, (Freudian) slips of the tongue, mistaken actions, symptoms, etc. They can also be the source of much creativity and insight.

Freud believed that dreams are mostly disguised wish fulfillment. I don't think that's always the case but some are (and some aren't all that disguised). I had a classic Freudian dream while reading his Interpretation of Dreams. At the time, I wished I could interpret my dreams. Then I dreamed that I could.

Score one for Sig...

The book of Freud's that got my attention as a teenager was The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which was quite a hoot. He argued that many common events in our lives reveal the activity of the unconscious.

Some examples:

*If you've ever "lost" your car keys when you had to go to work, maybe part of you didn't want to go to start with;

*If you've ever "forgotten" something and left it at someone's house, then possibly part of you wanted to go back;

*If you've ever forgotten the name of someone you know perfectly well, it may be because that person has associations with someone or something else.

I had another classic in that department a few years back when I attended the funeral of a friend. There was someone there I'd known, liked, and worked with for years and for the life of me I couldn't remember her name. It turned out she had the same name as someone I was having some disagreements with at the time.

Score two for Sig.

(The main problem of thinking that way is that if you do it too much you don't think anything is an accident. Sometimes the cigar IS just a cigar.)

FEDERAL BUDGET ITEM. It looks like the U.S. House and Senate have better budget priorities than the administration, which wants to keep slashing social programs to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy and its unnecessary war in Iraq. Here's an item from this Sunday's Charleston Gazette-Mail about the Senate version.

NEW LABOR LEGISLATION INTRODUCED. Recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board could potentially deny millions of workers the right to join unions by classifying them as "supervisors." Last week, a bill was introduced which would correct this problem. Here's some info from the AFLCIO blog:

One of the major contributors to the middle-class squeeze is the difficulty workers face when trying to join together and collectively bargain for better wages and benefits. That freedom has been further reduced by several misguided decisions by the Republican-controlled National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which eroded the ability of millions of workers to exercise their freedom to join unions.

...a bipartisan bill was introduced in the House and Senate that would begin to reverse some of the most egregious of those NLRB decisions. The Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers (RESPECT) Act would reverse a Republican party-line NLRB vote in September 2006 to slash long-time federal labor law protections of workers’ freedom to form unions.

The RESPECT Act would clarify the National Labor Relations Act to ensure it is not misinterpreted or undermined on a fundamental question of coverage.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED