Virtual Reality and Dreams

This paper is written in two parts dealing with two different aspects of reality. Part A examines virtual reality and how it affects real reality. Part B compares the reality of life to the reality of dreams.

PART A

            There are certainly all different outlooks on reality, though the truth within each is always a cumbersome matter to decipher, especially in regard to finding which is applicable to our lives. Many people may travel through a decent portion of their lives never to question or create an emphasis on the subject matter contained in discussions such as these. Could that be part of the reason society has been continuing the trend of becoming autonomous? The social aspect of it all seems to be dwindling by the day with individuality somewhat fading into the strings of existence. As I walk the streets, or travel in the petrol powered metal shells we have denoted as cars, a gross realization haunts my mind. Who are we? Why are we here? What are we doing? Why do so many people fear where their lives are going in relation to time, including discussing death and what comes afterward? All of which are without clear answers, though of course we are taught to figure out things for ourselves. In the end, the answers just become more skewed and the gray areas tend to expand until the little information we know is nothing more than a hollow shell. So what is reality? Well, a possibility exists that the life we live is not reality, rather just one of many possible choices on the subject. Reality is simply what we perceive to be more real and is based on perception alone. The deeper one delves into the possibilities and different tangents within these choices, the harder conclusions are to decide.

            As interesting as some of the questions are, there is a time to move on. We can only debate subjects without clear answers or evidence for so long before running thin.  That being said, there is a phenomenon or I suppose a technological theory in place that leapt out at me. This ideology is known as reality 2.0. In the current realm known as reality 1.0 there are already many people with a disconnection from society, common thought and some who believe there is no place for them to go. Meanwhile, everyone in general is searching for the meaning or occasion that will define their own existence, but what if there was something created to solve these issues, more over something capable of solving more than just that. A world that knows no physical bounds and is able to grant the end-user free control of whatever specific life they choose to lead. These users can date, by seeing other individuals as clearly and intensely as their eyes permit;, attend classes in a classroom, mirroring that of a university with students the same as them sitting in the room; and sleep in this place created of fantasy and travel places over the web connected network of personal computers. Is that fantasy, or does it prove that reality transcends different areas, dimensions even.  And so, the question arises… Is that not already feasible? The answer can be considered a yes, however in this context a no; why, you say? Because this reality, wherein almost everything is possible, is a virtual world where everything you see, hear, touch, smell, is as real as human perception can imagine. The possibility of the mind no longer being able to tell a difference may be in the near future… Wait a moment though, if that is the truth, than which is reality? That is the question most would stake their entire existence on; my opinion is that reality is where you choose live your life. Pronouncing one perception more genuine than another is open to interpretation and there are already plenty of people living outside the realm I consider truth. What would it be like to no longer participate in the world we have known for millenniums? In truth, the idea seems absurd, though with keeping an open mind all of these things and more are feasible, and depending on the view subscribed to can be positive or negative. For those who may become addicted to reality 2.0 despite the drawbacks, which include not actually being able to consume food, use the bathroom, reproduce; a theory known as reality 1.5 exists. Reality 1.5 designates citizens who despite knowing the facts surrounding the differences between 1.0 and 2.0 choose to continue living in both worlds, because one cannot exist without the other. R2.0 was created to allow ease of many things in addition to using 1.0. Not only that, R2.0 was supposed to be used much less to avoid creating a void. Citizens living 1.5 may indeed lose their minds due to the fact that their overall perception of reality no longer shows a divider between reality 1.0 and 2.0. When and if this happens, the worst possible outcome will have come to haunt the creators and prove the point that if something feels real, it may just be to the human mind. However, saving these people is possible I would guess, yet the sheer amounts of people that surface with an issue of this sort will most likely ward off any help originally conceived.

            As the finality of Part A draws near, there is one thing I would like to ask my readers. Traveling back in time, do you think that technological developments and theories were always so frightening and troublesome to discuss? Perhaps as humans improve and form these “new and improved” contraptions the old adages about sealing our fate are in the making, on the other hand, certain ideas could lead to our salvation. You and I may never know, but there is one thing friend that I do know, we all live on this earth together and when things change, we will all experience it together in whatever reality exists at that time.  

PART B

            What is reality? At the core of it, it is a collective space of collective ideas, all backed up by popular opinion. We go through life not even realizing that sometimes things aren’t what they appear to be, that’s why we’re told not to make assumptions. What of hallucinogens, dreams, virtual reality questions, and the déjà vu some people experience? What about abnormal symptoms such as synesthesia, auditory hallucinations caused by chemicals in the brain or destruction to the inner ear, or those who are colorblind, not to mention the almost endless list of schizophrenics, dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, people who have manic-depressive/bipolar disorders, PTSD, or anxiety problems. They each have their own version of everything they have perceived in life, from less important things (why pepperoni is better than anchovies on a pizza) to moral decisions (do you turn in a family member if they’ve committed a crime). Every political pundit with a TV show has tried to swat away a difficult question with the phrase, “the reality of the situation is this”.  Although I seriously doubt you will ever see serious debates about reality on the O’Reilly Factor, I’m going to try to change the way you look at life. I’m specifically going to focus on the similarities and differences between what is real in “life” and what is real in a dream.

            Dreams are a freakish phenomenon. They start when people are young, and can increase during times of stress. They’re like small movies in which the impossible becomes feasible; where time and distance don’t seem to matter as much. Besides the superpowers we may have and the past friends and relatives who may appear, dream life and real life are really very similar.

            When it comes to rationality or awareness of your surroundings, both dreams and reality have this. An exception here is in reality some people are not aware of their surroundings and cannot think “rationally”, and it is difficult to determine what is rational in an irrational world. Given the fact that dreams can be very chaotic, and certain laws of physics might be non-existent, how does someone use logic to solve a problem in a dream? Although dragons may circle overhead, and the ground below you is a fluorescent yellow, and the landscape is something out of MC Escher, you are able to discern what exists and what it is separated by. You can recognize, in a dream, probably everything you’ve ever seen in life; you are able to distinguish sounds, colors, and sometimes smells or tastes.

            Memory is difficult to show in reality, and is much harder to prove in a dream. “Some people have no difficulty in remembering several dreams nightly, whereas others recall dreams only occasionally or not at all… There is something about the phenomenon of sleep itself which makes it difficult to remember what has occurred and most dreams are forgotten unless they are written down. Sometimes a dream is suddenly remembered later in the day or on another day, suggesting that the memory is not totally lost but for some reason is very hard to retrieve.” (ASD)

            In reality we remember certain things and events. When we are young the strongest memories are those which were traumatic or extremely pleasant. My earliest memory is when I stepped on a yellow jacket while running to a pool—I was two and it stung me, now I hate bees. I remember very little about being a kid, except for specific instances, not all of them bad. Some people have a photographic memory, or can remember endless strings of numbers (mathematicians and pi) or formulas. The average person, I would guess, does not remember much about conversations they had with their parents at the age of 6, or what they were taught in their 8^th grade fall English class. Sometimes we construct memories from seeing old pictures, or hearing stories from parents or friends. Attorneys constantly call on psychologists to demonstrate the fallacies of human recall, especially in child abuse cases or when eyewitness testimony can decide a case. Try to think about your most vivid memory and realize how much you may have left out or reconstructed.

            Dreams have the advantage of being irrational when it comes to memory. There may be bits and pieces of connectivity during a single night, but rarely over multiple nights. Unless you experience recurring dreams, you don’t remember past dreams in a dream. At least I thought so until a few years ago when this happened to me. I was in a dream explaining another dream I had a few nights before. I’m still not able to figure out what this means. It makes sense in some ways, if I committed it to memory, why wouldn’t it appear just as friends and objects from my reality do?

            We do some of the same memory construction in dreams as we do in reality, even if you are camped out next to the Rio Grande below monstrous rocks and cliffs, and the in Amsterdam the next. You rationalize the connectivity, you may not know how you got from point A to point B, but you do know you were in one place and now you are in a different one for whatever reason, and you accept it. There are people you recognize in dreams and have known for years, yet if you wake up sometimes you realize you never knew them. If you have a dream about someone who has passed away, you realize this person is dead in the dream, but accept it and talk or interact.

            The hardest question for me to answer is: Do humans possess free will in a dream? If we have free will in reality, what exactly is taken away in a dream? I think the biggest problem is the speed at which a dream takes place. Our biological systems make instantaneous “decisions” all the time, even we make split-second choices in times of confusion or danger. In those two instances, we have no free will, it just happens. We can’t choose or decide how food will taste, how things will smell, feel, appear, sound. So now we have no control over our senses or in times of extreme stress. We don’t control where or when we will die, where we grew up, we can’t even control how we feel (although we are very good at rationalizing the way we feel). Maybe we have free will while we dream but our decisions are made in a different way than we are used to. Possibly, we decide based solely on emotion without rationalization.

     The ultimate test is in nightmares. “Nightmares are very common among children and fairly common among adults. Often nightmares are caused by stress, traumatic experiences, emotional difficulties, drugs or medication, or illness.” (ASD) When one is being chased by gigantic gargoyles, there is an obvious choice: run, or be torn to shreds in a dark cathedral. On second thought, there is no choice, your brain already told you to survive, so that is what you do. If you get mugged, threatened, or beat, that is the only thing on your mind, in reality and in dreams; when it comes to surviving there is no choice.

     There are people supposedly able to influence their dreams. “You often can influence your dreams by giving yourself pre-sleep suggestions. Another method of influencing dreams is called lucid dreaming, in which you are aware you are dreaming while still asleep and in the dream. Sometimes people experience this type of dreaming spontaneously… Some professional dream workers question the advisability of trying to control the dream, and encourage learning to enjoy and understand it instead.” (ASD) However, influence and free will are not the same. So as I believe in life, in dreams we have no free will, but can influence specific outcomes.

            Reality and dreams may ultimately be so similar because one is a reflection of the other. Which one really exists outside the mind? Which one is “real”? I don’t know.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

International Association for the Study of Dreams (ASD)

http://www.asdreams.org/subidxeduq_and_a.htm