We're not all like the White Queen from Through the Looking Glass who was
able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, of course we're
not. But sometimes it does seem as if Man is keen on infusing life with
the stuff of myths, unproven theories and firmly held beliefs that are
just waiting to be shot down - or substantiated - by a single unequivocal
scientific fact.
Take the Flat Earth Society. How we laughed at them when photographs
taken from space demonstrated beyond doubt that we live on a spherical
object, twirling round its axis and orbiting the Sun. Yet it would take
just one re****t, with photographic evidence, of, say, an ocean liner
falling over the edge somewhere near Patagonia and the Flat Earthers
would be back in business.
Similarly, all it would take to knock the stuffing out of Astrology would
be the appearance on worldwide television of a person born under the sign
of Scorpio who did not have a magnetic personality and penetrating eyes
that gaze directly into your soul. Failing that, a Leo with Aries rising
who turned out to be a shrinking violet would also do nicely.
We could carry this further: Man's entire religious edifice will come
cra****ng down around his ears the moment indisputable proof emerges of
intelligent life elsewhere in the Cosmos. And this is, of course, where
the churches and the Flat Earth Society come together: their certainties
date back to a time when what you saw was what there was and there was no
reason to assume that any other world than this one could exist.
Unfortunately, conclusive scientific data on these subjects are hard to
come by. That's why we're still walking around with our heads stuffed
with ideas, convictions and knowledge that are as reliable as a
Nostradamus quatrain but that do spur us on to some pretty horrific
behaviour.
Admit it, all you Muslims, Jews, Christians and others: you're ready to
kill and die for your beliefs, but how sure are you of the facts? No, I'm
very anxious for the scientific community to come up with some
spectacular answers and fast, before any more blood flows needlessly.
And then, sometimes it happens. Recently Swiss neurologists have
determined that dreams are a load of bunkum. Not voices coming from a
burning bush, then? The Swiss had studied the case of a woman who, after
suffering a stroke, had stopped dreaming altogether. In spite of this,
her memory, her cognitive powers and her brain patterns during sleep had
remained unimpaired.
Bang went the theory that dreams occur as your brain files the
experiences of your waking hours away in an orderly fa****on. Bang went an
even more famous theory: that dreams are a release valve for suppressed
desires or anxieties.
Bang, in other words, went Sigmund Freud. The old duffer, it now appears,
has been selling us a cock-and-bull theory -and done very well out of it,
too.
But what, if not our nocturnal filing clerk or spiritual blood-letter, is
a dream? Well, say the Swiss neurologists, since dreaming has no
particular function at all, look on it as no more than a sort of
entertainment for the sleeping brain.
An entertainment? Phew, what a relief. I once - and please believe me,
this is the absolute truth - had a dream in which I was *****cally
involved with Derdrie Barlow of Coronation Street.
It's nothing I'm particularly proud of, but what could I do? For a long
time afterwards, that dream haunted me: after all, didn't Freud say
something about a release valve for suppressed desires?
I knew, of course, that there was no question of my brain filing away the
previous day's experiences in an orderly manner; I'd been at work all day
and come home to a dinner of duck breast with red currants. But what dark
urges were slo****ng about in my subconscious? Did I really know myself?
I'm much relieved now that I know the truth. And looking back I can say
that, as an entertainment, she wasn't bad at all
--
T Moore
N E Manchester, England
http://sitemenu.tom-moore.com/
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