I
rarely remember dreams. When other
people do, and go on at length about them, my eyes glaze over. I'm thus hesitant to regale anyone with tales
of dreams. But here's a short one. I must have had some subconscious (and
totally ridiculous and irrational) fear of family disintegration. First, a very quick look at dream research.
There's
been considerable research on dreams but no consensus on what, if anything,
they signify or accomplish. There are
only a few unanswered questions. According to Frontiers in Psychology in 2011:
Do
the representations that constitute the dream emerge randomly from the brain,
or do they surface according to certain parameters? Is the organization of the dream’s
representations chaotic or is it determined by rules? Does dreaming have a meaning? What is/are the function(s) of dreaming? . .
. Why are some dream scenes so
bizarre? Are dreams built from images
that arise randomly from the sleeping brain?
Or is the emergence and organization of dream images controlled by
currently unknown parameters? Does
dreaming have a function? . . . We still do not know when it happens during the
night, how long it lasts, whether we can recall its entire content, or how to
control it.
Here's
a consolidated list of possible dream functions (from Psychology Today):
-- aid in the
consolidation of learning and short-term memory to long-term memory storage
-- an extension
of waking consciousness, reflecting the experiences of waking life
-- work through
difficult, complicated, unsettling thoughts, emotions, and experiences, to
achieve psychological and emotional balance.
-- the brain
responding to biochemical changes and electrical impulses that occur during
sleep
-- A form of
consciousness that unites past, present and future in processing information
from the first two, and preparing for the third
-- A protective
act by the brain to prepare itself to face threats, dangers and challenges.
There
is not likely ever to be a simple answer, or a single theory that explains the
full role of dreaming to human life.
Biological, cognitive, psychological—it’s very likely that dreaming may
serve important functions in each of
these realms.
I'm
going with the conclusions of G. William Domhoff (Distinguished Professor
Emeritus and research professor of psychology and sociology at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, and "a pioneer of scientific dream
research"). He utters a
caution: "The phrase 'I had this
dream last night . . . ' is a platform to say whatever nonsense, lie, or
fantasy someone might have on his or her mind, because there's no way to
determine if the claim is true or not."
More
important, he writes, "most dream researchers think it is worthwhile to
remember your dreams, and they have tips for improving your recall. But the evidence we have presented here
suggests something else: they are not
important, so perhaps not worth remembering.
So, unless you find your dreams entertaining, intellectually
interesting, or artistically inspiring, then feel free to forget your
dreams. If they just upset you or leave
you puzzled, then why bother with them?"
All
that being said (or written), in late summer I had two dreams, within a few
days of each other, that I distinctly remember and that I didn't like. Both were what I call
"micro-dreams," in that they lasted only a few seconds (that is, it
seemed like the dream only lasted a few seconds). First, Kathy and I walked down the sidewalk
to a house four houses away from ours—one that I've never been in—and met up
with my parents in the living room, at which time she asked for help from all
three of us to begin dating. I told her
she certainly could not expect help from me; my parents, however, agreed to do
so! (Both my parents have been dead for
years and never met Kathy.) Second, both
Elliott and Krystin (the dream was before her death), sitting in our living
room, told me that they no longer had any respect for me, completely disagreed
with all my values, and were going to have nothing further to do with me. I then immediately changed my will to
disinherit both of them.
Often
one can understand at least small segments of dreams. Somebody mentions Niagara Falls in a
conversation and that night you dream about Niagara Falls. I'm sure we all have those linkages on
occasion. But these two dreams just came
out of nowhere. I can't imagine what
elicited them.
Fortunately
(I'm quite sure!), neither of those events will come to pass. I know with absolute certainty that my
parents will not help Kathy start dating.
Kathy assured me she has no plans to do so. (Even if she did, I would not be among the
first to know—but of course I believe her without reservation.) Elliott assured me that he entertained no
such views. I didn't ask Krystin, but I
suspect her answer would have been the same as Elliott's.
Phew. I'm taking Domhoff's advice, which aligns
with what I've long thought anyway.
Dreams certainly can't predict the future and they are frequently so
bizarre that they assuredly don't reflect the reality of one's life. My conclusion is that they're just neurons
relaxing in the quiet of sleep. Joking
with you.
* * *
Tom
Crewe, writing for the London Review of
Books, reflected on statuary. He
began with Charles James Fox (1749-1806), a British politician whom I doubt one
person in 1000 in the U.S. (or Britain, probably) could identify. Fox has a statue in Bloomsbury Square in
London.
What's
interesting to me is that the UK has a Public Monuments and Sculpture
Association, which finds that there 925 public statues in Great Britain. As Rogers writes, "there is some appeal
in the idea of a commission appointed to investigate the state of statuary in
this country, to sift through the persons previous ages deemed worthy of public
space, asking whether they have been forgotten, and if not, what they are
remembered for. Does their prominence
perpetuate values with which we no longer wish to be associated? Do other values outweigh or counterbalance
these? Such questions evoke strong
feelings."
This
strikes me as an entirely sensible approach to the U.S. statue problem. It's probably not one that the alt-right
would like. Fox is a good example. Crewe reviews Fox's admirers and his
accomplishment.
I
have often wondered what I would say were I brave enough to pipe up one
lunchtime in Bloomsbury Square. ‘Mr Fox
excelled all his contemporaries in the extent of his knowledge, in the
clearness and distinctness of his views, in quickness of apprehension, in
plain, practical common sense,’ Hazlitt wrote.
‘The greatest genius that perhaps this country has ever produced,’ Burke
said (when they were still friends). Catherine the Great commissioned a bust,
and placed it between Demosthenes and Cicero.
Fox
was a great Whig; a great orator; a great statesman. . . . Fox was in opposition most of his life and it
would be hard to make a list of his achievements. But he was a passionate opponent of the slave
trade, and almost the last thing he did in Parliament was to propose the bill
to abolish it on 10 June 1806: 'So fully
am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be
the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that
I have had the honour of a seat in Parliament, I had been so fortunate as to
accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough.'"
Wikipedia
tells us that "Fox became a prominent and staunch opponent of George III,
whom he regarded as an aspiring tyrant; he supported the American Patriots, . .
. became noted as an anti-slavery campaigner, a supporter of the French
Revolution, and a leading parliamentary advocate of religious tolerance and
individual liberty." On the basis
of what we hold dear today, we would probably agree that Fox's statue should
remain in Bloomsbury Square.
Crewe
ponders the meaning of statues. Often,
"we accept [them] as the backdrop to our lives for no reason other than
that they’re there. It’s only when you
begin to look at them properly that they seem stranded, shipwrecked by history.
. . . Whatever the tumult of history,
the argument goes, we live in safer, stiller times, and to remove a statue is
to inflict an injury on the integrity of the past." There is, however, the "paradox that
statues become most effective (and valuable) as public memorials as the
conditions of their creation recede from collective memory, even as the passage
of time undermines the effects intended by those who commissioned and paid for
them. We can view Fox’s statue with a
detachment that would have been impossible for most people living in the 19th
century." The difference between
Fox and, for example, Robert E. Lee, is that "when the original context
refuses to go away – which is the case with statues of [Cecil] Rhodes and Lee –
we are entitled to see them clearly and coldly, as intrinsically political
objects." Just as, in the 19th
century, there might have been strong opinions about a statue of Fox.
Crewe
maintains that "the people who put our statues up weren’t thinking about
the long term. Whatever their talk of
eternal glory and perpetual fame, they were no more capable of imagining three
or five hundred years into the future than we are." I am not sure he's right. Certainly in England and parts of Europe,
there are cemetery and cathedral statues and markers that have existed for
centuries. But he is surely right to
argue that "statues are always the legacies of particular presents, in all
their complexity and contingency."
He's also right to point out that statues "shouldn’t be allowed to
create the impression of a unitary culture, or a hierarchy of historical
importance."
I
didn't intend an excursus on statues or on Charles James Fox, but as events
have unfolded during 2017, statues have become engrossing. We definitely need an agency—public,
non-profit, educational, whatever--to at least put a context around
statues. It wouldn't hurt to do it for
all of them everywhere in the country.
(Personally, just for my own enlightenment, I'd like to see such
explanations. We have statues in the
Twin Cities with barely any—or no—explanatory plaque.)
* * *
What
parents worry about: things like an
article headline "Is 'The American Dream' over for millennials?" The research, out of Stanford, Harvard, and
the University of California (the distinguished "The Equality of
Opportunity Project" out of Harvard, Brown, and Stanford), doesn't quite
align with the headline, which is hyperbolic, but it's clear that things are
different for our kids compared to us and our parents. The problem, the study finds, is that it's
more difficult for our children to surpass us in income because of
"stagnating wages and the growing wealth gap."
(For
those who, like me, are perpetually uncertain about generational names: per Wikipedia, the millennials "(also
known as Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when this
cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use the early
1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth
years." Generation X includes
people born from "the early-to-mid 1960s and ending with birth years
ranging from the late 1970s to early 1980s.
Generation X is a relatively smaller demographic cohort sandwiched
between two larger demographic cohorts, the baby boomers and the
millennials." Is that clear now to
everyone?) My kids are Millennials, I
now learn. Probably should have known
that before, but I didn't.
There's
one more "generation" I learned about in early fall from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Generation Z.
Acknowledging "generations are notoriously difficult to
define," here we are (birth years):
Greatest (Silent)
Generation born before
1946
Baby boomers 1946 - 1964
Generation X early/mid-1960s – late 1970s/early 1980s (1965-1980)
Generation Y early 1980s – mid-1990s/early 2000s (millennials)
Generation Z mid/late-1990s – mid-2000s)
Back
to Millennials and the American Dream:
The research found that "only half of Americans born in 1985 are
making more money than their parents did at the same age (when inflation is
accounted for). . . . It represents a
significant drop on previous decades, when more young Americans were able to
take advantage of favorable economic conditions to enjoy greater wealth than
their parents’ generation." Here's
the graph.
Here are the numbers: "the percentage of American 30 year olds
earning more than their parents has been declining, based upon the year they
were born:
1940 – 91.54 percent.
1950 – 79.8 percent.
1960 – 62.33 percent.
1970 – 60.95 percent.
1980 – 50.03 percent.
1985 – 50.26 percent.
The 1980 figure is lower than 1985, but
those born in 1980 turned 30 years old in 2010 – the height of the financial
crisis. The percentage of millennials earning more than their parents grew in
2011 and 2012, but is back on a downward trend again."
I
can see this phenomenon with my children, although in both cases they are not
the usual case. Krystin was not able to
earn an income greater than mine because of her health. Elliott just graduated from college, so
couldn't be making that much money unless he suddenly started selling oil
portraits for five-figure amounts.
The
study authors contend that the ideal of "the opportunity to pursue
prosperity, success and upward mobility – the ability to rise up the income
ladder – is 'fading,' according to the study." The reason, in their view, is the increased
and increasing disparity in wealth and income.
The rich (including their offspring) are getting richer; the rest are
not. The study points out that if
economic growth were spread across the population as it was in the 1950s,
"around 80 percent of 30 year olds would be earning more than their
parents did, the study estimates."
The stagnating wages of the middle class are what make the situation
dismal for Millennials.
The
study looked at upward mobility in different parts of the country; the Twin
Cities data suggest that the situation is less bad here than in other parts of
the country. The upper Midwest looks
much better on the map; as one might guess, the lowest income mobility is in
the swath of the country from Virginia to Louisiana. The authors note that cities with relatively
higher mobility, better chances to move out of poverty, "tend to have five
similar characteristics: lower levels of
residential segregation; a larger middle class; stronger families; greater social
capital; and higher quality public schools."
For
most of the people I know, the kids aren't having trouble with jobs, although
they may not be making more than their parents were at that same stage in
life. In some cases, they are; kids of
academics who went into the private sector usually make more than their
parents. Overall, however, the data are
depressing. To the extent that money
measures something worth measuring, the baby boomers and Generation X haven't
prepared a world where their offspring can do better than they did. I can think of a few reasons, a few villains,
why this is the case, but that's for another disquisition.
* * *
I
confess to being impressed with but also a little alarmed about Amazon. Elliott (who had an Amazon Prime membership,
which means free shipping) ordered for us a book and a bottle of slug
killer. He put in the order Monday night
Memorial Day 2017 in the middle of the evening.
Both the book and the Sluggo were here at 9:30 the next morning. Kathy accurately described that delivery time
as "spooky."
* * *
A
mundane event of life led me to an unexpected reflection on mortality. Kathy and I, optimists that we are, decided
to fork over the hundred bucks to get "Global Entry" status for five
years. The program automatically gets
you TSA pre-check and also quickly through U.S. customs when returning from
abroad. (The optimist part of the
decision is that we'll take enough trips outside the U.S. to make the money and
the reduction in hassle worth it.)
The
process was quick and easy and the customs guy I dealt with was amiable and
chatty. I was wearing a U of M
sweatshirt and he told me he was a Gopher fan.
In the course of taking information from my passport, he noticed that it
expires in 2020. He said I would need to
remember that when I renewed my passport, I'd also need to go to the Global
Entry website and put in the new number, or else the program (electronic kiosk)
wouldn't recognize it. I think there's
less than a 50/50 chance I'll actually remember to make the change, but maybe
Kathy will remind me.
It
occurred to me, later, that the 2020 passport renewal will likely be my last
one. I'll turn 69 in 2020; passports
renew for 10 years. While I'd like to
think I'll still be interested in international travel when I'm 79, I sure
wouldn't put any bets on it. The right
word might be "able" rather than "interested." Except for the lucky few, mobility can become
an issue once you head towards 80. I
might also be "interested" and even mobile—but lack the enthusiasm or
energy. All of this, of course, assumes
that I'll make it to 2020 and be in a position to renew the passport!
If
I behave like I did one Sunday in November, I surely won't be in any position
to travel to St. Paul, much less across an ocean. Kathy's son Spencer moved in with us about a
month after Elliott moved out (primarily because of back problems related to a
herniated disk). I helped with the move,
and did something I knew at the time was stupid: I was lifting a desk that was far heavier
than I should have tried to. Somewhere inside
my back a switch got flipped: the pain
was instantaneous and sharp. That was
the end of my contribution to moving day.
For
the next couple of days I had a faint glimmer of how Krystin must have felt
much of the time. I had a pretty much
continuous ache in my lower back, interrupted only by spasms of worse pain when
I moved in certain ways, and ibuprofen was only of modest help. Even though I had plenty of sleep, I
nonetheless felt fatigued all day because of the continued low-level pain. My days of moving furniture have to be over. No wonder Krystin was tired all the time; I
guess pain has that effect.
* * *
I'll
leave it to the reader to decide about the extent to which Margaret Atwood's
quip applies in the present political day.
"Stupidity is the same as evil if
you judge by the results."
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