pretty good reasons....................

 

     Every year at leaf-fall, Pwyll and his men rode to Arberth.  Riding through a valley five valleys from home they were like an old story Taliesin would tell.  And they had it in them to go with the story.  They had it in them, living now, riding now to Arberth, to be a tale told by a fireside in the far past, to be a tale told by a fireside in the far future.  And they would say, would sometimes say, that their only reason for being in the world was to give the world a chance to live out its own strangeness, its own danger, and its own wonder in them.

-John Moriarty, Dreamtime

thanks Rob

Opening paragraphs.....................

 For years I've had a recurring dream in which I am caught in a futile struggle to get somewhere.  Sometimes I'm running up a hill; sometimes I am climbing over boulders or swimming against a current.  Often a loved one is in trouble or something bad is about to happen. My mind is speeding frantically, but my body feels heavy and exhausted; I move as if through molasses.  I know I should be able to handle the problem, but no matter how hard I try, I can't get to where I need to go.  Completely alone and shadowed by the fear of failure, I am trapped in my dilemma.  Nothing else in the world exists but that.

-Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

The technical term is "hallucinations"......

 I have a proto-theory: That our brains tend to produce dreams at all times, and that during waking hours, our brains tame the dream machine into perception and truthiness. At night, we let it run free to keep the brain areas occupied. The foundational mode of the intelligence is therefore dreaming.

Here’s how I got there: For a while I’ve been intensely exploring generative AI systems, creating both text and visual images almost daily, and I am increasingly struck by their similarity to dreams. The AIs seem to produce dream images and dream stories and dream answers. The technical term is “hallucinations” but I think they are close to dreams. I’ve come to suspect that this similarity between dreams and generative AI is not superficial, poetic, or coincidental. My unexpected hunch is that we’ll discover that the mechanism that generates dreams in our own heads will be the same (or very similar) to the ones that current neural net AI’s use to generate text and images.

-Kevin Kelly, from this post

magic and dreams

 

-as cut and pasted from this wondrous blog

If I could have after-dinner cigars and drinks........

 .................with ten people I only know from the Intertunnel, Martin Gurri would be on the list.

And, when you think about it, the news media itself is something like an anxiety dream being dreamed by the articulate classes. Nobody should confuse the news with reality. Attention is fixed steadily on the predatory violence of the human animal, the record of war, crime and exploitation: with journalism, we are always a moment away from snapping awake, screaming. Sometime during the Trump years, that mood swallowed the internet. Once the gathering place of a peasant revolt, the web took on the rage, pettiness and mendacity of elite media and has since degenerated into the dictatorship of the rant.

-Martin Gurri, as culled from here

From the mind of Poe.......................................

 I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi."*

-Edgar Allan Poe, this being the opening paragraph to Eleonora

* [they ventured out against the sea of darkness to see what they would find]."

Dreaming.............................

“Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming.” 

-J. B. S. Haldane, Possible Worlds

enlargeable photo and attempted explanation here

Fifty years ago...................

The Allman Brothers Band................................................Dreams

Reckon up......................

27.  Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.  At the same time, however, beware lest delight in them leads you to cherish them so dearly that their loss would destroy your peace of mind.

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, from Book Seven

Blinded by the path........................

..............................................An interview with George Carlin

 

On dreams.............................

"I had a dream that feels important, but I don't know for sure."

"I guess that would depend on whom you believe."

"How so?"

"William Shakespeare called dreams the 'children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy.'"

"What's my other choice?"
"Dreams have also been called a sign of ambition.  I think the quote was" 'Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.'"

"And who said that?"

"That was also William Shakespeare."

"He couldn't make up his mind?"

She shrugs.  "I would say if it feels important it probably is.  Our subconscious can be downright persistent in prodding us along our path, even if it is a road we'd rather not travel."

-Camron Wright,  The Rent Collector

Don't be afraid........................

Denzel Washington..........................Aspire To Make A Difference

Unleash..................................

"By bringing our dreams into contact with reality, we can unleash our greatest energies and make the most progress in our lives."

-Gabriele Oettingen, as culled from this Don't Think Too Positive essay

via

Well, good..................................

 “Americans have combined human ingenuity, a market system, a tide of talented and ambitious immigrants, and the rule of law to deliver abundance beyond any dreams of our forefathers,”

-as quoting from Warren Buffett's latest annual report

via

Add a pinch of discernment too...

Heart of a lion..................

ordinary people.....................

     Against this inequality, however, there is a Chinese dream, shared by people all over the country.  Chinese governments have always trafficked in the rhetoric of national greatness, even when weak.  (The name of the country is often translated as "Middle Kingdom", but "Central Kingdom" is closer to its sense in English, the country at the center of the world.)  What makes the contemporary Chinese dream unusual is that it is also an individual one, shared by hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens.  It started in the 1970s as the dream that maybe hard times were over, that the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward and the madness of the Cultural Revolution could be set aside, and that ordinary people could not only get on with their lives, but that those lives might become easier.  This personal part of the Chinese Dream is very much like the American one, down to the obsession with housing, and tied to the aspirations of anyone in a market economy:  If you work hard, your life will improve, and that improvement will include material comfort and ownership of a home and a car.

-Clay Shirky,  Little Rice:  Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream

On passion.......................

via

It would be an aural feast........................

..........................................................I'd certainly tune in.

Life its ownself...................

     "What does it all mean?" many wonder while chasing purposes they're told are worthwhile, but which feel empty.  "What is the purpose of this life?" humans have wondered for millennia, contemplating how insignificant we are in the great cosmic symphony.

     Well, as the preeminent mythologist Joseph Campbell said, deep down inside, we don't seek the meaning of life, but the experience of being alive.  And that's what the nature of genius is ultimately about.

     It's about how we can empower ourselves to bring true meaning to our lives and the lives of others in ways most people would consider impossible.  It's about rising above a life of, as Thoreau said, "quiet desperation" that ends with our songs still in our hearts, and experience the rapture of true living.  It's about saying yes to our adventures.

     We rely on geniuses to entertain us, educate us, lead us, and show us all what our species is capable of.  We rely on geniuses to give us smart phones, electric cars, cures for diseases, social networking sites, sublime art, world-class food, and, indeed, the very fabric of our culture.

     If you've ever dreamed of playing a hand in the development of mankind, or if you just have a burning desire to improve one small aspect of it, then you have an adventure waiting.

     Will you take it?

-Sean Patrick,  Nikola Tesla:  Imagination And The Man That Invented The 20th Century