Common Sense Essay Example

When the body falls into sleep, it creates a new reality. Dreaming is often associated with REM (rapid-eye movement) sleep, in which your eyes move randomly, your heart rate and breathing become inconsistent, and your skeletal muscles become paralyzed. This portion of sleep generally lasts 20-25% of sleep, with 5 to 7 dreams often lasting 5-20 minutes. The study of dreams is called oreinology, and consists mostly of neurology and psychology. The origin of dreams in the brain is uncertain, but is usually broken down between random stimulus creating random scenarios, and the brain’s way of organizing the days events and thoughts. Neither theory can be proven, and they are not definitely mutually exclusive. The recall of a days events into dreams is known as Dream Incorporation, and are believed to not be willed by the individual mind, and are collectively interpretable. Studied patients with amnesia have been shown to recall significant events that are outside of their working memory, with high accuracy. The release of neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and histamine are completely suppressed, and the prefrontal cortex shows decreased activity. 

The Role of Dreams in History

In history, dreams have been significant in many cultures and religions. For example, the animist creation narrative of indigenous Australians regard dreams as “timeless time” of formative creation and perpetual creating. Mesopotamian Sumerians have shown dream interpretation as early as 3100BCE, and view it as a way to see into other worlds. Assyrians have structures dedicated to dream gods, and developed the “Iškar Zaqīqu”, a dream book containing a guideline for deductive divination, and rituals to alleviate bad dreams. Egyptians believed that a person with good dreams is blessed, and that dreams were messages from gods. This belief led them to rely on dreaming for divine revelation, and specially made beds for dreaming in comfort and healing. Comparatively, in culture, dreams are often highly and specifically negative or positive, with examples such as the Wizard of Oz, the Manchurian Candidate, Nightmare on Elm Street, the Lathe of Heaven, and Inception. 

Dreams & Senses

No matter the divine meaning of dreams, nor any interpretation or causation, dreams have meaning to them. Specifically, in regards to the senses. When dreaming, it is often reported that many senses are active. Physical pain, auditory, taste, and obviously visual sensations are common, and linked to activity in lobes of specific function, such as the Cerebral Cortex, Parietal Lobe, Amygdala, and Hypothalamus. The brain consistently generates and interprets sensations in dreams, with cause and effect present in the dream. Awake or asleep, different parts of the brain receive different sensory information, most prominently in the occipital lobe, temporal lobe, and the parietal lobe. All senses of touch are in the somatosensory cortex of the parietal lobe. All perceived sensations are in direct correspondence with events in the dream.

Due to the preceding objective information, it can be said that your senses are not always aligned with reality. They are susceptible to alteration, and it is foolish to trust them at all times. Any source that is often and plainly altered or duped cannot be trusted. It is easy to trust your senses when the input seems to match. When you see your arm being cut and feel the pain subsequent, it makes sense. When you throw a mirror and hear the crash, it makes sense. But when you lay in one place for six hours yet see, hear, and feel some obscure adventure with no relation to your actual life, there are questions to be asked. Why do your mind and body need dreams? Why are they sometimes so fading and unremarkable, and sometimes indelible, complex, anomalistic? The science behind dreams is so lacking, it is almost entirely a mystery. Nobody understands them, and none of it has basis in logic. We cannot trust our senses, nor the world around us. There is no definite truth to anything which can be perceived. Reality is subjective in every regard. Existence and perception outside of the threshold of the mind is negligible; nothing surrounding can be proven, and all of the bodies senses are untrue. 

The Power of Belief

Anything is true. The laws of physics are subjective. If I believe that you have no ears, and you believe that you have no ears, than you haven’t got ears. If I believe it and you believe it, the thing will happen. How can there be a “real” world in which “real” things happen, when there is no understanding outside of one’s mind? All happenings are within the mind, and all that happens in the mind is true. If it is believed, whether understood or not, two and two make five. Gravity is unreal. The body in which you preside is relevant only to the potential you allow yourself. The only absolute truth is within the mind, and nothing more can be proven. All that we know, and all that we can know, is what exists within our thoughts. Exposure to reality is not trustable because reality is not logical. Nothing can be understood or made absolute. Nothing ever will. 

There is no knowing, and all is based solely on trust and ignorance. The only way to truly embrace this “existence” is to believe that it is real, and to reject all that is otherwise. The only understanding we will ever reach is of the world around us, because that is all that we are given. The functionality of the universe is irrelevant because it is not actual. Understanding the mind and brain is irrelevant because it is only the physical manifestation of an ethereal cognizance. There is no logic to the mind because it is not physically within the mass of tissue we title the brain. It is everywhere and everything. Thought, life, understanding, and belief is collective. All information, exposure, and experience is collective, only at separate points. We must embrace the simulative existence we have been placed in, lest we deny it til it is taken from us.