| Saturday, July 28, 2007 |
| do androids dream of electric sheep? |
For my Psych unit this sem, we have to do this research project about dreams. Well it's not much of a project because we only have to collect data on ourselves and the rest will be provided, as it always is, by the Australian side. It's a bit of a bummer that we don't get to do and experience the whole process like the on-campus students get to, but well, I'll take what I can get! Haha. At least this time we get to 'do more' in a sense, because we all have to keep a dream diary for seven days. Previously, the experiments were short enough to do within an hour, after which we could forget about it until it was time to write the report.
The study isn't going to be about dream analysis though, but rather about the vividness of dreams. Obviously we all have different sorts of dreams, but the way we experience our dreams are different too! My dreams are often quite vivid, and I have experienced nearly all the basic senses (sight, sound, touch, taste) except smell. For some strange reason, I don't think I have ever experienced smell in my dream. I find it fascinating that there are people who actually smell in their dream!
Just as there are people who experience all of the basic senses and more in their dreams, there are some who only experience the visual, auditory and kinesthetic (performing actions) in their dreams. There are also people who experience none of this! How is that possible?
Back to my dream diary. Last night was our first night of keeping this diary. The problem was that we were supposed to set our alarms 15 minutes before our usual waking time, but none of us had a regular waking time! Since school has started, I wake up at different times depending on what time my classes start. I also have been unable to recall any of my dreams since Monday!
Quick fact: All of us dream in our sleep (in the REM stage), whether we remember it or not. Personally, I experience three levels of dream recall:
1) I don't recall dreaming at all.
2) I recall dreaming, but don't remember the contents, or only have a vague idea of it.
3) I recall parts or the whole of my dreams, with various extents of vividness. The senses which I experience in my dreams also differ depending on the content.
Anyway, I think this applies for most people :)
So I set my alarm for 10:30 am this morning - even though I haven't woken up at that time for some time... xP I ended up waking up several times in the morning :\ The first time was at 7:30 am, God knows why. Maybe it was because I was worried that I'd miss my alarm and consequently be unable to recall my dream. I don't want my dream diary to be empty for all seven days! I've noticed that when I'm tense about something, like if I have an exam, my body tends to pick up on that somehow and I'll end up waking earlier than I intended, or waking up more than once in my sleep. The power of the mind!
I woke up again when my dad came into the room before leaving the house, which was annoying because my sleep had already been interrupted several times already. Anyway, I dreamt a lot in my sleep, and I don't rememeber most of them save the one I had just before I was awoken by my alarm! I do remember dreaming, however, about waking up and groggily filling up my dream diary. -__-" On the other hand, sometimes when I'm in a half-awake, half-asleep mode, I don't know if my dreams are really my dreams or my thoughts! So I could have simply been thinking about filling up my diary...
Well, after I woke up I lay there for a while feeling disappointed that I could not recall my dreams. Then the memory of my dream came flooding back, at which point I sat up and started filling in my dream diary. Haha! To cut a long story short, I experienced, once again, all the senses in my dream, including taste, because I had steamboat in my dreams...lol! I even remember that I had two egg yolks (I love egg yolks) in my soup and the other stuff that was in it. I'm not sure if I smelt anything, but it had been raining in my dream and that part felt very real - the coolness of the air after the rain had stopped, the wet ground and the water glistening on it, the smell of rain (?).
I didn't always dream this way though. When I was younger, my dreams didn't include taste because I never dreamt of food. A couple of years ago I started dreaming of food, but never tasted it in my dreams. Now I occasionally eat in my dreams. I wonder if it's because I go to bed hungry much more often now?
Make of this what you will (Freud for one would have lots to say) - I went through a period where I dreamt about going to the toilet to 'release my bladder' - to put it nicely, haha. I've gone to all sorts of toilets in my dreams. Once I dreamt of a toilet which had a dirt floor, mud walls and a thatched roof! Another time, it was rows upon rows of cubicles on the steps of a round, open-air stadium. In my dreams it often takes a long time for everything to be passed out, and once my friends got impatient of waiting for me and went off! Sometimes the cubicle doors are incomplete; half-doors or have slits big enough to people to see through. They are never dirty though. Perhaps I dream of this so much because I have the bad habit/ability to hold my bladder for extended periods of time. xP Ok I know you didn't have to know that! Then again, I have the bad habit/ability to control my bowels as well, and I never dream of passing my bowels!
Ok too much information, haha. The title of this post is actually the title of a book by an unfortunately named but highly acclaimed sci-fi author, Phillip K. Dick. I had to read it as part of my unit materials for one of my Comms. units. The book is set in a post-apocalytic world where technology has advanced to the point where androids (human-like robots) are virtually indistinguishable from humans, except that they do not have emotions. They're also dangerous because some of them have killed their human masters (they're mostly used as servants). It's also a world in which most animals are extinct and many dream of owning a real animal as a pet.
The protagonist of the story, a bounty hunter, keeps an electric sheep, all the while dreaming of replacing it with a real one. He comes to realise, however, that the androids he 'retires' appear to have dreams of their own - that is why they killed their masters to escape slavery and to make a life of their own. The differences between human and android are further blurred when he encounters another bounty hunter who kills mercilessly and has no empathy. He experiences an identity crisis of sorts when he realises that he actually empathises for androids.
I enjoyed the book immensely, despite the fact that it didn't have a real resolution. I'm glad I got to read it, actually. Thanks to Comms., I also got to watch this film called Donnie Darko [spoiler alert for the link!]. I actually wanted to blog about then it but I didn't and the moment has passed...so that's that. It doesn't have the kind of ending I prefer either, but I still enjoyed it immensely, although this appreciation only came after the second viewing. It may not be apparent at first, but it's a film with a lot of heart. And that's what I can always appreciate in a work. :)
In other words - donno what the heck it all is supposed to mean (although I did well for the unit overall xP), but I like it! Watch the Bunny!! (He's really not as scary as he seems.) Additional incentive: Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Donnie, and does a brilliant job of it :D |
posted by esther @ 11:58 AM  |
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