What women's dreams foretell

Feminine groups around the world seem to develop organically, and rather like Nature, lack definitive organization. Any exercise to discover the trends finds more diversity. But where they are similar is in dreams. Women’s nighttime experiences are universally vivid and memorable. I imagine dreams are the unconscious confirmation that, beneath diverse surfaces, women are the same.

Everett reports that dream episodes display distinct gender differences. She writes: 

I often dream I'm searching for something in an old, crumbling house, or discovering abandoned rooms in my childhood home. Occasionally, the dreams will become nightmares, featuring bereavement, murder or terrifying chases up spiral staircases. By contrast, my husband tends to have dreams so dull he either doesn’t remember them, or recounts such gems as: ‘I was waiting to buy a new printer cartridge and the receptionist told me to take a seat.' 

Some authors pin women’s remembering dreams on their gender training. Women are taught from childhood to be emotionally attentive, because the maintenance of relationships depends on them. They may thus continue to hone soft skills during sleep, which they recall during wakefulness.

Some other studies seek to explain dreams as the nature of women, the product of the genetic makeup. They are perceived the result of periods of heightened hormonal activity and body temperature. Hence, female hormones contribute to the extreme action categories, the most aggressive dreams appearing in the premenstrual period and in pregnancy.

In my view, and because menopausal women also report similar dreams, rising tides of female hormones during the menstrual cycle may not be solely responsible for nightmares. Instead, violent dreams could stem directly from unresolved stress carried over into sleep states. Thence, they are normal in stressful environments, for women of all ages. Especially in Asia and Africa, where traditions impose on them a secondary status, education is denied them, and female infanticide gets tacit social support. The female gender must serve and obey, while men take all decisions, and boys as young as ten police sisters and mothers.

This uncertainty of being itself would naturally disturb sleep patterns far beyond hormonal biorhythms and learning of gender roles. Their constant need for vigilance would take toll on mind and body, preventing the women from relaxing even at nighttime. Because of the dominations they are constantly subjected to, dreams amongst women trapped in traditions, would be no more than reality revisited.

Across the world, post-feminist women are able to exercise personal choice similar to men. These women have distanced from the choices of their mothers in relationships. They have equated the institution of marriage with gender discriminations of the past. They have sought to be in charge of their own lives, and to negate traditional social learning with liberal new outlooks of self-reliance.

Greenfield writes:

My parents had a terrible marriage, with my father working away a lot and my mother at home with six children, growing increasingly resentful. … it has made me reluctant not just to marry, but to commit fully to a relationship. I’ve always kept a bit back, never daring to make myself financially or emotionally vulnerable.

The women have rendered the marital piece of paper redundant for their chosen lifestyle, investing instead in the lifelong commitment to a shared future. They have preferred to pour energies into having a lovely home, good friends and happy children with their partners, eschewing legalities.

It would then seem logical to assume that liberal environments would largely diminish the dreams, because the extreme stresses ease. Women that have resolved gender issues, and gained equality in the social interface, should also experience male-type change in their dream sequences.

However, in any part of the world, and at any age, women’s continue to dream vividly. Why? I should think that, rather like old wine in a new bottle, the perceived social change remains superficial. Women wanting to escape from the pains of the past have been unable to adequately define equality. The choices taken, based on faulty conceptualization, do little to alleviate traditional fears of vulnerability. And thus generate the unconscious stresses that continue to express in terrifying dreams.

For instance, although Greenfield chooses to live radically different from her mother, her life pans out similar. She becomes precisely what she had sought to avoid – the single parent saddled with child responsibilities. The woman is now left unsupported, while the father of her children, and her soulmate of so many years walks out on the family, citing her lack of respect for him as his reason for doing so.

With the wisdom of hindsight, Greenfield writes:

One thing I do know is this: it’s far easier to separate when you are not married than it is if you are. For a start, there are no lawyers involved. All you have to do is say ‘I want out’, and off you go, which is surely the main reason co-habiting couples are more likely to split up than those who are married.

Many Western women that likewise free themselves of social weddings find out too late that cohabitation does not change mindsets. Their familial responsibilities do not reduce; in the absence of marriage, the increase is manifold. Surveys confirm that the incidence of “divorce” is more than twice higher amongst cohabitating couples when compared with those legally married. 

Post-feminist women may be missing the forest for the trees in their evaluations. The haste to achieve "gender equality" actually hurts women in the future. They appear more focused on the exercise of choice, than to think through all its possible outcomes. Like, its effect on their partners. When the public affirmation of marriage vows is omitted from the equation, men are provided convenient windows of escape as the novelty of the partnerships wane. It is clear that all parties are not on the same page - the men do not perceive oral agreements of long-term commitments as binding.

Firstly, because men are brought up to identify with organization, women’s decisions to step outside of it earn neither respect nor compliance. Secondly, in an organized society, the institution of marriage needs to be appropriately organized too. Rather than demolish the institution of marriage itself, women need to push for changes in legislation that support them. Finally, social ceremonies confirm the social contract; else the individual becomes isolated, outside the social purview. Errant partners are far more likely to conform with pressure from the collective, than to respond to the entreaties of individual women.

Perhaps the point expressed in dreams is that for the women, the habits of dependence persist despite the modern notions of equality. Women have wanted others to be different, but within their self, attitudes resist change. Women anywhere in the world are yet to centre in their universe. Despite “equality”, they continue to perceive themselves as satellites, nurturers and caregivers romantically awaiting rescue from their own decisions while suffering the extreme stress their dreams foretell, just as their sisters under the skin do elsewhere.

References for this post:

1. Everett, Flic. “Why women's dreams are much wilder than men's... who often don't remember them because they are so dull” dailymail.co.uk. Mail Online. 14th September 2011. 
2. Greenfield, Louise. “Like many co-habitees, Louise dismissed marriage as 'just a piece of paper'. Now she admits it would've kept her family from falling apart” dailymail.co.uk. Mail Online. 15^th September 2011. 

The socialist attitude

Perceptions of socialist attitudes tend to the negative, especially in the West. The assumptions may be of some sort of discrimination against creative enterprise nurtured in poverty-stricken populations. However, the socialistic slogan generally attributed to Karl Marx: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need may actually owe its origins to the 'right' - the moral teachings from religious discourse of times gone by! 

In response to the socialist attitude perceived in our posts on the London riots, a reader comments: 

In my opinion most people, who start life with very little, have a socialist attitude that says “those that have should give some of it to everyone else (me)”.

In societies used to outlooks of individualistic enterprise, the thought may conjure up visions of large groups of poor people feeding off other groups in parasitic existence.  The  socialist attitude would then appear to sponsor the maintenance of poverty, facilitating hooliganism and apathy to honest labour. 

The reader also writes: 

As people earn more and get a better standard of living and more possessions their opinion tends to move to the right and they then think “those who have a lot more than me should share it BUT I don’t think I should share what I have worked for with those who don’t work”.

In other words, with the gradual accumulation of personal possessions, people's interests also change, turning to self at the expense of society. I should think the larger a social organisation is, the more it needs to subscribe to certain socialistic values, if only to keep the collective together in harmony. People that live in society, rich and poor, have certain duties to the collective, in the same way that members of a family are responsible for its identity and organization. 

Democratic societies with formidable Diversity, like India for instance, have had to incorporate these values into their Constitution, assuring justice, liberty, equality and fraternity to all members within its fold. That means to carry the entirety forward to a new level of competence irrespective of caste, creed, colour and class. That also means to decrease divides between diverse social groups, and to fail to do so is to fail democracy. 

Psychologist Adler perceived the balance between social interest and self-interest, crucial for harmony. Since none can exist in isolation, people join with other people of similar background, employment, or status to form social groups. Groups co-exist with other groups, having interrelationships for the same reason, essentially to help themselves. 

Kronemyer explains:

“Social interest” … translates as “community feeling,” as opposed to one’s private interests or concerns. … If one has social interest then one evidences or enacts a “useful” style of life. If one does not have social interest then one is self-absorbed and is concerned only with one’s self. Such a style of life is “useless.”

With overt preoccupations with own wants and expectations, people desensitise to the needs of others in the same universe. In coping with the daily stresses of being in the world, they prefer to adopt the selfish style of living. It should be of no surprise then that within the prevailing sense of individualism in a rapidly complicating world, many more people believe that they alone should enjoy the fruits of labours. 

The concentrated devotion to owning more possessions, tilts the balance towards self-interest at the expense of social interest, and ultimately leads to the ethical bankruptcy witnessed in recent times. In many parts of the world, the powers-that-be as well as groups lower on the social hierarchy appears to thus lose their moral compass. 

In the community living of Christian apostles centuries earlier that the scriptures provide glimpses of, the so-called socialistic values seem to be upheld in their fair distribution among the ordinary people in society. In Acts 4, it says:

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common… There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need.

It seems logical to infer therefore that, when individuals and groups share resources between them respectfully, neither question of resource control nor of unmet needs arise. True, the simplicity of the earlier times has been lost in the complexities of the present day. However, much of the change in people’s minds from then to now has been in negativity. Attitudes have not expanded to encompass Diversity, but have instead shrunk to in-groups, and competitive self-interest.

The Parable of the Bags of Gold (Matthew 25:14-30) provides insight into an effective process of harnessing abilities that could be relevant even today. It says:

Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

The master of the house in the parable was fully cognisant of the differential abilities of his employees. Present day wisdom might have advised investing all of his wealth in schemes guaranteeing maximum returns. But rather than simply boost the bottomline for himself alone, the man in power opted to provide opportunity to all his workers in accordance to their individual abilities, and share the proceeds of their work with them. 

The point is the socialist attitude does not demand doles, but exhorts those blessed with privilege to talent manage those less fortunate. Over the centuries of their existence, the scriptures have taught no different. On his return from the journey, the master in the parable rewarded each person proportionate to the labour they put in. The man that not only did no work, he further justified his action with presumptions that the employer's profit sources were dubious, got not reward but punishment for his brand of selfishness. 

In the context of the riots in London, criminal activity should indeed be dealt with in accordance to law. However, the punishments should fit the crimes. Prejudicial judgements, concerned solely with exercising power, usher in retribution, not justice. The organizational machinery has the positional clout to to make development happen; they perhaps need the will to bring outlying groups into mainstream. 

Similarly, to help others help them achieve their targets, it behoves businesses to also invest in social development; however very few do. When focused on the bottomline, corporate bodies tend to become insensitive to both people and environment. In the drive for immediate gains, they refuse to consider the future effects of depletion of natural resources. They forget that they are dependent on people within and outside the company for their survival; profit making is a distant dream unless goods and services are sold and bought.

In earlier posts on this site, on the effects of businesses reneging on their corporate social responsibility (CSR), we wrote:

The abuse of resources by production and manufacturing houses, like the indiscriminate release of industrial wastes into rivers, toxic gases polluting the air and thinning the ozone layer, have been implicated in global warming, changing climate patterns and new diseases. Indiscriminate hunting has also endangered many animal species … Multinational corporations (MNCs) have at opportunity, flouted human rights and environmental concerns in developing nations… 

Perhaps prophetically, we also wrote about a year ago, that:

Business and political compulsions have created the “conflicts” that divide people. The single-minded pursuit of advantage has retarded healthy development in human relations. It has instead borne bitter fruit – us-and-them polarizations on the basis of race, religion and culture, and vengeful reactivity. The privileged have grown richer and greedier while the poor, more disadvantaged and resentful. The accumulated negativity displays in their eagerness to embrace any cause that advocates the removal of perceived “inequalities” through violence.

In the present context of the outpouring of reactive violence, it seems clear that social interest has all but died as ethical bankruptcy becomes socially generalized. The connivance of corporate and political circles accentuates divides creating polarized groups of haves and have-nots in terms of privilege and opportunity. 

The unhealthy competition for resources raises inter-group tensions, mistrust and perceptions of social inequality. Leaders in democracies need to resurrect the values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity in social dealings. If they are to forestall the growing disgruntlement spiralling into anarchy, they need to encourage citizenship amongst all groups of society, political, corporate and others. 

References for this post: 

1. “Chapter 4. Life in the Christian Community” usccb.org 

2. Kronemyer, David. “Alfred Adler’s Concept of “Social Interest”” phenomenologicalpsychology.com. Phenomenological Psychology. October 3rd 2009. 

3. The Diva. “CSR 3: The exercise of domination” thedivaatlarge.blogspot.com. TheDivaAtLarge. February 26, 2010. 

4. “The Parable of the Bags of Gold” biblegateway.com. BibleGateway.com.