Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 124: A Knife In The Back

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

“Loyalty is the strongest glue which makes a relationship last for a life time.” – Mario Puzo

Greetings friends, welcome to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend Dank via Discord, and he doesn't have a lot of time, so we're going to jump straight into it in just a moment. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the video game streams and other things. I don't have the physical copy of the book again. Currently available, 16 works of historical dream literature, the most recent dreams and their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson.

I'm going to pop it up on the screen here, and it'll move across to catch attention. You can get all this and more at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com. I'm going to pop that up down here as well. Encyclopedia, MP3 podcast episodes for your downloading pleasure. Complete list of all 16 books. That's enough talking about me. Enough shit.

Got a shill. Got a shill every day. Dank, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me on. Good deal. And for everyone out there, Deng's just a random guy. I met randomly, you know. So you got a dream.

I'll talk. to you. It doesn't have to be. And you see, also, you don't have to be on camera. It's a better episode. People like to see what the dreamer looks like, but it's not mandatory. I'll talk to anybody and there's no benchmark for the quality of a dream. They're all each unique mystery. So, don't, don't hesitate to contact me because you don't want your face on camera. Hey, we can do that too. So anyway, I keep saying I know you're short on time and I want to respect that time limit and then I keep rambling. That's kind of what I do. So, you're fine. You're fine. Yeah. It doesn't have to be but yeah well we're going to do what we can with the time we have available um and then that's fine too

i like the four and a half hour marathons and i like the shorter ones too where i'm really tested to kind of get to the point a little faster this is all um iron sharpens iron type of thing where i'm like you bring me a challenge i try and rise to meet it and where i fail teaches me something why couldn't i do that better what did i miss what am i what is my method lacking i still don't understand my own method i i've dialed it into like well it's got three parts but what am i actually doing in each of those three parts. I don't know when I know it'll be time to write a book. That's what I'll do. Do you know, a wizard's guide to dream interpretation. Copyright. Benjamin Davidson, 2023. There you go.

Got to say it. Okay. So we're just going to jump. Well, thank you very much. I'm actually looking at doing an entire series of books called a wizard's guide to X, Y, Z, like an idiot's guide or a guy. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, like that. Where this is more like, you know, Well, you get the idea. I'll over explain it. I'll stop right there. Spending too much time talking about me. So we're going to jump straight into the dream.

You just tell it like you remember it. No stress. You literally can't do this wrong. So I'm ready when you are. So I don't remember like too much about how the dream began entirely. I do know that it was like nighttime. It seemed like it seemed like it was real because obviously I was sleeping. It was so it was nighttime.

So I kind of like woke up in the dream in the middle of the night. And I can't remember exactly how it all started. But like it kind of like escalated very quickly. Like I was in my apartment at the time because this was a older dream. And like there was a hallway in between like, you know, my room and like my bathroom and the apartment. You know, it was a fairly small apartment. everything was kind of like right next to each other. So there wasn't like a lot of room to like do much.

The bathroom was like right across and it was like a very narrow hallway. And I don't remember exactly why I went out into the hallway or like what alerted me that somebody was at the door or whatever. But yeah, because I can't remember at all. not but I really think about the dream like I can't remember at all why I have like opened the door whether like this was like a burglar because there was there was a an assailant at the door in the hallway and I think I was home alone even though I lived with my girlfriend right it's like really weird even though I didn't really notice that at the time like I don't think about it. like I don't remember like anything except like somebody like being at the door like in a salient like you know some random burglar like being at our door so I'm in this little hallway and the narrow hallway is right down from our door like it's directly down the hall from our door even though it's an entire like living room and everything like this apartment is

designed so that like you come out of the bedroom door there's another, you know, doorway right there for the bathroom and then, like, directly to your right all the way down, like, there's a, there's the door out of the apartment. So, like, everything's like, you know, that, it's just that easy

to, you know, walk into the apartment and be like, hey, that doorway right there, that's the bedroom. Like, as soon as I walk out of the bedroom, there's, like, somebody at the door. I think the doorway was open, if I recall, actually, and I'm thinking about it. And they all of a sudden just start hurling knives. And this is like, I've never really had any dreams that had any like, you know, like extreme, like violence.

Or maybe like a fight or something. Maybe I've maybe we had deja vu about a fight I had when I was a kid once or something. But like I've never had like, you know, anything like really, it like that from what I can remember. Unless I had like, it didn't be a dream about being in the movie. or a show or something, you know. Like that's obviously fictional. But like, yeah, it was just throwing like knives at me. And it was kind of like theatrical in a sense where I was, it was like, you know,

I was kind of like Batman or something because it's like none of these things were like hitting me or if they did, they were kind of like, you know, kind of bouncing off of me or like barely hurting me at all. You know what I mean? And I'm just like stuck at the end of the hallway because I hadn't like, towards the door, I don't think. I was still, like, in the doorway of the room, like, closer to the bathroom, and there's, like, the end of the hallway where it's, like, a closet that's closed.

So I'm just kind of, like, up against that door, like, you know, trying to dodge these knives and knock them away. And I don't, I don't, I don't think they actually stopped. I feel like they may have stopped, or I may have picked one up and, and, and, and, And throwing one back and rush the guy at the door. And this is why I said it gets a little violent because, you know, obviously, you know, there's an assailant. So I had to do something myself. And so I take one of the knives and I start to attack them.

And when they're finally, like, finished off and everything, I like, I'm like, who is this person, like, attack me? my part like i don't i don't have any enemies you know like but they're like you know they have their face covered up and like a like a not like a ski mask but you know those um those burglar mask where they kind of like take something and cut holes and i can't i can't remember exactly what they take and cut the holes into um like a skull cap they'll take like a skull cap and they'll uh you know like the like the beanies like that tin pool wears or something like uh they'll they'll they'll take those and they'll pull it down over their face and they'll cut the cut holes in it and everything. It was one of those.

So I pulled that off and it was my girlfriend. And that, and that, like, jarred me and, like, woke me up. And that was the end of the dream. Okay. Just finishing my notes here. All right. And that's it. And it's that easy.

There's, you know, I just shut up and listen. I've tried not to interrupt it all or ask for details. And I go like, this is, you know, it is what it is. And literally you can't do it wrong. Here's what I remember. Here's what I was feeling. As much or as little as you have, you tell me. And then we jump into it again.

Go back to the beginning and I start looking at, okay, what, what am I seeing here? How do I see it better through your eyes? So how, how, about how long ago was this? You said it's a little bit older? Yeah. So, yeah, okay. This was, I think. this was during like COVID since like since like no I can tell you this was like my ex so this was

during COVID uh and we broke up or or at all even next you break up it all ended uh in like February of 2021 so this was like this at least had to be in 2020 would you be surprised This was like at least. Oh, go ahead. No, sorry. I was, I was just saying. It was at least before 2020, maybe the summer 2020. Okay.

Or, yeah, summer 2020, because this was 20. So, time frame, we're looking at, you know, two to three years-ish ago. Maybe summer 2021. What I was thinking, and I was going to be, I was going to, going to do the uh well i was going to do it a different way but i'm just going to ask instead would you be surprised if i if you told me this dream back then and i'd say you guys your relationship is probably not going to last after this dream did you wake up oh would not have been surprised okay yeah well you've got your girlfriend as an assailant you've put her that way in your mind and

you feel like you're being attacked um there's definitely something something going on with that there i think that's probably where we're getting to is like why what what was it that gave you that clue maybe and it's it's Sometimes it's in the nature of the way you formulate the, the way you're conceiving the intact, where you show it to yourself. So it's nighttime, you're sleeping and you awaken in the dream. So that's a very common thing that a lot of people report. You know, it's not in every dream, but it's one of those things where it's like, you know,

it's not unheard of. And definitely a lot of people report the same thing of this idea of awakening. Okay. There's also, I guess I should add in the attacking part too. Like there was an issue with like her having like a, her getting upset and like, you know, pulling out knives for some unconceivable reason. In real life, she would grab a knife. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. And it would just be like more, it would be like a like what are you planning on doing with that? Like, yeah, like very uncomfortable. but yeah. Yeah. When that dream happened, this was like a couple of years after that had started,

like at least like, because we'd been together, when I had the dream, we'd been together at least like three, four years or at least we've been living together three to four years already. Okay. Yeah.

For sure. That's, I'm just wrapping my head around it too. So this is, so it's a very direct representation in the dream. of actual real life behavior. She wasn't dressed as a burglar, face covered throwing knives,

but the idea that she would be the person using a knife in some threatening manner, yeah, that directly relates. So very much so. Why, you know, the idea, what I'm getting to with this kind of stuff is I started identifying these elements. So you weren't already awake in the dream.

You showed yourself awakened. in the dream as if you're and there's a connection in my mind that pops up immediately which is the idea of becoming aware. You go from a state of unawareness to a state of becoming aware and that's metaphorically represented maybe by awakening showing yourself waking up from an insensible unconscious state. Does that feel right in terms of where this dream starts?

Yeah. Yeah. But that's all I like our. remember I don't, I know I woke up like that was in the middle of the night. Like, I was exactly where I was almost. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And it's one of those things where it's like, why would that show up in the dream? Like it's because it's present, it means something. It's, it's a, it's an element of it like, uh, you know, someone who is, uh, say, unaware of a problem. You might tell your friends like, dude, wake up. This shit's happening and you need to realize it. So kind

of showing ourselves awakening to a scenario is like, like, you know, I need to become aware of this. I need to accept that this is happening in some way. So there's this kind of, that's, that's, that's what it feels like to me in, in that sense, like waking up to reality. But, you know. That is kind of how I felt after I had that dream, too, because it was like, there's very rarely that, I don't, I don't think really ever that a dream has ever woken me up, like, actually

like that, because at the end of the dream, I actually woke up out of my sleep. Because it actually scared, scared the mess out of me. Yeah, for sure. And that's something that, again, is, you know, it's not in every dream, of course. It's not a feature of every nightmare. But, and there's even dreams where it's like you are startled awake by something disturbing, even though you didn't have a helpless feeling of terror. It's just the disturbing nature of the thing, even if you're rather stoic about it, still has enough force to kind of jolt you out of like, for you to desire to get away from the experience of seeing it happen in your, in your mind's eye in that sense. So, yeah, also very common in terms of what people say, you know, oh, I was so disturbed by something or frightened, terrified even that, you know, that's the most common thing of nightmare, terrified, startled awake, that kind of thing. So it may not be relevant where this took place in the apartment itself. You're showing yourself a representation of a real place. you're grounding a lot of this in in a very real setting. You know, it's not a fantasy setting.

It's not far removed. This isn't speculative fiction in that sense. This is my real house, my real life, the environment I'm familiar with. And so that might be the most relevant element of the physical setting that it is your real apartment. And you were living in that apartment when it happened. And that is actually, like, part of what made it so, like, disturbing is that it was like, it seemed like very real. Yeah. That's what made it all the more real because it just seemed like, you know, that I had just, you know, walking up out of bed and this was like actually happening.

I felt like I was in a dream, though, because I've had lucid dreams before and a lot actually. And I felt like, I was like, that's why I was saying when the knives were like kind of coming at me. I was like, this is like, what is this? Like, I mean, I'm not being hurt. So it's obviously the real. It's kind of how I was feeling that. Yeah. That's an interesting thing.

I mean, there's, I'm developing a theory. And I'm probably not the only one. But things need to make sense to me in order for me to speak on them confidently. So I'm saying take this for what it's worth. It seems to be like, you know, we sleep so deeply. We are completely unaware that our brain is processing. But it is. We just can't see it because it's so far removed from consciousness.

Then there's another level up, which is we are conscious, or it's close enough to our conscious awareness that we can perceive it. It's entered that liminal perception zone, but we're still asleep. So it, there's no voluntary aspect to it. We're watching a movie in that sense. Even if it's a movie showing. by us to us, which is a weird thing. Who is watching and who is showing what is happening here? But it's very similar to observing yourself having emotions and thoughts,

and separating yourself on purpose from yourself. It just kind of happens biologically when we're asleep. And then there's the next level up, which seems to be the lucid dreaming zone, which is not only are you aware of what's happening, as in you're perceiving it, but you can actually reflect on yourself perceiving it, which is sometimes then gives you the ability to say, well, I want this to go differently or I don't like that, wake me up, those kind of things. And then the next level up would be actual consciousness of I'm no longer sleeping, something like that. Again, this is all theoretical.

I'm trying to explain it, but that kind of seems to be the gradation of it. And I'm, you know, I sleep so deeply. I don't remember most of my dreams. I mean, I rarely ever remember I have had a dream. and when I do I would say the same thing most of the time most of the time for you and that maybe that's why when it does happen like

I like really remember it and I I did at one point try to kind of hone it too so I was like you know I was really into the make yourself lucid dreams kind of thing I've never never tried it I'm a little skeptical of that I think it might be more

I don't know I say I'm skeptical and I haven't tried it so well fair point it might be my memory too because I like I tend to have a pretty good memory so like I told you I have a lot of deja vu and like I don't remember dreams after the fact so like that alone kind of make me want to like remember the dreams before it's deja vu so I've always tried to be like you know try to remember that I've never really kept like a dream journal or anything I've always tried to just remember it from like you know my actual memory and and that usually requires me to like kind of

experience it. So yeah, I took, I tried to take a lucid dreaming thing kind of seriously. And I was like, well, if I can kind of try to remember that I'm in a dream, maybe I'll remember it better when I'm outside of the dream. I've spoken with people who report success with that. Did you, did you find that that did kind of work focusing your attention on I'm going to be lucid when I dream tonight, that kind of thing? Yeah. And a lot of the time it just happens. Like, you know, I mean, I like I want to say, I do kind of smoke and stuff like that. So it's not. like I haven't had a little help with the process. Sure. I take melatonin. We all get to sleep our own way. Yeah, yeah.

But I would say like as far as me trying, like I would say it's the same as what you said. I don't really feel like I dream that often because a lot of the time I do sleep very deeply. So when I do like have a dream and I remember it, it's kind of like, you know, that dream where I'll usually like wake up. of it having remembered it if it was really significant like I told you I have like about two more I can probably tell you sure a decent amount about because they they had so much of an impact that when I woke up I thought like that thought it was real and I was upset when I woke up I've had stuff like that when I was since I was a kid like I would like have a dream and I would think it was real and I would wake up and I would be upset like I would like come

into lots of money and I'll be like ah I wake up and I'm like ah that really like it sucks. I think that emotion is kind of what made me remember it more. And that, that is very true. You know, the stronger, and that actually emotion strongly tied to memory in general, things you don't care about, you don't tend to remember, things that are meaning really impactful, highly emotional. And that's why that's why trauma sticks with us. It is so deeply negative and emotionally impactful that, yeah, scars you for life, that kind of thing. Or at least it's always going to be a part of you and has to be incorporated into who you become in order to get over it. I think there's a lot of things you're describing.

Number one, the idea of waking up from a dream. So speaking of my historical dream literature, there's stories that are told in those works. And it's fascinating stuff where one of the authors laments his dreams of being given a precious gift because he wakes up and it's not there. He actually says he would have preferred to have nightmares because the relief from waking up from a nightmare is better than the disappointment of, oh, I didn't get that precious gift. wanted that I did get. I would agree with that. Right, right? Honestly, it really hurts when you wake up and it's like, oh, well, that kind of suck.

Especially when it's like one of the dreams I wanted to tell you about is a, I fell in love in a dream. Oh, yeah. That's, that's got to be just. It's not the first time either. Yeah, that's like soul crushing to wake up from. I had one that just occurred to me that, you know, just in just the shortest snippet. I was in the backseat of a vehicle with Maryland. Monroe and we were making out. And I woke up from that like, no, she was about to disrobe and carry it

further. Uh, I can't believe I forgot that one. That was, oh, that was, I was a teenager, you know, and I think I'd just, uh, recently become aware of Marilyn Monroe. I'm like, she's real pretty. Wow. You know, iconic beauty standard for 40s and 50s. Uh, anyway, but why her specifically, you know, at that time in my life, you know, not just, it makes sense I would have that kind of dream, but what was the? right why not someone else very interesting there and it was like girls at my school i had dreams like that about and it was like i don't even really think about her at all like you know what i mean like literally people i didn't like at all like even i didn't even like the personality i don't think

they were that pretty yeah it was like it was weird yeah those often those dreams are like if we can establish that no i was not interested in her in real life why that representation then and that usually comes down to other aspects of their purpose of their purpose personality maybe that you found attractive? Well, one of them, I guess I did have a crush on when I was like very young. Well,

that's a more direct, yeah, direct link. But at that point, I had like, it was like a long, long gone. Didn't like her.

Or she hadn't grown to be particularly attractive either. So, yeah. Yeah. And some people stay beautiful and you just realize, man, they turned into a real bitch.

Why? God, their personality's awful. I wouldn't have anything to do with her, no matter how attractive. Right. But, you know, anyway. But, but, but, and then those dreams tend to fit into a category of reminiscence or wishful thinking in terms of I, I, I enjoyed the feeling of the attraction when they were at a certain age. And I was to, and missing that, the, the hope of potential.

Those are the direction I go with it. It may not be right for a specific case, but. We start looking at, you know, if it's not the person, if it's not just a pure animal sexual attraction, if it's something else. And a lot of times, we'll get something where, say, and I use the dream of, you know, a dream that you stab your dog. You would never do that in real life. You love your dog. It woke you up because it was horrifying. Why would I do that? It does not mean you want in real life to stab your dog. You have no hurtful feelings. It means something else. And it can be the same as, you know, you imagine yourself, say, in a homosexual relationship with a man, and you wake up and you're like, whoa, why would that? why would I dream that? That is not what I want. That's not who I am. And it's not a secret urge. It's like there's something else about that. You're imagining yourself married, say, to the qualities of that person and the icon of that person is a, is a masculine, you know. So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it isn't like, oh, you're secretly gay. I mean, there's a lot of, maybe it, maybe it is for some people. But the idea is, if you're certain, you're not,

fair enough. We go with that. And we say, okay, what else would put you in that where you needed to conceive it that way, where you needed to see this representation. And usually in those dreams, there's no disturbing element of you. I'm not gay. It's not even about the gay. And there's no sex scene in the dream. It's more like, oh, I was married to a man. Why would I do that? Well, there's something about marriage. There's something about masculinity that you need to bond yourself with in a more permanent way, like a more permanent union like marriage is supposed to be. There's a lot of the ways we conceive of these things is like, why this situation for this person displayed in this way.

And we're way off track too. We're working on the other dream where, but this is all related to the idea of, so you had a relationship with this girlfriend. You'd been with her a while and she started doing some threatening things with knives. And that was in real life as well. And there was, it seemed like this was heading towards the end of the relationship when this happened. And you're like, how am I, how am I conceiving my relationship with her? You know, she didn't help you fight off a burglar, but leave afterwards saying, I can't. stay. And then it's like, well, we were good partners, but I got to go because this ain't

working. I mean, that's a different kind of experience. And this is, she is the threat. She is the burglar. And she's hidden. There's, there's like this sneaky element of, I'm going to hide my true identity and attack you and really try to legitimately wound you. I mean, she probably didn't know you wouldn't be hurt. Her in the dream. And you have to overcome that and then expose her. I'm getting way ahead of the, but that's kind of the narrative. I'm going to stop there and just ask what you think about that so far. Like that's kind of where I'm headed in my brain about this narrative. Oh, yeah, that was pretty much it.

I mean, and it's not like I didn't like know. It's just maybe it wasn't like a I can fix her kind of thing. It was more of like, I kind of signed up for this. Like, because we'd, we had like, you know, we had a bit of a more serious, relationship than most like it wasn't just she wasn't just my girlfriend we had like uh we had had like a child together um oh so there was like uh there we we ended up doing like adoption and everything but um there was like that aspect where it wasn't just you know just a girlfriend yeah that that bonds people uh you know i talk about this too sometimes i argue about it you know online and but this is a

different thing it's like there's there's something As I said, I think off the air, I have a conception, Yin Yang style, that the abstract is as real as the concrete. And a lot of people go, but you can't touch it. Like, yes, it's real in a different way, but it's equally real. Yeah, I definitely believe the same thing. I'm glad you kind of dig that because we think of concepts and categories and things fit in a category or they don't. And it's kind of like the idea of establishing a category and the reality of whether a specific concrete thing fits in that category. or not. That's that's not negotiable. Once the category is defined. Oh yeah.

Definitely. I'm sorry. That just reminds me of an argument that I started on one of the servers before about whether math is abstract or not. Oh, yeah. And people had some very, very spicy opinions on that. Isn't that weird what opens the door to like intense, emotional, and people get rage, ragey. You're dumb. You just, I think math is abstract or not. And then it was like mild opinion, rage. But it's exactly what you are saying. Yeah.

It's exactly what you were saying. It's both. It is. That's why I agree with you. I think there's some things that are completely imaginary. I mean, like literally imaginary numbers. But so where I was going with that is the idea of, of, I think the most real, things that are the most real are where abstract and the concrete meet.

That's what most people, I think, mean when they describe reality, although they use the word reality, although what they're conceiving it of as physical objects. They're only seeing half the equation as the real part instead of the intersection. So this is also the root of the disagreement in math. I mean, there's mathematical philosophers, if you believe it or not, that would say, you know, some say math is an invented language and some say it is a discovered. discovered language in terms of all these things existed. The principles were always there. And I tend to be on that side of the argument. Like the concept of 2 plus 2 equals 4 existed before humans could count on their fingers and toes and understood what numbers were.

Like that that's something that can't be created by social convention. It's not just a legal fiction, as they say. Well, it is because we say it is. It's actually something. And the way I look at it is like the concept of zero. circle in the sand and there are no rocks in the circle that is zero you take one rock and you put it in the circle right yeah there is one you add a second rock now now there are two rocks in the circle because so i and i tried to explain that once too and someone on the uh um that's how i

explained to my nephew actually like so they can understand why math is important yeah like i'm like this stuff is like representing like things in the real world like because it actually exists exactly. Even though it seems stupid when it's on paper, it might seem a little weird, but yeah, because it's abstract. And then it gets more and more abstract and you get these formulas. And I always, it broke my brain when we got into the, you know, X plus Y in the little things plus or, you know, plus two minus negative Y. What the fuck are you doing in my brain? Stop it. I got bounced. I am not a math, math, magician. I'm definitely more on the words and abstract concept of type of things.

Yeah, I like puzzles, so I really like that. I like puzzles. So I like, I'm trying to get back into it now because I want to, I want to do more mathy stuff. But I'm like, I haven't sharpened it. Well, there's also the practical application of stuff too is like if you have, you know, the measurement of the angles of the triangle, you know, A plus A squared plus B squared equals C squared, that kind of thing to get to get to get the sides of a triangle.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. That geometry is critical. And then you get it into, say, like, engineering. How do we make a bridge that doesn't collapse and can carry the weight of cars? You know it's real because you can use these principles consistently to create something that functions. I had an article recently about that, the Pythagorean theorem that some students may have proven the theorem, like, actually physically proven.

It was very interesting article. I didn't know. It was unproven. I thought it was just like accepted. I think it's like, because like it's a theorem. Like there was something specific about like, you know, whether like whether it was actually, you know, solid every single time. But I think that they, I think that they proved, they proved like that it wasn't just like a theory.

It's like a proof or whatever. I guess there's a different term. I'm not a mathematician. Yeah. No, me either. I kind of get what you're saying, well, it's a theory, like, like, whatever, gravity or relativity. It seems like it. We're pretty sure, you know, this is.

Because the numbers aren't usually exact, I guess, is the thing. But I think that they kind of prove that it kind of is. Gotcha. Or something like that. Yeah. Well, we get into the problem of pie, infinitely repeating whatever's. And anything less than the full series is short of reality. But we can't see the whole series.

and it never ends. It literally goes to infinity. At least as far as we can tell, maybe Pi goes out six million places and it eventually ends. We don't know that, but it looks like it doesn't. So as far as I can tell, maybe I'm way behind and they've already shown,

oh, yeah, Pi has an end. It's 800 and quadrillion. Yeah, they're still looking for it, I think. Yeah. That is, you know, that makes me think of Douglas Adams and the computer with the, what's the meaning of life? You know, what's the answer to the question, to the great question, 42.

Well, if it was pie, like the computer would still be rattling. The computers would still be calculating. It wouldn't even be rattling off the number yet. Yeah, that's a problem of AI too. What happens when we get to those ideas of giving a computer an impossible choice and telling it you're not allowed to choose either one and you must make a choice because something is going to happen anyway. We get like that trolley problem.

The trolley's coming. You know, you are in a situation where you can do nothing or you can do something. or you can do something and either one of the two is going to happen and neither one is acceptable. What do you do? How do you solve that? I think that's why everybody's worried about the programming, you know, the ethics behind it all. Yeah. No, that's a big deal.

That's behind my advocacy. We should not do this because, you know, the only way not to screw it up is not to make the attempt. I mean, we are flawed beings playing God trying to give birth to a, new type of conscious entity. We can't do that. We can't do that well, successfully, properly. We are not gods. We shouldn't try to be.

They're trying to slow it down. Apparently, they signed like something recently where they're telling people to slow down. Elon Musk and like, I think one of the founders of Apple and a couple other people are signed on to it. Good idea. Yeah. And it isn't that maybe we couldn't get closer to that someday.

I look at like, you know, again, Yin Yang style. I think progress and tradition are equally important. I have one foot solidly on either side of that left-right divide. I'm a true radical centrist or whatever they say. I want the balance. I want the harmony. I think we need constructive progress and stable order. We need both.

I think the human body is a perfect representation of that. We have a rigid skeleton without which we cannot be flexible. We cannot move and function in the world. And again, without being able to move and function, it doesn't matter how rigid our skeleton is. If it was too rigid, we could not move and go hunt food and keep ourselves alive. So it's this balance. It's that golden green.

Yeah. And it has to be both. It has to be both. And that's where you get the extremists on both side saying, no, absolute rigid order. No, that's a bad idea. No, everything must be no boundaries, complete chaos. No, also bad idea. And then you get into those interesting analyses of, I think, honestly, everyone.

And I think this is a truism and it's for obvious reasons. But the idea that everyone is conservative about what they know, about what they're familiar with, they don't want to change their formulas. Even if their formula was originally radical, once they've accomplished that, now you try to conserve it and you become conservative of, you know, like people are like liberalism or classical liberalism or the idea of being liberal has become a conservative position. I was like, yeah, we'd like to keep that and not maybe go into communism or socialism so much. We don't want that kind of radical change because it's just not, you know, for whatever reason.

I think most people are on that page. Like, you know, some, not all change is good or for the better. Yeah, I think it has to do with like the openness trait. Hmm. I think some of it does. like if you're more open to like to new it like you might not uh think that it's going to end up you know i think that's probably where like you know the that phrase comes from you know well it's uh world communism hasn't been derived because uh you're open to the idea that it can be

it can't be successful but yeah you know maybe everybody has like their own concept of what it is or what it truly is like what it truly means but that's why it always you know that's why any of those rigid ideas, like you were saying, end up becoming, like, problem because you're just, you know, it's just one rigid idea. You know, I think actually, like, the mixture of ideas is, like, the key. I think so, too. Because it allows more people to do what they like and do what they're comfortable with, and you have less conflict. Yeah. I think a lot of it is a problem of scale in some ways, because I conceive of the nuclear family as a communist dictatorship. It is a dictatorship of the proletariat, the father or mother, you know, the working class makes the rules

from each according to their ability to each according to their needs. I mean, it works. I mean, that's basically a good description of it. And they share, try to share equally and support each other and all the great things. I think you can expand that a bit to the, it's like you can expand it at a lesser, to a lesser intensity to extended family. And then to a lesser degree to your community and each each expansion of the bubble you kind of lose a little bit of the ability to apply that fully and and so you can get up to the scale of a you know a commune of 50 100 people and we all kind of work together we all know each other by name we all know our our personalities and our struggles and you get beyond those kind of small group settings and it's just impossible to

administer it top down in any way that doesn't just turn doesn't oppress people and and treat people unfairly, you know, so I just think it's a matter of scale in that regard. Not that it isn't a great idea, implementing it. It really is. It really is a matter of scale. Yeah. And I would say, I think that's why like the federal system, the federalist kind of system,

tend to work better too. Because it's, you can have like, you know, maybe one little group. You can have like a city or a town. Yeah. It operates like that. Maybe in its extended family and family friends. and extended family friends, like, you know, it branches out from there, like, and then you have, like, another small town next to it that has, like, you know,

a different set of values, but they let them, you know, they, they come together to decide on, you know, certain local issues or do stuff like that, but they don't have to directly follow all the same rules just because they live next to each other, you know? Oh, yeah. That's why I like those, what the states were supposed to be. They'd say, you know, 50 individual laboratories of democracy. Try it out, see what happens. And then we can learn from each other. It's okay that Tennessee does it different than Idaho or Oregon does it different than Florida.

And then we get to decide where we want to live. I mean, I'm kind of, I'm stuck in Oregon for now, which is a little too, a little too much both feet too far to the left. Not enough straddling the line, in my opinion. So maybe I need to move. And fair enough. I need to live where they've got the balance right or they're the way. the balance is a little bit more the other way because that's my comfort zone. You know, we'll see.

And that's okay. If the people here want to live like that, that's fine. I should, I should leave. You know, that's just, you were talking about openness. That made me think of it too. And it's the, it's definitely the synergy of how all those, because I consider myself highly open, but also highly conscientious and highly disagreeable. So I don't have a problem telling someone, I think you're wrong.

And I don't mean anything by it. And I don't feel offended to have someone tell me that. And I go, okay, fair enough. We believe different things. I think you're wrong too. Congratulations. Right? Yeah.

That's where I'm at. Some people have a harder time with that in terms of, that's pretty much how I think that's almost exactly how my, kind of my test came out with the Big Five. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. And I think that also, if you were able to kind of match yourself with, say,

friends that were similar, not identical. And you want some difference. And sometimes there's no accounting for taste and personality. Man, this person might complete opposite. And I just think. you're awesome and we click for some reason. Who knows? So I think that's kind of where the broadly libertarian side of things comes from is like, I am open to just about anything. I don't care what people do as long as you're not hurting someone else. I draw the line there.

conscientious is you take care of your business. You don't make it my problem. And that's what, that's the mutual reciprocity where it's like, I don't have the authority to tell you what to do and you don't have the authority to make me responsible for what you do. So I don't have to care. I don't have to exert my influence on you to stop you from doing things I don't like because I'm going to have to pay for it eventually down the road. I want to separate those two things with complete freedom means complete responsibility. You can't have one without the other and the degree to which each shrinks is proportional to each other. But then there's also that disagreeableness, which is like how likely are you to go along with the herd? There's one thing to go ahead.

I think there's one interesting thing that actually goes into that, which is a the end like there's one there's one there's one thing that kind of pegs it that kind of messes everything up when like everything something that you do can affect everybody else something like like that's true something like the environment or something yeah i feel like that's where things like that get really complicated people because you can only like you can only let people do so much to where it does start to you know affect you or even like your family and everybody everybody where you live like the east palestine thing i think is like one of those examples where you know that's pretty realize like how how how much just even like the smallest thing can affect like an entire

community and then like you know back in the day that could have caused like an entire like you know war or something between tribes um very much if you think about it like that you know what i mean yeah no definitely there and there's there's there's an issue of scale as well with a lot of that too it's like there's freedom can't mean the freedom to hurt other people that has to be the limit so you do something like that that you have to be responsible for it so So this, you know, this is actually where the concept, and it makes sense. And I don't dispute that a lot of these things were, let's say, the instantiation of government regulatory agencies was meant to solve. It identified a real problem and tried to solve it, but we'll just make regulations.

My issue with that is, and that's not bad. There's a lot of regulations that are good. Yeah, you can't put poison in your food and sell it as healthy. Wonderful. That's great. That's exactly the right. That's exactly the right idea. I want the same thing done a different way.

We can argue, is that possible? What would that look like? The unfortunate part, so we get the East Palestine thing, we get regulatory capture and immunity, granted, illegal immunity. So the railroad company can say we were following all the rules. This is government's fault. Government can say we can't be wrong. You can't sue us. And they did everything we told them to.

So guess you're just, you know, SOL. And then we get, you know, if FEMA's not going to come and help and we can't sue the railroad, well, we're just screwed. Now our homes are worthless and people are dying and there's no recourse. I'd like to see something else happening. You know, I would almost rather, I would almost rather the EPA were abolished and the people of East Palestine could just go to the executive offices of the railroad and have a little chat with some tar and feathers and make this right. and say, you know, you're going to, you're going to take responsibility or we're going to hold you accountable our own way. That's, I think that's a better solution in my estimation.

And some people say, that's pretty violent. I say, yep, that's how it is. That's pretty old school. That's all like it. I'm just saying, you know, you fuck around and find out. And I don't want anyone to get hurt, but hey, maybe don't hurt people. You got to be responsible one way or they got to pay for this. You got to.

And if it's, I mean, and that's, the reason that's what they would do back in the old school back in days, because. It's not like they wanted to hurt anybody, but like, you owe us something. Yeah. How are you going to make this right? Come to, come to town. Let's have a public meeting. Let's find out what's going on.

Maybe you got to go bankrupt buying us out of our home so we can move because you poison the earth and we can't live here anymore. You know, I don't like, we're getting way off track, but it just was randomly kibitzing. I don't like the idea of corporations. That is a legal fiction. We say, oh, if all these people sign a piece of. paper. Now there's something magical called a corporation and that imaginary thing is responsible,

but we aren't. We just work for the corporation. We're just the CEO and the board of directors. I want those people personally responsible. No, this is your business. Every decision you make, you are personally liable for the damages. That is a legal fiction we've created that has immunized. And again, it's this regulatory capture. The government says they did everything we told them to. You can't sue us. You can't sue them. Take a hike. I want that. protection gone. And, you know, because people need to be held accountable for their problems. Yeah.

Yeah. That's one of the ways the market should work. Yeah. That's one of the ways you maintain a free market is that they actually have to deal with the real world consequences of their actions. Yeah. You mitigate. And there's a compassionate angle to say, we don't want to, we don't want to, we don't

want natural consequences to happen to a two-year-old toddler that wanders into the street. this is not that's too much being run over run over by a car so we have this compassion thing well let's minimize the mitigate the harm to a degree yeah but then sometimes you mitigate so much harm that you can't that the that the system can't self-correct and and then we get what these 2008 bank bailout silicon valley bank bank bailout again and it's going to keep happening again because what's the incentive for it not to happen they're not changing the laws they're not letting people fall on their face and lose lose everything oh yeah that just that's the worst part of it all. Yeah. They're just, and at some point it goes from, from compassion to enabling.

Now you're cleaning up the drunk who, who can't get his ass out of bed. That's the perfect word, too. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect word. Enabling. And then they don't have to face the consequences and decide, this isn't working. I'm hurting people. I'm hurting myself. I should change. We've, we've really destroyed the, uh, necessary functional feedback loop in so many ways. And again, it's not about I want people to suffer. It's like sometimes you have to suffer to change. You got to see this isn't working. You can't be saved from every consequence. I mean, that's where we get spoiled kids that grow up entitled, thinking they're, the world owes them something is they've been saved from every consequence. Well, that might even be why I like that, that whole spoiled rich kid thing is like a trope.

But, uh, I mean, I think you can get to the point where you, you have people who aren't even rich who will experience that because it's just so. sheltered by. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. And it's like, okay, we throw in not all X are like that. Granted, true. It's just the trope because that's exactly what happens. That's why it happens. And then we can actually look at those distinctions of, okay, when it doesn't happen, why? What was it? So we have two things that are ostensibly the same. Wealthy parents, spoiled, rich kid. What is the spoiling and what is not spoiling? How does, what does that look like? And then we get extreme cases. like I just heard, what is it,

Ashton, Cucher and Mila Kunis are going to donate their entire fortune and leave nothing to the kids because they want their kids to grow up responsible and have to work. And, you know, maybe put them through college because you can. Maybe set them up,

you know, not trust fund kid for life. Yes, that would probably ruin them. But, you know, maybe set up some things like, I wouldn't donate at all.

That seems a bit extreme. You know, you can set them up for certain things like, you know, you're not going to have to worry about a place to live. We're going to buy a, house. Great start. If you can give that to your kids, that's why you work hard. You don't work hard for yourself or just to give it away to other people. You work hard to acquire resources to make

sure your kids are okay. They have the tools they need to succeed in life. I think you can write it into your will to like have it dispersed over time. That's a really good way. I was thinking that too. You know, you get at, you know, at 16, you get 10,000 to buy a car. At 18, you get 25,000 is down payment on a house. At 30, you get, you know, 50,000 as a college fund for your own kids. That kind of thing. I mean, if you're going to do it, like, and dedicated to specific things, it has to be spent in this way. And then you're setting those limits on this is how to be responsible in life. These are the milestones that make sense. Anyway, I don't know, we're saving the world one discord conversation at a time.

Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his DREAMs program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New DREAMs episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dreams. experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, featuring

the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. And we've gone far from the dream. I love these two. This is what I normally do with folks in terms of, I talk to them beforehand. Then we get into the dream. And now we're kind of doing that backwards because it seems like the dream was relatively not simple in its own way, but I was able to see it maybe more clearly, more quickly

than I typically do. And it made sense to you. We weren't pulling teeth, which, you know, difficulty pulling teeth is not actually the person's fault. Some people think of like, man, talking to you is like pulling teeth. And it's like, well, teeth are stuck in there pretty good. Actually, when I got my... Sometimes it's hard to pull a dream out.

Yeah. You got to remember the different parts of it, you know. But I had thought about it so much that, yeah, I kind of had, I already thought about it a lot. You had a similar understanding to what I offered. Yeah. That's great, too. So on these occasions, now we're going from what I do to the meta level, looking at what I do and how I do. do it. Um, what we got to relatively quickly is what I'm trying to accomplish and often takes

me a long time to get there. So we're looking at the, this, the meta analysis of my dream interpretation process. So I start and I start telling myself a story one piece of what does this look like? Okay. What's the next one? What's the next one? And so we've got key elements. And I'm, I'm writing out the last one here. And I'm trying to distill these down. to bullet points for myself too. So I can, and this is kind of what I'd get to usually at the end of a lot of these, these conversations, like, let me tell you the story of the dream as I see it. And then I'm like, yeah, you know, that's it.

Or I don't know, it doesn't feel right. And that's fine. We would get it or we don't. So there was an open door indicating, you know, a lack of a barrier to safety. I mean, usually and in the sense, you're conceiving this person as, as someone breaking into cause harm. And you conceived of it maybe originally as looked. like a burglar. So this is someone who's there to steal that you wouldn't necessarily assume,

you know, they weren't there to murder. They didn't look like a serial killer too, whatever that looks like. Um, this is someone who's, you know, an enemy, but not necessarily a dangerous enemy. Um, and there's a lack of a barrier to keeping them out. And, and with the girlfriend, it's like, this is, she has a key. Of course she can walk right in. She's inside already. This is, this is a threat inside the house, say, uh, the call's coming from inside the house. Um, um, So you've got an open door, the lack of a barrier. You've got the hidden identity, some kind of dishonesty or mask that's being worn to cover over this threat, to make a real threat look less threatening. But also maybe in the relationship, like maybe she wasn't the most open person.

She wouldn't tell you everything. She'd hold some things back. Is that kind of how she was? or? Maybe. I think that may have started to happen a little bit more later on, but not really. Not in general. I think we were pretty open with each other.

Like, we had a lot of like experiences together. So, no, like I said, we kind of had a child together. Yeah. And this. I did watch a good burp and everything, stuff like that. For sure. And this conception may have been like more at the end of the relationship. look how she's changed.

Look what she is now. Not that she always always. Yeah, exactly. Not that you're seeing her true nature finally, but her nature changed where she became more secretive, or less open. And thus hidden identity. It's like,

but there's also the element of a hidden identity is that maybe you weren't ready to see the face until you process the nature of the attack. And it wasn't until after defeating the attack that you could pull off the ask and say it was her all along. You know, this was, there may be a sequence to that where it's like, this is my discovery process. Is she really? Oh, yeah, that's exactly it.

Yeah. This is who she was all along. That felt like it. Yeah. That was her all along. Well, also that is like when we're telling ourselves stories sometimes, we look at it and go, okay, I have a thought, what if? Let me look at the evidence.

And then I'm going to draw a conclusion. So there's a bit of that going on here where it's like, what if this person is a certain way? Oh, they're attacking me. That looks like they are a certain way. But I'm not convinced it's them. I just know there's an attack happening. And you have to really process the attack and say, what is this? Is this real?

Is this happening? What is the nature of it? How threatening is it? How am I dealing with it? And then after it's over and you've defeated the attack, you can then look at it and say, okay, this was actually the person I thought it was. The attack was real. I wasn't imagining this person was attacking me.

They actually did. And now I have to accept it, confronted directly by pulling it back and looking at the face and saying it is. It is who I think it is. I don't know if that makes sense to you. That kind of problem solving process. No, no, that makes perfect sense. Okay. I mean, that seems like that's what my subconscious would be doing.

Yeah, because you don't want to see her. You just have to say, but it's real, but she is doing this. And now I got to confront that and say, you know, this is the person who did that was her. You know, I can't blame this on anyone else. You know, there wasn't, it wasn't like it was her dad under the mask. And it's like, wait a minute. So I'm blaming her behavior problems on her bad relationship with her dad. And maybe that's even true, but it isn't the same as confronting that like she's not,

she's not an ally. She's not a friend anymore in this, in this circumstance. now she's a threat inside my home. And it doesn't have to be a physical threat. You're like, the knife thing, that was a thing, that happened. You're like, um, so it makes sense that to show up in the dream, like, is a representation of the nature of the threat. At worst, yeah, you're getting stabbed.

Shit, that's a problem. But more like the relationship being bad is like, this is not an ally. I'm living with an enemy in a sense. No, yeah. That's actually what I ended up, like, happening. I ended up realizing that that it was exactly what it was. Yeah. And people can end up enemies by being on, I say,

enemies. Enemies is strong. Opponents. We can end up being opponents in life. And that's, that's tough when you have a relationship like that where we, our lives are blended, but we are acting at cross purposes. What I do is not facilitating your needs and what you do is not facilitating my needs to the point that it's actively, you're holding each other back. And that's where you become opponents, enemies in that sense, where you're just, you know, pulling it opposite ends of the tug of war. Yeah. Yeah, we had started to like go like, complete. completely separate ways, like, as far as, like, what we wanted out of life and everything, too. So I was kind of coming to terms with that because we were talking about getting married. Oh, yeah. We were like, even like, we're, I mean, we may have even been technically engaged, I think. Mm. Mm. Mm.

You know, kind of technically engaged. Yeah. And that very much shows that you just can't force something to happen like that. If it's really, it's oil and water. Some things are just, they're not going to blend. It's not going to happen. Um, and it's better to. realize that, even if it's tragic, and especially if no one's at fault, we're just different people.

We just want different things. Neither one can give up what they want because they will not be satisfied with life. No one wants to choose to be miserable for life just to not have to end a relationship, you know, and especially before you get married, that's like the big deal of like, are we on the same page here? Do we want the same things? If I want a, you know, a cabin in the woods in Montana and she wants to live, in an apartment in Rio de Janeiro,

we are miles apart, you know, and one of us is going to have to give up the dream or neither of us does. And that means sacrificing the relationship or the dream. You know, the goal. The funny thing is I think I was probably ready to do that although earlier, like, and I think like she didn't want to

and she didn't want to take a break or anything. She didn't want to end it. She said no breaks. And then like later on, we had kind of gotten to the point around that time where, she was talking about any relationship herself. So she'd like finally come around to that herself. And I'm like, well, you kind of dragged me along for, you know, a little longer.

Yeah. Yeah. It can be tough. And sometimes one partner or the other is not not ready to accept that it can't be salvaged. Maybe they want to try a few more things to settle their mind that it's really over, that kind of thing. Or they're just not ready to physically move on. It's like, I need like two more months. and then I'll have another opportunity that I can, I'm just not ready until then.

And so they're, rather than saying that specifically, they say, no, let's not break up because they figure that's the better strategy to not lose a place to live or whatever, whatever the problem is. That was pretty much what the issue was. Is that what it was? Yeah. My mom was always telling me, you're like, you're going to, you're going to have to be the one to leave.

And like, that's what I remember happening. Yeah. Well, some people, some people were. But it was my apartment, so it kind of sucked. Like, she moved from an entirely different part of town in with me. So it was, it really sucked to have to do that. Yeah. And so that's very much not fair.

I mean, if you've had that, if you had that conversation with her to say, well, we should break up and I want you to leave. Then she could just say no. And it's like, well, fuck. Now we're really at odds. Like, and. Yeah, that was pretty much what happened. Okay. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And then, yeah, well, then what do you do? then there's it ain't right but practical solutions. Okay, well, I'll leave and just take me off the lease and that's it. I'm out. That's not fair. That's one of those things where it's like this ain't right, but I'm just going to go because it's not worth fighting over. You know, the ending it is more important than being right.

Ending it well, getting that separation going finally. I had an issue, not an issue. I had an experience once where I, uh, okay, you see me in Discord saying things like consequences always obtain. There will be consequences no matter what. Now, maybe they're appropriate, maybe they're not. That's a different question. But something, cause and effect, something always happens.

So I had one situation where I was dating a gal and we lived together. And she was mad at me for something. I don't even remember if it was whose fault it was. And it doesn't matter. It's like the way I handle things is differently. She was trying to kick me out of bed and I'm like, you, I do not get, I do not sleep on the couch. This is not happening.

You can roll over and I will stop talking to you, but I'm not getting out of bed. Neither one of us slept that night. she would not let go of kicking me out of bed and I would not leave the bed. Oh my God. Yeah. And so. Yeah. We had a lot of nights like that.

And it was like, it was, it was just ridiculous at a certain point. It was like. Yeah. And it was definitely my pride type situation in a way, but also a, I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong and I'm not letting go. A very practical consideration was, you know, I need sleep. I'm going to go sleep on the couch. And then, you know, the.

pride fucking with you type of thing. It was in the back of my head was, oh, now I'm the guy that is, you know, girlfriend gets all emotional and he's got to go sleep on the couch. Like, it's his fault.

I'm like, I'm not that guy. That is never happening. I'm not going to do it. Not once. And I never have. Dude, the thing that,

the thing that sucked with me is that I did that. Yeah. When I would do that, I would get in, I would get in trouble for doing that. I wanted you to stay and work it out. She wouldn't want you. She didn't want you.

Like, it was like, she wanted you to. Yeah. But then like, After you actually did it, she realized she didn't want you to actually sleep on the couch. Yeah. So then I'm like, well, no, like, I'm comfortable out here now.

Like, at this point, like, I would have to go set my TV up in the other room. Yeah. You know, everything to get console. And I'm like, well, I'm comfortable now. Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah. And that's one of those things where it's hard to know.

Okay. It's hard to know our own motivations, number one. And then trying to read other people's motivations. sometimes they don't mean what they say even though even though they genuinely think they do so some folks are like you know the specific scenario gal says you know girlfriend says get out of bed I don't want and what she really wanted

was the fight over whether or not you're going to get out of bed because she wanted the engagement and that was just the next place to go in terms of an emotional lashing out and a lot of people do that this is one example I'm not blaming this on women in general and guys will do that too and sometimes no that was the kind of person she was too

like it was like everything had to become like a fight, like even just me, like not doing anything. Yeah. So it was like, that was what made it. I think that's what made it worse over time. Like I think I guess I eventually got tired of it. That's eventually I guess kind of what a dream happened. Well, and that works for some people.

Some people love the dramatic passion of constantly fighting with someone. They actually love it, couldn't live without it. That is not me. It's not a good fit. You know, I don't want to be bored by someone. but I'd rather be, you know, I'd rather we, if I'm dating someone, I'd rather we are partners facing a challenge. Now, we can go looking for challenges to face.

That's fine, but I don't want to. Maybe that's why I like crazy girls. I do kind of like, like, I see, I like that. I like that, I like the fight, but I don't like it all the time. Like, I like it, you know, controlled, you know. Yeah. Well, that's too. Yeah, too much of a good thing for sure.

And that's, it's a delicate balance. and it is, it's one of those things where it's entirely subjective. It's, it is literally just emotions and feelings and I like this, I don't like that.

There's no right or wrong answer. Like, intellectually, it's like, if we were fighting, because I love when we would, like, fight and, like, we'd argue about, like, certain things, right?

Yeah, yeah. But, like, it, like, not like, serious stuff or, like, you know, or when we could just have, like, you know, a silly argument, like,

then laughs about it. Yeah. But not, like, you know, an argument and they were, like, they were both, like, mad at each other

because we couldn't convince one another or one of us didn't want to admit we were wrong. Yeah. It happened in a lot. So it stopped being like fun. Yeah, not fun anymore. Yeah, that's not good. Yeah, and that's just totally subjective. I mean, there's, what was it?

I was on, you know, the other server that shall not be named from the primary one. And someone was talking about how it drives them crazy that their sisters in a relationship with a guy and they both yell and fight and kind of hit each other. And it's mutual. You know, he's not being abusive any more than she is. So if it's abuse, it's mutual. But they're married and they have kids and that's and neither one of them wants to leave and they're not, you know, this. So the person who was complaining about this is like, I just don't like going over to their house because it's so loud and they yell at each other and they bicker. And they love it.

They seem happy as a clam. You ask them, God, do you guys fight all the time? Do you want to get divorced? And I'm like, no. Are you kidding? Everything's fine. What are you talking about? They don't even see it.

but not so the person that was complaining is like that's not my speed i can't handle that i don't want to be in a house where people are loud and yelling at each other and and and you know pushing or getting in each other's face or whatever uh you know and that might work for some people and for me personally not so much that is not my speed at all um as much as i joke about the sundari girl hot crazy is kind of fun in it in the proper context but living with that She becomes that. What's the other one where she's like the stabby. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The stabby psychopath. That's too far. That's who I was. And that was one of our jokes. Oh, yeah. So she kind of knew.

Yeah. No, she knew. Yeah. And it's tough too because people can say that's just me. And then actually they can't change it because really that is kind of just them. Yeah. I mean, like, and I knew like that's what I was saying. Like, you know, I knew what I signed up for.

It's like, you know, shit. you know, on the books, like, you know, certain disorders. And it wasn't like, uh, it wasn't like I didn't know, but I thought, you know, certain stuff I'm maybe excused. Sure. Because I was like, well. And sometimes people, and it doesn't mean, so that's a, that's a tough thing, too. Let's say someone has that diagnosis and they're open about it.

Do you just scrap that and say you're not worthy because X, Y, Z? Now, maybe you do. Right. Maybe personally, you can't handle it. And maybe personally, you kind of like it. And that's hot, as we say. Um, but what you're talking about. about within this is where I was going with that to the idea of the person who says get away from

me and wants you to fight with them because the attachment the engagement is what really matters that seemed like kind of what was what was going on there it's like the point isn't fighting the fighting is a signal of it's like that's how they feel loved it's really weird type of thing it's like yeah it's very insecure like it i mean it was One of those things where I'm not the type of person to be like, you know, I love you all the time. I've never been that type of person. So, I mean, that was, that was a problem. Yeah.

So I couldn't like, like not say that for too long. I had to, like it had to, like, which I understand. But at the same time, it's like, you know, you got to understand me too. Yeah. There has, there does have to be. And that's the thing to how much compromise is enough, how much is reasonable and how much is. We're not even satisfied with life because we're both being asked to change too much. I'm being asked to sacrifice too many things I want out of this one, one time circling the sun,

you know, that's where I look at the difference between, you know, something that's a, there are situations that are a tragedy and then they're the opposite of situations where someone's at fault and it's, it's malicious. I can't conceive of the right word at the moment, but in my estimation, a tragedy is where, nobody's at fault and a bad outcome still happens. Accidents, like, you know, back to the toddler running into the street. You know, the toddler's not at fault.

Car driver's not at fault. Couldn't see them. Just happened. And still, dead toddler. And maybe you took blame the parents. I don't know. But still, it's tragic in that sense of like not a good outcome. But really, who do you blame?

And does it do any good to blame them? It really is it. Is there something anyone actually could have done? I mean, maybe, maybe, but, you know, there's no one getting out of that situation without suffering. Parents suffer, car driver suffers, kids dead. They suffer the ultimate consequence. And then a lot of times we want to say punish people again. It's like, okay, there are sociopaths that just don't care if they kill someone.

But most normal people feel horrible. They have to live with the rest of their lives feeling this every day, knowing what they did. And sometimes that is punishment enough. We don't need anything more. how to tell those people from the other folks that put on a good show and don't really care. I don't know. That's kind of, yeah,

we get that judicial system. Well, I know you were wanting to keep this to about an hour. I don't know if reviewing the process of the fight is, I wanted to get there eventually to kind of look at maybe lessons you could take moving forward. It seems like we've talked a lot about that. This is all things you've learned about your, your your what you're yeah because i've had a lot of time to process yeah it

honestly it seems like we've gotten to your understanding of your personal boundaries what you're comfortable with what you want out of a relationship what you were what you and a lot of times we experiment we say uh i think it might be fun to do this and we try it and we go that wasn't fun at all that was a very bad idea i did not enjoy that you know so you probably looked at that well i'm not going to date that kind of girl anymore that's just too yeah yeah i know what kind of girls i like now yeah now i know like i mean i guess before i didn't care that much or maybe i didn't like i didn't really want like a big family or anything really a family at all i want to get married now that's

kind of flipped on its head so nothing's yeah gotcha and then and our um hmm our desires is not the right way to put it but you know what we want out of life does tend to change and it goes through different phases that's why we say you know it's normal for uh you know teenagers to say rebel and test a bunch of limits because they got to figure out who am I and what do I want out of life? Do I want to imitate my parents or do I want to modify something they did to suit my taste or because I think it's more functional? That's a lot of the, you always got to have those review and testing processes, a recursive loop of the scientific method in a sense. But then also, you know, being a young adult is like, especially for men, it's like, well, I just

kind of want to get my freak on as much as I can. And then a little later down the road, you're like, okay, I did that, been there done that, not satisfying. What else is there to life? What could I try? And definitely a lot of times men get a little bit older and they're like, you know, the idea of settling down and having a family and committing to one woman, raising kids, that actually starts to feel more appealing, more satisfying than the messing around

I did earlier. And that's a tough thing to say to people. Like, well, you're going to end up that way eventually. not everybody does most people do probably um but i'm also in that same category myself like uh guinea style i've never been the most masculine of men and i've never been really in a feminine either i have a pretty good balance of masculine feminine in terms of that so i've never really been the uh macho man womanizing you know gonna put a bunch of notches in my belt or my bedpost type of guy i'm like you know comes and goes motivated enough but not driven by it

And also never wanted to have kids. So I'm in this position where, you know, I'm in my mid, mid, mid late 40s now and still don't want any kids. Hope I didn't accidentally have some out there while I was making stupid mistakes. Pretty sure I don't. But, you know, crossing my fingers on that one, that would be the preferable outcome. I don't. I don't have any mistakes. Dodge that bullet.

Fair enough. But still looking forward, like I am not, my wife, too. I had to find a girl, you know, a woman who also didn't want to have kids. kids because if that was that's I mean that's a deal breaker it has to be if your passion is raising children and you're going to commit yourself to someone who doesn't want any this cannot be resolved this cannot there's no halfway point there's like okay how about 1.5 kids instead of zero no to zero zero because I always knew I kind of always want to do adopt kids oh yeah at a certain point and I still might I don't know yeah and that's still something I could do too now I kind of

just want to have them all Because I ended up, well, we technically accidentally had one anyway. It's true. And those accidents do happen. And then, but you resolved it, you know, and it didn't trap either one of you with each other in a way that was just never going to work, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of better.

And not that relationship is over. Like, I'm like, well, it's, I mean, if I do end up with someone that really wants them, like, sure. Like, I definitely want them now. Yeah. And this. But I also have to look for a completely different type of woman. Exactly. No, for sure.

And now you know that. And I think this is coming back to the topic, this I think is the power of dreams. I mean, number one, it's like, what was I thinking about? What experience from life did I need to look at because there was an intuitive sense that there's something meaningful there? And that's where I think a lot of the folks in the server that we don't need to mention, they're a little too reliant on Jonathan Heights's moral intuitions as the answer to everything. Well, that's all there is. I personally believe intuitions are useful to point you at something.

Then you have to actually look at it. Okay, what is it? How do I feel about it? So there's something important here. That feeling is usually genuine and important opportunity and important threat, whatever it is. Then you got to look at it and say, okay, what is it now? How do I make use of that once I identify actually what it is? Is this something to be incorporated into my life because it's useful?

Is it something to be avoiding because it's dangerous? We still got to figure out what to do with those feelings. Is this a feeling that is purely emotional for explainable reasons, but not any grounds for making a decision? Like I would say the idea of paranoia is in that, yeah, it's a real feeling. And yeah, there are real threats. Let's find out if this is a real threat and if I should avoid it. Right. That has to be a rational decision.

You have to look at the evidence in the environment and say it is or it isn't, and then choose accordingly. And sometimes we choose, or we should choose against our feelings. I feel uncomfortable with this situation, but you know what? The result is beneficial. So I'm going to override my own feeling and do something I don't want to do because I have to. I don't want to go to work. I'd rather not be homeless.

Fair enough. You know, I don't want to. Yeah, I do it all right. Yeah. We have to. If we were nothing but feelings-based creatures, we would do whatever we want in the moment regardless of consequence. So I don't think we're as driven by the elephant as people think.

We drive that elephant to work every day. Most people do. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but the power of dreams in general. So you needed to show yourself this image in order to get to the place where you would eventually be able to accept it consciously and act it out in the world.

This situation cannot continue. This is not good for either one of us. me personally, I feel like I'm being attacked. I feel like there's a danger or a threat in my home. Even if she was never going to stab you, it just wasn't working out. The threat is a bad relationship that makes your life unstable. That's bad enough. It doesn't have to be risk of death or malicious intent.

Right. And then you're able to reflect on years down the road and you're like, because I was able to critically examine this experience, now I have a better template or pattern for moving forward. I know what I want. I know what I don't want. I think dreams can can be a very useful and powerful tool in that regard examining dreams to say, you know, what am I trying to learn? Why did I feel this was important enough to have a dream experience about it?

Especially when I remember. I think those are the most important ones like dreams, in my estimation, self-select for importance. If you remember it and it feels intensely some kind of way, that's your intuition telling you this, you better pay. attention to this. You better do something about this because it's going to, there will be a consequence one way or another. Something's going to happen. Something's got to give. Yeah, because I definitely don't remember most of them. Like I said, even some of them are just deja vu, like, even if they were like something like something that actually ended up happening, you know, like, you know, borderline, you know, premonition kind of stuff. But even then, like,

it won't be something so important that even needs to be remembered. So I won't notice it until it happened, right? But certain stuff, it's like, you know. Yeah, there's that, there's a couple of different explanations for, well, a couple, three, half a dozen explanations for deja vu. The one I, so being a kind of rational scientific, I'm weird, I'm this weird combination of like the guy who like legitimately thinks he's a wizard by my understanding of what that is. And a completely skeptical, rational, scientific-minded person. I'm willing to believe. I'm the same way. Yeah, yeah. I'm willing to believe anything, highly open, but my bar for proof is extremely high. So most of it's just, theories and I'm open to, we'll see what happens.

So my preferred understanding of deja vu is that we get a bit of a hiccup in our brain. It's like a hiccup in our brain where a loop fires and then it fires again immediately right after itself. Like it fires twice in succession. And that creates a bodily sensation of like, whoa, I just experienced this before. Well, you literally did a fraction of a microsecond right before experiencing it the second time again. That's the explanation that makes the most sense to me. Then there's other things like I get deja vu because I saw this in a dream and it was prophetic or I get deja vu because it's a psychic

message or a message from the spirits or God. I can't disprove any of those theories. I can only say the way I would describe it when it happens for me, it's usually like it's one of those things where I tell you like it might have been like one of those losing things where I remember the dream vaguely but like I was saying it like it wasn't like important so I wasn't like you know thinking about it or was like but then like something happens like say I used to have it a lot in school like you know somebody would just say something you know just stuff like that yeah and I'm like like this this uh I remember somebody I remember something similar I remember I had a dream where something like this happened and then like somebody else said this and then like somebody

else will like say that or like later on one of the things that i was like that i remember happening this dream i was like is that happening now like sometimes i'll be like oh no this isn't what happened in that dream this is something separate uh and then like later on the exact thing that happened and the dream will happen and i'd be like i thought that it was happening before but this is this is this is what i dreamt about like and like so it'll be like it won't just be like that one instance where i think like oh yeah this is this i saw this in a dream once it'll be like, no, this is like exactly what I remember from that thing. This is like exactly what they said.

This is like the place I was in. I didn't even, I was wondering what place I was in, what that place was in my dream. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. Yeah. And like, I'm here right now. It's it. And I'm like, oh, this must have been what I was dreaming.

But I'm like, oh, it's kind of weird. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's why the deja vu is always weird to me because I, like, I never, when I explained it to somebody once, that's what they said it was called. and so I've always thought that that's what it was so I've never had any concept of like what else to call it except I'm like well the only thing it sounds like you're saying you have a psychic vision basically right

but it's never relevant for anything important so I'm like I wouldn't even really say that it's just I mean maybe maybe your brain is just firing off predictions in your mind with your sleep like I don't know we actually do I mean that's one of the things that makes humans unique is we can kind of negotiate with

future because we understand cause and effect we can say if i do this then that will happen if i do something else then that will happen that's the nature of the wizardly crystal ball i guess that's kind of what dreams are in some ways yeah and and and and they are and they aren't or at least they can be but not all are that that kind of thing i was just going to mention real quick that i have a friend in real life he says actually the he has had prophetic dreams this is what he says i've never had them i assume he's telling the truth at least he believes it he says the feeling of a prophetic dream playing out in front of him is distinctly different than deja vu that feeling he says i've experienced them both they are different so in his assertion to to his to his understanding his

his experience of it deja vu is different than a prophetic dream playing out and what that means uh i don't know how to tell the difference uh that might be what i was uh talking about actually because like that's kind of what i was getting at is that yeah it's there is like a different like i think i know what the deja vu is that you're talking about where it's like you just think it's like you might have dreamed about it or might have happened before but then there's just like when you actually like may even remember a dream fully or just a part of a dream that you but you remember enough about it like you know the environment where it was everything yeah to like know that what somebody said or what something that happened hadn't happened before you hadn't been to that place before but you're

watching it and you're like this happened before like this actually happened before. You know what I mean? Yeah. I've never had that experience. And that's why I separate out the things that I can relatively confidently say. Like, what I do is really staying in my lane psychologically. I don't know what to do with prophetic dreams.

Lucid dreams. You know, a lot of other different things, the experience of people dreaming about deceased relatives. And I mean, I believe a lot of these stories are true. I think people are reporting honestly I've never had that one before

yeah well they remember about a dead brother yeah I don't think I have fair enough and it's not something everyone does I mean there's these

classic categories of dreams that go all the way back to like ancient Greece uh Homer it was it was such a well-known phenomenon that it was not surprising

when Homer put it in the Iliad that Achilles was visited by the ghost of Patroclus and it is phrased in there using the Greek words in a way that makes it sound like he had a vision of his deceased friend, which was a different framing than saying his deceased friend returned from the underworld as as a ghost and visited him. That's it. The specific Greek words they used was that it was a vision as in in his sleep. Very interesting. And so it's been a known trope in that

sense since more than 2,000 years ago, you know, pre-B.C. times. Um, yeah, and so there's categories like flying dream, the nightmare where you're moving slowly and can't get away from the creature. Like your feet are stuck in something sticky or you're struggling to run and your body won't move. You know, that kind of a dream. Dreams of, you have deceased relatives coming back. There's all these different categories of common, common dreams, so to speak, that are actually common enough to be well known as categories, but not common to each individual person or each person over time. I've definitely had the flying dream. I've definitely had the moving so slow you can't get away from the monster dream.

I've had too many negative things, I think the most negative experience I've had is like what we were talking about with like waking up from a good dream. But I think I've had too many negative dreams like that. Yeah, I mean, anxiety comes up in our dreams, our hopes and fears or motivate our dreams to a degree. and not just, oh, I hope this happens, but although that's the broad category, or I'm afraid this might happen, which is also the broad category. But we have dreams that are just wish fulfillment and dreams that are warnings to ourselves. So on the broader topic of prophetic dreams, you'll note back in the beginning when I first started the analysis, said, would you be surprised if I said this relationship wasn't going to work out? And you said, no, it didn't.

So I was right on, that's the level of prophecy I can give to someone in a dream regarding dreams. And that's not even absolute. It isn't like, you will definitely break up. I have spoken. But I'm like, this is a bad, you conceive this as a bad enough problem that it looks like you're unwilling to continue this relationship. Unless things change and she's willing to work on it, which it seems like you're, the dream as presented, you're looking at it as she's not willing to change in that regard.

So the prophecy would be, this ain't going to work because you're incompatible. And you're not happy. And so the only thing I could say is you're probably going to break up unless, unless something happens, unless something changes. That's about as far as I can go with those things. I can't say. So I can't differentiate if you brought me this dream before you actually did break up.

I couldn't say whether that would happen or not definitively just by the same. The crazy thing is I think I may or may not have told her about it. Oh. I don't think that I told her it was her. Hmm. I don't remember. I think I might have told her because I've never had the good thing that like woke me up like that you know Really jarred me like that you know I wanted to tell her but I didn't want to like tell her

I again I mean there's some things where you dream it where it's like there is no good outcome for me telling her this She's not gonna have anything useful to say and she's just gonna be offended by it and we're gonna argue for nothing Because you know how to myself I mean I guess like they're typically like the the trope is and it's that it's fairly true like though they'll be honest about how they'll have dreams about you cheating and stuff like that. And they take them a lot more serious, you know. I mean, she was really kind of people like she had like dream catchers and stuff up. So like it's so like she took James seriously and like even actually she actually had had dreams about the cheating on her and stuff like that. So like there wasn't like.

Yeah. And a lot of it does does depend on how seriously how not how seriously how seriously how a. how a person conceives of their dream experience. If they believe in prophetic dreams and they have a dream about you cheating, then to them, that's a prophecy, done. Whether it is or not,

I don't know. But there's also, I think the more common phenomenon is, it seems like women experience emotions more intensely than men in some ways. And I'm saying intensely, like it's not that they're more out of control. It's just that men are maybe a little more, and women are a little more.

It's the empathy. Yeah. Yeah, there's like an intensity of emotion that can come from a negative dream experience. And if that negative emotion is specifically related to fears of cheating, whether you will or not in real life, if she even worries that it could happen and how devastating it would be and experiencing that emotional devastation and all her worst fear has come true, that carries in to when you wake up. And it could ruin your whole day. There's people who report dreams so disturbing. They just had terrible anxiety all day or terrible fear or terrible sorrow and sadness that just ruined that. The bright blue sky was painted gray by their emotional state of mind from a dream.

And it doesn't matter that the dream was realistic or not. That was ever going to happen. You showed yourself it happening how sad you would be if it did. And you carry. So women that wake up angry that you cheated. It's like not that they think you will. And it's not even you. It's that they're worried about that so much that it's just.

just ruins their day and it makes it actually had that like physiological response yeah that's the funny thing we can imagine ourselves into physical emotions based on things that are completely immaterial that don't exist all we have to do is imagine something bad happening that's not even happening it's just a picture in our head and we can trigger those emotions to happen trigger a physical response from pure fantasy and that's kind of what we're doing with movies like that never happened That's actors. But we let ourselves believe, what if this was real people? How would this, what would this look like?

How would this feel? That's a lot of what's going on in dreams. We're showing ourselves this movie of a visual rep, very most often visual representation of a what if scenario to kind of think our way through a thought experiment type problem. That's kind of my concept of dreams and broad strokes. Yeah. Yeah. I've had, like, I feel like I've become a lot more sensitive. like a story.

Maybe it's because I'm mostly only watch anime now. Yeah. I feel like I'll become a lot more sensitive to like certain stories like yeah. Like just things on the sad happens. It's just like I'm a lot more like sad now. Man.

Yeah. Well, I think that's really, I think anime is some of the best modern storytelling. And that is the fault of Western media turning to shit. I mean, I think anime has always been decent and

gotten better over time. But, you know, I just watch a lot of things. things or they put a lot of things out there coming out of Hollywood specifically that are like this is just crap this is a bad writing these terrible characters not even good acting hey your cgai top notch tell a better story and you go look at anime it's it's 30 frames per second of cartoon images and you feel things because wow they wrote that character well did you ever watch i've

been recommending this lately uh... bakemono guitari oh yeah that's one of my favorite series actually i was streaming that in the other server Nice. That may be an anime series I will never watch again because it was too good. It was so moving, impactful that I will not put myself through that again. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, really would. Yeah.

I like watching the other different parts of the series and stuff. But yeah, like watching like especially the original like the rock and one guitar and stuff over again. Like, yeah, that's hard. Well, I didn't get into too much of the, well, whatever. I don't know how we're defining this, but there was like five series in a movie, five, five. Oh, yeah, you got to watch them in order to like really have. And you got to watch them in order. Yeah.

I think the- I finally got the order together. I think the way. And I'm streaming them. And you can tell me this. I think the way I watched it was one, two, three, four movie five. Does that make sense? Uh, it depends on what movie.

But like there, yeah, see, they came out. Oh, they did more than one movie. I'm not watching it. I can't, I can't go back. I can't go back. I watched was about the vampire her story that that movie is that makes yeah that's the movie okay yeah it has three parts to it though that's why it's like there's technically like it's technically three different movies but if they made it one

movie they made I watched it all as one yeah yeah I think I did no and that all and that was the perfect order in my estimation I think if I'm saying it correctly don't yeah that should be the perfect order I think it sounds like you watch it in the perfect order because I want to be well I did my research I'm like okay it pisses me off and I'm talking to you, Japan, get your shit together. Number your fucking series. Let me know what I'm watching. This is episode one.

This is the movie 1.2. Whatever. Let me know where I'm at. I think they wanted to do that on purpose with that series. I kind of like it because, like, you can kind of drop in. As long as you watch the original series first, you can kind of backtrack and watch any of the other ones at any other point and realize where you are in the story. And it'll just keep adding more to the lore. Yeah, it's probably my autism that I'm like, no, must be in order, only in order.

No, that's me. Like, I literally look up the list and I'm like, you got to make sure I'm watching this one. Okay, the next one is just the right one? Wait, something's off. I need to watch this. I did that with Dr. Stein. I was watching like one of them. And I was like, wait, and I have to, this doesn't seem right.

There's some, feel like I'm missing something from the story. And then it was the one that I hadn't watched yet. Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. Now we're going to know. Well, that's, that's what I want to get it to. Now, there's also the, um, the question then becomes if there's a prequel, do you watch that first, even if it was made after? I mean, all I can say is, like, for Star Wars, I experienced them in the order they were made.

Preference, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And it is very weird to say, if you're going to show. I wouldn't want to watch the prequel first, just because I would enjoy the story more as long as the prequel is good. Yeah. You know, if the prequel is bad, I might This is

This is something for me that Maybe Star Wars specific, but the idea that I would probably say I had a kid and I'm like, I'm going to introduce you to Star Wars. We're going to watch episode four first. I think specifically with Star Wars because of the nature of the prequels and how they're none as good and they're a little boring and slow and great graphics,

but just the drama there, the real hero's journey type of arc. I want to get, them invested into Luke Skywalker and true true and then then watch the prequels in order saying okay here's how they got there here's the story and then maybe not even watch the final word is special in that regard it is I think it is for sure yeah some of them you can actually watch you know what I just watched last night um they did a remake I would also see live action stuff is a little different too that's like just because like like because you can tell

that like one is older than the other until you get a little bit later on you can tell that one is older than the other so it's like yeah when you're watching it going from a newer one to the older one yeah wait a minute what's yeah yeah what are these practical effects I've only ever seen CG but you can see you have an anime

sometimes too that's true like if it's old enough and it's been long enough since they like a continued series or something you can see like the difference in the animation but it's not as it's not as bad I think because like maybe like sometimes you know they'll change the art like when you you have a certain anime and it might not look as good as like the previous art so you know it's kind of it's just kind of you're you trying to follow the story chronologically in order more when it's anime but i think production wise there's like the big difference from like the live act stuff that there's like it like you might look like super grainy especially it's like super old yeah and you have like the super crisp new one that's like like what's like what you're like what

watching fast in the furious one. Well, also, like, I had no interest in watching the original, what, 1990s, Hunter X Hunter, but the remake in, what, 2011, I watched the whole thing. It was great. So I have no idea how they compare. I'm assuming it was better the remake in terms of graphically, graphically better. I'm not sure if I saw the remake, honestly. Oh, yeah.

It was on Netflix, so I powered through it, watched it all. Speaking of which, too, there's an interesting thing you can do. do where I watched a movie. It's on Netflix right now. It's one of the new rivals, etc. It's called The Thing. Now,

The Thing was a 1980s movie by John Carpenter, and it was great. It wasn't Kirk Douglas. What was his name? Who's a guy that was in? Was it the Fantastic Four, or was that like a different thing? No, no, no.

This is a movie called. It's a horror film set in the Antarctic called The Thing. Yeah. Now, this movie was made in 2000. 2011 starring, what's that gal's name? Mary Elizabeth Winstead. She was in Scott Pilgrim versus the World.

She played Ramona Flowers. Oh, yeah. She was a big deal for a while and made a bunch of movies. And so they cast her in this remake, this, this updated version. It was just called The Thing, same movie title. And it wasn't. And so you're thinking, all right, I'm watching an updated graphics remake of this, you know, the high concept of the horror film, redone in a modern style with new actors.

I'll give it a watch. I don't want to ruin anything, but it isn't until the end of the movie that you realize what's really going on and what it really is. And maybe that it isn't exactly a remake. Again, I don't want to spoil anything. But if you're, so now here's what I would do is if, let's say the 1980s one was the continuation of the story, you don't want to watch the second one first. You don't want to watch the more recent one first. You want to watch the original and then watch the more recent one. So you're doing actually the prequel out of order type of thing.

I guess I did spoil it, but you definitely want to watch them in chronological production order in that sense. I just thought that was neat. You know, I'm like, oh, I got a little end of the movie and it made sense because I saw the first one. And you really have to. And maybe I just forgot that it was always intended to be a prequel. But, you know, it isn't like, you know, they just, it looks like a remake. And it makes sense. Anyway, long story short, we're to wait.

Yeah, I love when they do that, though. Yeah, but that's what that's exactly. We like that. I was saying. Yeah. I love those nice little, surprise endings where I don't see it coming. I don't understand what's really going to happen here. Those are my favorite.

If it's too predictable, you know, we all want the main character not to die, but, but sometimes they need to. That's one thing I enjoyed about my playthrough of Mass Effect was the unpredictability of maybe who's going to live and who's going to live and who's going to die and that it has permanent consequences across multiple games. The sequel, you know, if someone died in the first game, they don't come back in the second. This isn't a reboot. This is the real world.

You're just playing part two of the life of this character. That person's dead. They are never coming back. They will never be in another frame of gameplay for the rest of the series. That reminds me of one of those, like one of those popular anime, a comic, a kill. Oh, yeah. That one drives it home. That one drives it home.

Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. Yep. Well, we're heading up on an hour and a half. I know I promise you to try and keep it short. I guess you didn't run out of time yet, but we'll get you going before you do. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Nice talking to you, too. Do you feel like we got a pretty good understanding of the dream in general? My offered suggestions kind of line up with what you were already thinking, which is good. give me a puzzle and I feed it back to you with the conclusion you already had, which means I was on the right track. There were no elements of it you wanted to focus on a little bit more, or are you that you still remained puzzled by? No.

Yeah, because it was kind of straightforward, you know, like kind of like you said. Because it almost ended exactly like the dream did in a sense. Like, you know, like once it was, once I realized it, and it was like, you know, okay. Yeah. These are a little bit different experience. I call these Stump the Wizard episodes where it's more like you already know, you have your own idea. And you don't tell me what that is while you're giving me the details. Here's what happened.

And you see if I can get pretty close to what you already understand because you know yourself better. You've had more time to think about it. And I always like having my process, I guess, validated in that way. where it's like not only is what I'm doing working, but it can be beneficial because I'm able to get some, I'm able to suggest something very close to what the person honestly discovered on their own and considers to be true. So that's a little different experience than the other episodes where it's like,

I just had this dream. I don't know what it means. And we try and figure it out together. But I like both. And this, you know, change, change up the variety. Yeah.

Yeah, I got some for you that I still haven't like quite thought through. fully. Yeah, those are good too. We'll try and have you back. You know, not next week right away, but I try to change it up. But I always invite folks to come back at the end of the dream. And I've had some folks come back.

So give it a few, maybe a few weeks before cycling back. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll just wrap it up there. And I'll just say, yeah, thank you to our friend Dank from Discord, random people. I'll talk to anybody. You know, this is, you don't have to be special.

Your dream doesn't have to be literally prophetic or meaningful. You don't have to save the world. It doesn't have to be the most bizarre thing anyone's ever heard. heard. Just any puzzle is kind of fun for me to solve. Um, and I'll say to everybody out there watching, uh, would you please like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for my video game streams, uh, 16 works of historical dream literature out there, the most recent dreams in their meanings by Horace G. Hutchinson. Wow. All this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com and that's enough for me. And, uh, dank, thanks, thanks for talking with me.

Thank you, man. Yep, and everybody out there, thanks for watching.