The Mrs told me earlier that when she got up this morning she was closing the bathroom window when she knocked some bottles into the bath and she hoped it didnt wake me up (she an early bird an i certainly aint). Now a couple of days ago i was woken up early by some noise in the bathroom, sounded like someone droppingstuff in the bath. I checked and nothing there. Anyway I said yes it did but i heard it a few days ago. perhaps it was a premonition she said. That got me thinking. Did it actually wake me up and then i dreamed the last few days or is causality not always linear - ie not time dependant and did the effect occur before the event. Its like the old tree falling in the forest thing - if noone was there to hear it then did it happen but in reverse (ish). Glitch in the Matrix some would say but Im going to get up in a minute cos i need to go to bed early.
In all seriousness Im convinced ive dreamed a scenario that makes sense of this but its all arse about face. Thing is - as soon as she said I began to doubt the memory. How many more things have i dreamed and not questioned thinking they were fact. I have a truly appalling memory for events during my life so why remember stuff from when your not even awake!
According to Hulme (the father of Causation) the difference between impressions and ideas is that impressions come through our senses, emotions, and other mental phenomena, whilst conscious, whereas ideas are thoughts, beliefs, or memories that we connect to our impressions. We construct ideas from simple impressions in three ways: resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. But Hume goes on to argue that assumptions of cause and effect between two events are not necessarily real or true. A premonition is an idea and only becomes manifest when subsequent events correlate to the original idea. A dream, however, is a physiological construct of the subconscious mind, stimulated by past experiences and present events, which may include external stimulii such as noise, light and other environmental factors likely to enter into our conscious mind while still asleep. The noise you heard was real; you connected this event to a similar dream you had a couple of days previously, in which the noise did not occur. Either that, or your other half is doing a job on you...has she asked you to fill out any forms recently?
I hope this is true because the utter filth that Rachel Riley dreamt of imposing on me the other night would have left me a pallid, grey, spent man. Let's see how thought implantation works... Fingers crossed.
here's one to ponder: Sanity and insanity, or at least what we deem to be such, are constructs based on 'normal' and 'abnormal' thought processes....these are themselves determined by society at large, at any given time. Throughout human history, certain members of society have been considered to be insane, for myriad reasons. Nowadays, we measure pathology according to strict criteria and have developed a complex spectrum of 'insanity' with countless subtle divisions and sub-categories delineating different types and levels of 'abnormality'...ie how far one's thought processes deviate from 'the norm'... When sufficient numbers of people think and act in a particular way, those that deviate are ostensibly 'on the spectrum' and receive all manner of treatments and medical interventions to negate or overide their conditon. Considering the number of people in the UK currently prescribed anti depressants (According to official NHS data, more than 53 million prescriptions were handed out for drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat in England in 2013 - a record high, and a rise of 24.6 per cent since 2010)....at what point does requiring treatment for Depression constitute 'the norm' and those people that don't receive prescriptions, by definition, be deemed 'abnormal'?
Furthermore....if a significant proportion of the population is considered sufficiently ill at ease to require anti-depressants, isn't it 'abnormal' behaviour for the medical profession to continue to prescribe such drugs, without trying to address the very factors that give rise to the condition? This is institutional 'madness'....IMO
It is a product of the quick-fix society. It is a lot easier to prescribe someone some tablets than to listen and understand their problems. There is certainly more sympathy for depression but the idea of giving someone tablets to alleviate their poverty or their loss of a loved one is indeed 'madness'.
