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On 20/08/2012 12:27, John Grigg wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAGSKFy0HGiJ79PJbfTFEej+UUQ3S_y7FH4CuUB0mU5awpm5A7w@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div>My question for the list is just how "transhumanist" are your
dreams? </div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Mine tend towards the very surreal, abstract and transhumanist.
Mostly because that is how the inside of my head is.<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAGSKFy0HGiJ79PJbfTFEej+UUQ3S_y7FH4CuUB0mU5awpm5A7w@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div>Anyway, I just wondered if some of you had really amazing
dreams about the future, and how much stock if any, you put into
them. <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Well, here is a small excerpt from my "autobiography file", from the
section "My megalomaniac youth":<br>
<br>
<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">I have another childhood memory that I am
pretty confident is
by now far, far away from whatever happened in my young brain. <span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was a dream, where a model aeroplane
appeared in my
bedroom after having squeezed under the window. It invited me to
jump up on it,
and together we flew out under the window by briefly becoming
two-dimensional.
Outside was a long dark tunnel, with walls covered with world
maps. The floor
was earthen furrows like a ploughed field. Ahead a traffic sign
showed up,
rocking as if an unseen person was holding it up from underground.
It stated:
“I am an Englishman”. Passing the sign we saw a tiny planet with a
tree and a
house. Leaving the plane behind I went in. The interior was a
single room,
perhaps reminiscent of a simple farmstead. At the stove stood a
person I knew
was the Moon. At the dinner table was a group of people that I
knew were the
other planets. The Moon brought me to the back of the room where
there was a
circular window. Outside in the darkness I could see another
planet – now a
real astronomical sphere rather than a personification. The planet
was dark,
but across its surface was a web of light similar to a circuit
diagram or a
vast city. I knew that this was my planet – either I would be
going there, or I
would <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">become</i> it.<span
style="font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It makes a great piece of personal narrative,
doesn’t it?
Mysterious, hinting at some grand destiny, even a hint of hermetic
symbolism.
In my personal narrative it is supposed to have happened in my
preschool
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Picking apart details is not hard. The maps
were from the
background of the television news programs in the 70s. The English
sign might
have been inspired by the knowledge that a family we knew were
partially
English. An interest in space and planets obviously played a part.
The tiny
planet seems borrowed straight from the illustrations of “The
Little Prince”.
And the dark planet lights were very similar to the lights from
the back of a
television set in the animated intro to the foreign-language
children’s program
I occasionally saw when the Swedish children’s programs ended.
Even the basic
plot – a child brought by a strange messenger away to a land of
magic and
revelation – is ubiquitous in children’s stories. <span
style="font-family:
"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These details make me actually think that I did
have that
dream at a fairly early age: there are no details that I would
have learned
later. Yet the meaning of the dream is clearly up for grabs. What
would be a
fun adventure to a child can be seen as a promise of destiny to a
teenager. My
current take on the dream is that it works pretty well as a
symbolic motivator:
it would be pretty cool if I could somehow make it real.<span
style="font-family:
"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times
New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New
Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:
EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">And, besides, I <i>did </i>more
or less become an
Englishman many years later.</span>
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<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University </pre>
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