No serious scientist today claims that human behavior is either all nature or all nurture. When it comes to our actions, humans are born with certain tendencies, and these are shaped by circumstance. Just to what extent we come pre-programmed is not known. We, more-so than any other mammal, enter life painfully under-developed. What it means to be human cannot be fully expressed until many years after a child is born. In the interim, how much behavior is learned and how much is inherently unwound is a thing of speculation and ongoing research.
Surprisingly, it seems that in the sphere of dreaming there is considerable inherited information. Regardless of culture or historical epoch, it is safe to say that most, if not all people have the same dozen or so themes dominate their memorable dreams. Vivid and realistic (at least believable) hallucinations of being chased by strange men or animals. Being in jeopardy of or actually falling off a cliff. Teeth falling out. Even flying dreams are commonly precipitated by being chased and are an escape tactic. You do not have to have experienced these in waking life - we are born with these schema. |
What are lucid dreams for? Why did we "evolve" lucid dreaming? Well, we didn't. Lucid dreaming is what we call an epi-phenomenon. Lucid dreaming is possible because of other interactions, and did not evolve due to lending humans any particular survival advantage. We did not develop the capacity to have lucid dreams over evolutionary time due to their making us any stronger, faster, smarter, or otherwise more fit. It's like this (an analogy): Humans did not make it this far because we have the inherent capacity to type 150 words per minute. Sure, typing well works out to give some people a certain advantage in the modern world, but the ability to do so is not how or why our fingers and the brain-parts responsible for moving them came out shaped and functioning the way they do. Our hands are great at gripping (prehensile ability) and even manipulating small objects - we have fine-motor control of our digits - but it would be absurd to think that our hand development had anything to do with the purposes we eventually applied these appendages to.
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Just like we didn't develop our amazing hands because of or for typing and it turns out that our hands are quite useful for this kind of task (and today, we are finding that our hands are good at swiping and gesturing on glass screens like on smart phones,iPads, and other tablet devices or touch-screen computers), some of us are discovering that our dreams can be used for self-examination, adventuring, and all sorts of experimentation that they were never "adapted" for. By adapted, we mean in an evolutionary sense, not in common parlance; using the word generally, turns out our dreaming mind is well suited, or adapted for all sorts of things that did not benefit our ancestor's survival long enough for them to reproduce (and those behaviors which did, including appropriately timed aggression, cooperation, hiding, fleeing, foraging, hunting, fornicating, etc., were in fact adapted-for during our species' evolution). With that said, dreaming, but not lucid dreaming, was very likely adapted for.
So, what kind of an advantage does dreaming bestow on the dreamer? There is good evidence indicating that every animal (except for the platypus and perhaps some dolphins and whales) has REM-Sleep and with it, dreams. And these dreams activate species-specific, survival behaviors (yes, thoughts, including dream thoughts, are behaviors). In humans, we need to step away from any conceptions of the modern world and consider the ancient, paleolithic environment that we existed in for many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of year. This was the world we became "human beings" in, and it was the landscape that we existed in for the vast majority of our time on Earth. For much of this time, our brains and all of it's built-in software has remained relatively similar. This is apparent when we look at the various ethnicities, or if you are so-inclined - races or breeds - of humans. (Anthropologists do not use the term "race" because they claim that although there are certain markers which can identify ancestry, we are so much more alike than different that we may have more in common with someone who lives around the world from you, genetically, than with someone living next door to your family for the last dozen generations.) What we find is that humans have very much the same brains. It is our cultures which are different, but our deepest needs and perceptions are the same. This is well illustrated in our dreams. The same dream themes which helped your ancestors survive, are those that you dream about today. This is true whether you live in Alabama or Africa, Chicago or China. This is true today like it was true before we had computers, before airplanes, before we discovered the wheel. Yes, some new elements enter into dreams - the characters and even the landscapes and the this and that reflect the waking world you know - but these are merely surface place-holders. The important structure underlying dreams is the same... |
Dreams are species-specific, instinctual behaviors being rehearsed in a virtual environment. For humans, before we managed to escape the food-chain (what an accomplishment that was!), we may have had huge brain potential, but we were, and still are, relatively flimsy creatures. We do not have the claws of a bear, the teeth of a large feline, the tough hide of a rhino. We aren't particularly quick, we can't see well in the dark. Most of our evolutionary primate cousins are far stronger than we are. All this means that we had to be prepared to perceive threats early, and have a means to deal with these. And our big threats came in the form of other male humans (we are a viscous thing, even to those like us) and other predatory animals, falling (a vestige from our pre-human existence), natural misfortunes beyond our control and our own failures at trying again and again to do something important. When we are younger, our early dreams more closely reflect the enactment of these themes in situations and places closely resembling out archaic world - being chased by large mammals, falling off of cliffs, being lost. As we get older our experiences and day-residue begin to fill-in, and this often includes media influences: Being chased by TV and movie characters, driving off of an overpass, not able to finish our work (often schoolwork or a more adult deadline) on time, being cheated on by our lover - things that threaten our physical survival or our social standing and resources. It was once "missing your boat," now it may be missing your plane or train. And the common "territorial imperative," that deeply rooted instinct to respect borders - this may play out as you dreaming that you are in a house but it is not yours and you better get out before you are caught. We have all had the "chasing dream," sometimes you know what is pursuing you, sometimes it is just a feeling and you flee anyway. Sometimes you feel as though you are an outlaw or guilty of something, and this is why you are being pursued. To make it more challenging, the threat build and your legs feel as though you are running in quicksand, they are heavy and the "monster" is gaining on you. But whether you are being chased, or attacked, or can't find your way or complete your task, YOU DO NOT GIVE UP. What good would all of this practice be if you faced it half-hearted? (And as a side-note, you do not need to remember dreams for them to have an effect on threat perception and handling because the motor memory is what is being acted upon - the fact that dreams can be consciously recalled is an artifact of our powerful memories as humans.)
Dreams did not evolve as a means to experience our repressed desires, for wish-fulfillment. Sorry Freud. Dreams did not develop over our ancestors' long trials and tribulations of behavioral mutations and fitness selections as a way to work-out just any kind of waking problem. Nightmares are not dream malfunctions, but are what occurs when the dream system is maximally activated - and this happens when we are stressed. Of course, the world we have built only vaguely resembles the one we lived in for most of human existence, and our dreams are still trying to prepare us for yesterday. True, sometimes amazing breakthroughs happen in dreams, after a great deal of intensive waking-thought has been pouring over an issue. And yes, some dreams are not only pleasant, but ecstatically wonderful. Your unique personality and your dominant concerns surely are reflected in dreams. And here is the important point - we can hack the system. We can become aware that we are dreaming while still dreaming. Flying, which many people first experience as a strange escape tactic while young, can be used to feel the magic of will-power overcoming dream gravity (and that's an interesting thing - gravity is not absent in most dreams, even flying dreams, and the fear of falling is not necessarily absent). And after the lucid dreamer explores flying (which is almost always the first thing a person does after becoming lucid), they can proceed to experiment with all sorts of dream manipulation. We will only be limited by our imaginations. But before any of that, learn the basics of lucid dream induction, learn how to stabilize immediately after becoming lucid, and have a plan for what to do once you are awake in your dreams. |