weird dreams, and State of Fear

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. But I've separated everything, so you can pick and choose what you want to read.

Let me start with the QUOTE, so you don't have to scroll all the way down to find it. "I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me." (10 points)

weird dreams

I've been having really weird dreams lately. A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was at home and it was Christmas time. We all sat down for Christmas dinner, but the mood wasn't very bright. Soon, people from the family started drifting away from the table and didn't come back. There was also a little spat starting up between my brother and my mom. Eventually, everyone was gone except for me and my brother (not the one who was arguing with my mom). I could hear my mom in the kitchen, complaining about how she had to do all the work, and no one appreciated what she had to go through. And I started crying, and yelling about how Christmas in England was so much better, because they actually all stayed at the table and talked with each other and acted like a family. My brother was goading me on all the while, agreeing about how our family wasn't acting like a family. It was so intense that I actually had tears in my eyes when I woke up a few minutes later.

Then, the night before last, I dreamt that I had applied to the University of North Texas to do a Master's in Physics. They wrote me back with a rejection letter, stating that they were not accepting me, mainly due to the poor recommendation that one of my high school teachers had given me. I hadn't asked this teacher to recommend me anyway, and I couldn't help thinking that it sounded like they had gone specifically to this teacher to try and get some dirt on me. They quoted parts of his "recommendation" to me, saying things like that I was "hopelessly ignorant and dim-witted" and that my "presence in the classroom had caused disruption to the other students". Things that really didn't sound like me at all. But the thing that really annoyed me was that this particular teacher taught a math class, which I admittedly hadn't done well in, and they had purposely ignored my high grades in other math classes and in my high school and college Physics classes. The teacher who had slandered me was one that I never had in high school in real life, but the really weird thing is that I remembered him from another dream I had months ago. I had taken the first half of this math class already and done really well in it. But then I had him for the second half of the class, and for some reason, the two of us just couldn't stand each other. So I would sit at my desk in the back of his classroom and seethe with rage at him while I tried to work out my problems, and it was like everything I had learned in the previous semester had suddenly disappeared from my memory. So I didn't do well in that particular class, but all the rest of my grades had been very high. The dream ended with me writing back a letter to the UNT Physics department, accusing them of bias and cherry-picking, and outlining my argument for why I was qualified for a Master's in Physics.

State of Fear

I'm almost done reading State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. It's typical Crichton drivel and reads more like a film script than a novel. It's riddled with profanity and is much more overtly sexual than I appreciate, especially the first 100 pages or so. Its only redeeming quality is intriguing ideas.

The novel has had several reviews, many good and many bad. And while I haven't read most of them, the ones I have read seem to ignore an important part of the novel. Most of the reviews, from what I've read, focus on the idea of global warming and environmentalism. That's a big part of the novel, and a very intriguing one, as Crichton cites all kinds of commonly plugged evidence for and against global warming and other environmental 'catastrophes'. The heroes of the novel come out on the side against these issues, and I completely agree with their arguments. But there is a bigger issue at play in the novel. State of Fear is not really about global warming, any more than Amadeus is about Mozart. Both are about a wider and deeper issue, and the overt subject is merely a means to an end.

State of Fear is about just what it says it's about: the State of Fear. Its central theme is that modern society thrives on keeping its citizens in fear about something or other. People are very easy to manipulate when they are afraid, and our modern society illustrates that point as well as anything. There is, as Crichton calls it, a politico-legal-media organization (the PLM) that operates to keep people in fear so that they can control them. Modern universities feed the fear by 'discovering' new things to fear.

Now, while all this sounds a lot like a crack-pot vast conspiracy theory, I must say I agree with it on the whole. My one problem with Crichton's theory is that he doesn't seem to move beyond the Communist scare. Right now, he says, the fear is environmental catastrophe. Before that, it was the Cold War and nuclear threat. Before that, it was Communism. But before that ... ? He doesn't mention anything. Which raises the question for me, if the theory is correct, then what was the big fear before Communism, and before that, and so on? Which also raises the question, when did this 'rule by fear' begin? Can it be pinned down to a particular time period, a particular theory, or is he suggesting that it is perpetual - has always been around, and always will?

Crichton answers the first question, in part, in his appendix, where he discusses the theory of eugenics, which was highly influential at the beginning of the 20th century. But he still doesn't move beyond that. And, as far as I can tell, he doesn't answer the other questions (keeping in mind that I haven't quite finished it yet). But I would have to ask whether it isn't possible that this 'rule by fear' can be pegged down as arising around the time that Marxism came into favor?