Morality-In-A-Bottle

The Land Of Cockaigne by Pieter Bruegel The Elder (1567)

A Link Between Dreams & Stereotypes?

Recently there was a series of articles in the international media about a US study that purported to find a link between what people dream & the stereotypes they believe in. According to the study, it was posited that if people's dreams were "engineered" to underline a specific change in their chosen stereotypes, e.g. about colored races, there would be a noticeable change in the strength of their bias against different classes of society. The researchers went on to say that, if their experiment worked on a large scale, it could translate into impressive progress in the promotion of inter-racial harmony in American society, an issue that badly needs attention as the recent events in Ferguson amply illustrate.

Let's Sleep On It

But this is just another morality-in-a-bottle story. Anyone having a basic knowledge of human psychology can vouch for the fact that every generation of clinical psychologists has at least one incurable optimist who obstinately maintains that a patient's own suffering isn't the only sign of the presence of illness; even if someone is perfectly okay himself or herself & only causes suffering to others, he or she is a "patient".

Take the phenomenon of psychopathy. Aside from the currently-unexplored possibility that narcotics abuse damages the brain in a way that eventually promotes psychopathic behavior, psychopaths are basically people who enjoy causing suffering & yet are sane enough to know that they must keep their hobby a secret or else they will become social outcasts. The normal instincts of love or greed routinely take a back seat to their desire to cause chaos & suffering. It is for this reason that one clinical study proved that, while harsh incarceration conditions generally only make recidivism more likely in a convict with a normal mentality, it functions as an effective deterrent for psychopaths - the catch is in accurately identifying a psychopath.


Dreams

A dream can be defined as follows:
"Images, ideas, emotions & sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during specific phases of the sleep cycle."

Dreams, as a field of study, have always held a semi-supernatural attraction in almost every culture in the world. There are literally thousands of stories about how dreams enabled the dreamer to solve problems, make discoveries, invent things, see the future & even communicate with the dead. The jury is out on the extent of the accuracy of such notions because mankind hasn't plumbed the depths of the human soul well enough to analyze how far dreams can help us understand our place in the world.

But we do know two things about dreams: they spring from the subconscious mind & are the result of the electrochemical activity of the brain. However, this information only leads to more questions, such as:
Considering that 99% of the subconscious mind is "programmed" during the first two years of life (a time when all of us are completely free of stereotypes & biases), how do dreams address ideas that took root after the subconscious was almost full?
If our thoughts are basically a stream of electrical activity, won't all the different varieties of energy activity that can be found in even the cleanest atmosphere play a role in what we dream?

Stereotypes

A stereotype can be defined as follows:
"A fixed & oversimplified image or categorization of a particular type of person or thing."

There is a popular misconception that stereotypes are born of some unconscious prompting going back to ideas picked up before the subject was old enough to know better. In reality, most stereotypes have their roots in what is known as ethnocentrism - a strong belief in the inherent superiority of the subject's culture & traditions as compared to other cultures & traditions. The very act of comparison between "us & them" is something that only an adult would find worth his time; a child would never spend even one minute on it.

The situation is further aggravated by the sensationalists in society, who oversimplify & edit originally complex information until the audience has no choice but to assume that human uniqueness is neither real nor important in day-to-day life.

The Business Of Peace

Morality & broad-mindedness are both intensely personal choices. You can change a person's behavior, but you can't change his mind. The one thing that everyone agrees is essential to personal & collective prosperity is the ability to raise the resources to buy the comforts that make life worth living.

So, instead of trying to appeal to the loftier instincts of the general population (which has been conclusively shown to be a waste of time), put the parties in question into a situation in which they have to deal with each other - in other words, make them do business with each other - & harmony will follow. To quote Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street, "Greed is good".