Arantxa/Dreams (Revised)

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The truth shall set you free…?
What do dreams really give us, and what are we without them?

'The first step of freedom is not just to change reality to fit your dreams; it’s to change the way you dream. …..this hurts because all satisfactions we have come from our dreams.' – Zizek, The Perverts Guide to Ideology. Is it freeing for the world to reach for the highest dream. Or is it just a goal that is unreachable and therefore one of the main reasons we can’t feel satisfied and face our real world, outside ideology.

When Renzo Martens (Enjoy Poverty) explains to the African labor men in the Republic of Congo, that they are a natural resource for the western society, he tells them they have to accept their situation as it is. Forget their ideal way of living. In their head they would live a better life would they be giving a better salary. If they keep striving and hoping for a different situation, they will never take the effort to enjoy the situation they are in now. They won’t see the positive side because they believe – in their dreams – it can be better. This is supposed to create freedom for them. But what does this ‘freedom’ mean?

It seems to me that freedom is another word for ‘truth’. Truth in turn, is said to ‘set us free’. These are still two very vague descriptions. What one can decide from this, is what truth and freedom is not. It doesn’t mean that you are happy, it doesn’t mean that you are healthy, it doesn’t mean that you are wealthy, it doesn’t mean that you are in love, and it doesn’t mean you are content. You could be broke, sick, alone and housebroken… but you would know the truth and therefore free. The moment Martens says this to the men in the Republic of Congo, the men immediately try to change that saying into something that will still make their dream possible. They continue to believe in the possibility of what they think will be a ‘better life’. In short, they still have hope.

What Zizek says in the Pervert’s Guide to Ideology is that we have to change the way we dream. He doesn’t truly say we have to change our dreams though. But what is interesting is that he mentions ‘the way’ we dream. What does that mean though. Maybe he means that we have to reset our standards. We can dream about living the ideal life, with the newest products – updating our dreams by means of the updates products themselves, all the while becoming bigger and more complex – but with a side thought that these dreams are that – just dreams. Instead of the bigger dreams for our life we settle for the smaller dreams that are based on reality.

But then the question we have to ask ourselves is: would we in fact be satisfied in life, living our small, reality based dreams all the while thinking of the bigger ones. Like Martens says to the poor African man: we have to accept our own situation and change our dreams based upon our real financial, social, health or any other life situation in this moment. Only that way we can be productive and free in our satisfactions. As the saying goes: take things in small steps, in this way you will be more productive? Maybe this is what can be said to our dreams as well.

With this we enter the paradox of small dreams and small steps against big dreams and big accomplishments. Big desire, grand motivation, hope. Without these we would never dare anything outside the box (within the creative world). We as a society would never dream of opposing the government, and would never try the build technology outside our expectations. Entering the technology aspect, we enter an even more complex realm where we think we create our own dreams; we are in fact made into dreaming by larger corporations. Companies as Apple and Microsoft, continue to in fact create our dreams by advertising new and developing technologies. These advertisements are unconsciously embedded into our dreams and desires. We want them, and we can’t function without them. By creating ‘plandoplesence’ – articifally limiting lifespan on products – and creating updates without which our systems won’t be able to function, we are forced into dreams that are full with these forged desires. (The Men Who Made Us Spend)

There is much to say about this. It seems obvious now to you as a reader, and me as the writer, that I have difficulty understanding what Zizek truly means with his dawning quote: “The first step of freedom is not just to change reality to fit your dreams; it’s to change the way you dream...this hurts because all satisfactions we have come from our dreams.” All satisfactions we have come form our dreams. It’s when we accomplish a dream, or get closer to a dream, that we experience a satisfaction. We create an ideal for ourselves, and anything moving to that ideal feels like we have done our part and we have contributed. But in the western ideal, with the constant updating of technology and new products, these dreams build up. The moment we fulfill one dream we are already thinking of another. You can never find satisfaction, because during the accomplishment of one dream the next dream has already taken over.

By taking away the impossible fulfilling dreams, and taking them back to reality, we create dreams for ourselves that are possible to fulfill and therefore we can feel the supposed satisfaction. By getting back to reality though, we lose something more. We lose the idea of hope, hope for something greater than us. We don’t go beyond ourselves, outside the box. It’s not for nothing that we are ‘Dared to dream’. Dreams basically give us something to strive for, take that away and we are primitive and live life as it comes, then we are truly what we were meant to be as, animals living to propagate. The thing that sets humans apart, is their ambition to go beyond themselves, to not accept their current situation but to think of the impossible. The world can be ideal, yes it can, we will make it so. Even though we know we won’t be able to accomplish.

“…How come it is easier for us to imagine the end of all life on earth, an asteroid hitting the planet, than a modest change in our economic order?....It depends on us, on our will….” - Zizek, The Perverts Guide to Ideology

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