Dream or Impending Nightmare

 

Last night, I had a very strange yet quite realistic dream. Despite its realism, there were surreal moments completely unrelated to the main theme. Occasionally, the dream shifted to a university colleague I haven't seen in almost 40 years, who was in trouble, caught up in some kind of organized plot.

I found myself at a conference organized by President Biden. It felt like a mix between a masterclass and a press conference. He was the president, but he was acting like a professor or something similar. To be honest, it was a bit of both. There weren't many of us, and he explained that World War III was imminent. He provided several reasons for this unavoidable conclusion and suggested that the final trigger would be a decision made by an elected "Prime Minister." Since we were in the USA, I assumed it would be a president.

This person would make a decision that, combined with other circumstances, would start World War III. The explanation was accompanied by a slide presentation showing, among other things, the destructive power of various types of weapons.

I particularly remember a small missile directed at an island. I expected it to completely obliterate the target, but in the dream, as often happens, the missile hit a warship instead. However, it wasn't a common warship of today; it looked more like an 18th-century battleship, with a wooden hull and white sails. When the missile hit the hull, the ship did not explode or shatter into a thousand pieces, as one might expect. Around the ship, shoals of fish, which were actually human corpses, began to sink, descending slowly, as if in slow motion, to the depths of the ocean.

Given the current state of the world, it's not surprising to have such a vivid and strange dream. With global and official media bombarding us with either apocalyptic or distorted news, social media vomiting nonsense in an uninterrupted stream of contradictions and verbal violence, and the deafening noise of organized minorities rising against inarticulated majorities who, although not completely silent, tend to bend under the violence and pressure, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. In a world where the Green and Red Axis is determined to sell its soul to end democracy and the Western way of life, where women's associations strive to end hard-won freedoms, giving way to a new wave of "men who want to be women," where societies are quick to condemn a people for defending themselves, and where it has become acceptable to call for the annihilation of a country and its people, these dreams do not seem exaggerated or inconceivable.

Reflecting on Hannah Arendt's concept of the Banality of Evil, it's clear that the erosion of rational discourse and ethical standards can lead to monstrous outcomes that seem routine or even justified by those committing them. This normalization of extreme actions and thoughts makes such dreams all the more plausible. The banality of evil shows how ordinary people can become complicit in atrocities simply by following orders or conforming to societal pressures without questioning the moral implications.

I only pray that it remains a dream and is merely the subconscious releasing the stupidity and cruelty experienced during the day.