A parable for our time
May. 14th, 2012 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vostoklakeAll right, so last night I had the strangest dream, but this isn't a State Insurance ad.
A political leader called a few hundred people together and announced "HOLY CRAP eco-catastrophe is getting out of control. The town where we live will be underwater in less than a week! Luckily, I have charted a new form of flying vessel that can get us all to our new home on safely elevated land in just a couple of hours."
So we were all lined up in the chilly cold night, hundreds of us, waiting to get into something that looked like a six-storey ambulance. (Don't laugh, this is how my subconscious works.) We were all squashed in very, very tight. I remember getting to the head of the queue, then climbing up a long metal ladder until I was just behind the cockpit.)
We took off, and the flight was amazing. It clearly wasn't along the ground, as the various twists and turns and 80-degree dips proved. We were actually flying. Through the air. To our new and better home...
... and then I found myself flying a paper aeroplane through a large cafeteria-like place, making "zoom zoom" noise. I stopped in front of the political leader, who said "well done". It turned out there was no eco-catastrophe, and no flying vessel, and we hadn't gone anywhere. He had just hypnotised us to think there was, to "make the danger of eco-catastrophe more real". And to encourage us to donate to his political cause.
So there was a party afterwards and I was talking to several people who said: "Oh well, that was fun while it lasted, and it certainly got us excited for the political work ahead."
"But he lied to us," I said.
"Well, it was in a good cause and we got excited!"
"Yes, but he LIED to us," I said.
"Hush! Someone might tell him you said that and you'll be in trouble."
And then a fight broke out among a bunch of crust-punks in the carpark, and I woke up.
I wonder who can riddle me the Secret Message of this dream.
A political leader called a few hundred people together and announced "HOLY CRAP eco-catastrophe is getting out of control. The town where we live will be underwater in less than a week! Luckily, I have charted a new form of flying vessel that can get us all to our new home on safely elevated land in just a couple of hours."
So we were all lined up in the chilly cold night, hundreds of us, waiting to get into something that looked like a six-storey ambulance. (Don't laugh, this is how my subconscious works.) We were all squashed in very, very tight. I remember getting to the head of the queue, then climbing up a long metal ladder until I was just behind the cockpit.)
We took off, and the flight was amazing. It clearly wasn't along the ground, as the various twists and turns and 80-degree dips proved. We were actually flying. Through the air. To our new and better home...
... and then I found myself flying a paper aeroplane through a large cafeteria-like place, making "zoom zoom" noise. I stopped in front of the political leader, who said "well done". It turned out there was no eco-catastrophe, and no flying vessel, and we hadn't gone anywhere. He had just hypnotised us to think there was, to "make the danger of eco-catastrophe more real". And to encourage us to donate to his political cause.
So there was a party afterwards and I was talking to several people who said: "Oh well, that was fun while it lasted, and it certainly got us excited for the political work ahead."
"But he lied to us," I said.
"Well, it was in a good cause and we got excited!"
"Yes, but he LIED to us," I said.
"Hush! Someone might tell him you said that and you'll be in trouble."
And then a fight broke out among a bunch of crust-punks in the carpark, and I woke up.
I wonder who can riddle me the Secret Message of this dream.
