THE DARTMOUTH GREEN KEY
FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2017
PAGE 23
CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST WILLIAM SANDLUND ’18
VERBUM ULTIMUM THE DARTMOUTH EDITORIAL BOARD
Troublous Dreams
Conspicuous Awareness
Our dreams are gateways into self-discovery. “Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake.” — Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi Each day billions of dreams formulate and dissipate across the planet. They are phantoms of our skulls, mirages we can taste and touch. Once we wake they are gone, lacking any material trace except for the uncertain testimony of memory. If we do not write them down or tell someone, this evidence disappears with the morning dew. They are immensely interesting for their composer but are usually odious conversation topics. Dreams are the stories we tell ourselves, ones that in our self-absorption we become lost in. We do not just suspend our disbelief — the line separating reason and emotion dissolves. Occasionally, there arises an exceptional specimen of dream. These dreams are so powerful they take on the status of revelations. It becomes unclear if the dream imposes its vision onto the individual or the individual imposes his or her interpretation onto the dream. The consequence of such dreams persists in the waking world in religion, history and art. These nocturnal visions seep into reality, further blurring the line between subjective perception and our shared external environment. Dreams possess the unique potential to change how lives are lived from within. The deadliest dream of the 19th century flit before the eyes of a stressed-out student in Guangzhou, China. In 1837, Hong Xiuquan, a Hakka peasant from Southeast China, failed the imperial examination for a third time. Although he showed intellectual promise, the exams were notoriously difficult to pass, with a district level success rate of around 1 percent. China’s rapidly growing population had outpaced the number of government postings, leaving thousands of promising young scholars disaffected in a time of economic stagnation, government corruption and racial tension. Hong felt an immense pressure to succeed. He came from a poor rural family that had invested significant amounts of time and money into his classical education. Following his failure, he suffered a nervous breakdown and slipped into a days-long delirium. Later he described the experience as his spirit visiting heaven. He had a recurring dream involving an old man telling him the Chinese people were demon worshippers. The man eventually entrusted Hong with a sacred mission to slay these evil spirits. Around a year before this strange episode, Hong received a religious tract from the protestant missionary Liang Fa called “Good Words to Admonish the Age.” Christian ideas almost certainly influenced the content of Hong’s visions, but more importantly they helped Hong interpret the significance of his dream. He believed that the old man was God and that He had assigned Hong with the divine mission to overthrow the Qing dynasty. Upon recovery Hong apparently underwent a cathartic change. He purportedly grew taller and exuded a charisma people found irresistible. He began preaching and quickly gained a strong following among peasants and miners. Stories began to circulate about Hong working miracles
— mutes could speak and the insane became articulate. An angelic young boy reportedly descended from the heavens and repeatedly proclaimed Hong’s name. In the early stages of the movement, Hong continued to reference his wondrous dream, which became steadily more embellished. He drew confidence, purpose and followers not just from the dream itself but from its repeated retelling. In an essay written by Hong’s cousin Hong Renkan, Renkan describes his reaction to Hong’s preaching about his dream-vision as follows: “I felt as if I were waking from a dream and as if I were regaining soberness after intoxication.” The dream took on a life of its own and somehow awakened people to their reality or convinced them that they had found something meaningful around which to order their lives. Hong eventually founded a millenarian sect called the God Worshipping Society. The movement quickly gained momentum by exploiting local dissatisfaction with the Qing dynasty. In 1850, a year after the start of the rebellion, Hong and his followers took over Yongan and later established the “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace.” Two years later, the Taipings had taken Nanjing as their capital. Their kingdom in southern China lasted until 1864. Hong died during the death throes of his revolt, probably poisoning himself within the confines of his luxurious palace. He was one of the final casualties in a conflict that left at least 20 million people dead and permanently crippled Qing authority. Histories have already been written about the socioeconomic conditions that allowed for such a deadly rebellion to take place. It is hard to acknowledge and understand how a single dream started a chain of events leading to such a massive loss of life. However tempting, analyzing Hong’s dream can only ever yield speculations. We must be content to observe the power of a dream over an individual and a movement in the hope that it can shed light on our subjective experience. Dreams exploit our self-centered nature. They have an intoxicating power that prevents us from recognizing their illusive qualities. When Hong woke from his vision he was convinced that he had awoken to a new reality. His world had been shattered by his failure to pass an exam but then his life was restored and imbued with new meaning and purpose. It is an awful lot like someone discovering religion or Marxism and feeling like he has found a framework to understand the world. Suddenly you have answers to uncertainty, and you want to tell everyone about your momentous transformation. Conversion begets conversion, just as power begets power. We embrace dreams, theories and religion partly in order to feel at ease in an unfathomable universe. Before you fall headlong into a new idea, consider asking yourself what it is you are attracted to. Then ask why you think this is what you are attracted to. Keep questioning and delve deeper into yourself. Truth is elusive and illusive, but it comes from within. And if you have a sacred dream vision, you will know you are onto something good.
Awareness is a challenging but necessary exercise.
The average morning routine of a they engage with the challenges they face. Dartmouth student likely involves a wake-up The individual and structural hurdles to groan, eyes pried open by a depleting supply open-mindedness manifest themselves in of willpower, a cold shower and copious our activism. Our mindsets thus lead us to amounts of caffeine. Being physically awake no more than a surface-level understanding allows us to learn and experience; develop of the issues we discuss, and a surface-level and share. Being awake gives us a working understanding of anything can only create mind but not necessarily a receptive one, a surface-level solution. allowing us to listen but not necessarily As a result, even the best of intentions understand or empathize. can contribute to our collective blindness, The education we receive at Dartmouth is hypocrisy and ineptitude. When students a valuable one, powerful even. But nothing we speak with those of other groups, they cannot learn from classes, extracurricular activities necessarily comprehend their experiences. or research programs means anything if Going to a Black Lives Matter demonstration we do not also learn from each other. It is not a substitute for embodying the values of is often easy to assume that the two are that movement into our daily lives. Wearing intertwined, though that may not always apparel for a cause may raise some awareness, be the case. When students participate in but in most cases that visibility serves only seminar classes, where every word they say as a self-congratulatory proof of activism. factors into a percentage of their grade, are Using “awareness” in a performative they listening to the dialogue around them or context can raise issues of its own. Instead of rehearsing their own script? Before we raise spending their time advocating for something our hands, we should figure out whether each students may criticize their peers for not comment builds on the existing dialogue or is advocating enough. But the moment they find an attempt to compare, criticize and outdo. satisfaction in being more aware than those Individually, most students strive to keep an around them is the moment they become open mind, but we should ask ourselves if complacent, which leads to inaction. Inaction we are collectively succeeding in that effort. is not what we are here for, not what we owe Even when we do genuinely listen, there to everyone who helped us get here and not is still a difference between acknowledging what we owe to those we plan on serving, different opinions and being willing to change working with or leading. our own. We might hear what someone As this academic year draws to a close, has to say but never give that person the some students are graduating in three weeks, opportunity to break through the rigidity of others in three years. All of us can do better our own judgment and shape our perspective. by being awake in the truest sense of the Being flexible to change and acknowledging word. Certainly, the College has a role to our own lack of understanding is by no play in fostering opportunities that allow for means easy — it means exposing the rifts students’ personal moral development and in our own intellect and admitting that we that give them the space, time and conditions are vulnerable. But it is to realize their own values a necessary part of true “Being flexible and engage with each other awakening. more meaningfully. But in The stratification to change and the end, being willing to and separation arguably acknowledging do so is up to us. intrinsic to the college Waking up is about our own lack of experience only adds more than just getting to the challenge. Most understanding is by out of bed every morning students tend to surround no means easy — it to go to class. It is about themselves with people letting go of our apathy, who a re simil a r to means exposing our shallowness and our them, with whom they the rifts in our need to compare. It is also have common habits or about allowing ourselves to own intellect and values and with whom be vulnerable and using the they can have easy, self- admitting that we are strength we have to combat affirming conversations. vulnerable.” our fear of judgment, As a result, even when we disagreement or rejection. think we are engaging in Critically, waking up is real discourse, we end up within the confines about being there for one another. If we of echo chambers, congratulating ourselves decide to care more about each other, we on being “woke” but never actually learning will inevitably become better listeners, closer anything we did not already know. Some partners and stronger fighters. Ultimately, of those conversations may be mentally our choice of how we view and judge others stimulating, but rarely do they break any affects who we are as people. A Dartmouth real barriers. education and experience is an opportunity Most students tend to fall into two to change our view of the world, our view camps. Either we believe ourselves to be of others and our view of ourselves. Let us open-minded when we are not, or we use it well. recognize that we are not but believe true open-mindedness is out of reach. Whether The editorial board consists of the opinion staff, superficial or cynical, the way we engage the opinion editor, both executive editors and the with each other directly impacts the way editor-in-chief.