Global Village Voice

View our latest blog: The Global Village Voice: What do our dreams mean?

Welcome to the International Institute for Dream Research (IIDR) public forum on the Internet The Global Village Voice. The blog is intended to provide a place to discuss the nature and everyday meanings of dreams and dreaming. It was Marshall McLuhan who coined the term the Global Village which today has become a metaphor for life on the information highway of the world wide web. The Global Village Voice will feature Dream Vision  narratives from around the globe in an attempt to mimic what Northrop Frye  termed the "total dream" of humanity. On a collective unconscious level we are all connected to the universal process of dreaming, consciously we can all get connected to our dreams.
 
Today we can read and hear the news from a variety of sources concerning a diverse range of stories about social problems; wars raging on the planet, the downturn in the stock market, crime, the environment, taxes and the revival of the Cold War. Or, we can turn to and tune into a different channel for our daily news, one that provides us with a different perspective. Dreams speak to all of us nightly about such problems as cultural imperialism, militarism, rape, abuseabortion and self-destructive behaviour. The Global Village Voice provides a forum to create a dialogue about the nature of these social problems, while also searching and proposing solutions. All the blogs will be organized by narrative  topics and archived and made accessible to you. 
 
A society committed to freedom of speech, the press, religion, assembly, etc. - will be an open one where individuals can attain high levels of self-realization and satisfaction through a lack of censorship. This freedom leads to autonomy and dignity for the individual, which in turn benefits society as a whole. The self-fulfillment of a free speaker can be understood through the "Marketplace of Thought," where the thoughts of the individual and the collective combine in an discussion. The 18th-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that in order for individuals to achieve the highest possible levels of freedom within society, the workings of that society needed to be transparent. In other words, institutions, such as governments, businesses, social groups and the like, needed to be fair and just, creating an open society. The psychodynamic forces that shape societies and our nightly dreams are overdetermined.
 
In our dreams we find the influences of the culture industries and popular culture. One of the main findings of the IIDR is the generational philosophical geneology of the culture wars raging in the social unconscious. One of the aims of the IIDR and The Global Village Voice is to contribute in ending this decadent philosophical and cultural Dream Vision geneology of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, in the alternative these wars will continue to inhabit the dreams of our children's children .
 
Since before the dawn of the human race and communication, the daily tide of dreams has swept and circulated over our planet. It is sweeping over the planet as we speak. I call on you, to make a contribution to the discussion. The IIDR calls for a mythic sea change in the tropics of cultural history and the marketplace of thought and ideas, a turning away from philosophies of pathological poetic conflict (agon), a turning away from a decadent cultural geneology of war, rivalry, prejudice, violence, crime, destruction and hatred(s) which are poetically expressed on all individual and societal levels (conscious and unconscious) and have been inherited from our collective past. It is a call to the mind of the Public, to all philosophers, to all faiths, to all races, to all classes, to all artists, scientists, politicians, educators, business people, media outlets and so on, all who are creators, carriers and partakers of the living spectacle of the plastic arts  we call Civilization. It is a simple call to humanity and Everyone as a whole, it is a call to all Dream Vision dimensions of life, it is a call for a poetic revolution in Public and private life and living. I call on you the reader, you the Public, to create a Public sphere  where the Dream Vision of freedom, peace and cooperation for all pervades.

All material Copyright 2006 International Institute for Dream Research. All rights reserved.