OTC's Top Secrets -or- The American Military-Industrial Complex

Jake, 39, American, "Test Plans Analyst for a data collection firm"

Mark, this is my Dream...

It starts with me as a researcher in the Antarctic studying the differences between modeled ice thickness and satellite measurements. Upon arriving at the selected site the thickness of the ice was overlaid in my sight by a gradient showing ice thickness. This gradient was topographical in nature and ranged from red to blue according to the thickness of the ice. When I reached down to take a sample the entire Antarctic ice sloughed off into the ocean. This was recorded by the satellite and the resulting ocean level increase of 8 feet. I then was in Los Angeles being pursued by some unknown person or group. I was accompanied by I think either Jack Klugman or Cliff Robertson, the actors who were Generals.

This was taking place in a theater as the ocean was rising in the city in waves. We lost the pursuers but we were trying to get away from the incoming water. We suddenly were in a labyrinthine underground complex. The waves of water kept coming in and we had to unlock and re-close a series of various types of doors and gates. We finally sealed a huge vault-like door to reveal an immense tunnel hallway stretching as far as we could see in either direction. We went to the left and wandered a bit until it opened into a large cavern complex. We came upon a group of people being attacked by android-like beings. We helped people escape from the androids for a while.

We then were being chased by them again, along with a man in a dune buggy-like vehicle with a cage surrounding him. I managed to turn one of the androids to our side by logical argument. Together we disabled the vehicle and mortally wounded the controller of the complex. The android was able to open the vehicle and remove the device to release everyone from the cavern. We emerged in the mountains and began to make our way to civilization when the world began to meld into a fantasy type world and everyone was decked out in armor made from the scales of some huge reptile type creature. We then began to be harassed from the air by creatures riding pterodactyl type creatures. This is when I awoke.

Mr. Hagen's Reply: American Military-Industrial Complex - or - The War Industries

"Dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask."
-- X-Files

 "You are the soldiers and nurses of the next war. There will be another war.  There always has been." George S. Patton to a Sunday school class of eight year olds in 1945

The scope of thought that has gone into your dream is enormous in its psychological proportions and implications. It was not until I questioned the source of the e-mail and saw your e-mail address: www.otc.army.mil that I deciphered your (and the military's?) rather opaque intentions. Your dream reads as it might come out of a script from the TV series "The X-Files"(view video clip) which featured FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (standing in for the public) constantly uncovering the covert "top secret" operations of the military and the CIA.  

"Test Plans Analyst" -or- Geopolitics and American Power in the Global Village

Carl von Clausewitz's "War, Politics and Power", written more than 150 years ago, remains the definitive work and statement on understanding the dynamics of war and politics. He writes: "War in its literal meaning is combat, for combat alone is the efficient principle in the manifold activity which is called war." Since you say that you are an American "test plans analyst" the chapters on the "Plan of War" will be of special interest.

Apocalyptic dreams and dystopian visions prophesizing the future of humanity have haunted the dreams and imagination of our ancestors. Your dream can be viewed from a popular Hollywood dream factory perspective. One film that fits your reported dream landscape is Mad Max (see film trailer). Since one setting of your dream is LA, and one of the actors is Cliff Robertson, the research adds up to the dystopian SciFi film "Escape from LA". The sequel to "Escape from New York", starring Kurt Russell as "Snake Plissken", a former war hero, recruited to secure top secret material fits your dreamscape to a T. Sound familiar?

Another recent addition to Hollywood's canon of apocalyptic film is The Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington. 

Dystopian Surveillance -or- Dr Strangelove in the Global Village

Your dream has the narrative structure of a military science fiction parody which strikes a subtle balance between the original military (Pentagon) script and the deliberate distortion of the truth and its principle characteristics.

"1984", "Brave New World", "The Matrix" and "Blade Runner" all represent dystopias, however I believe the one that might fit your situation the best is the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel "Fahrenheit 451" (video trailer) starring Oskar Werner as a troubled futuristic "fireman" responsible for the destruction of books who begins to wonder about the necessity of his work. The Nazi's used book burning as a method to control the public's mind.

Peter Sellers in the film "Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (video trailer) plays numerous roles including Dr. Strangelove and the American President. The storyline has a paranoid American General believing that the fluoridation of the US water supply is a Russian conspiracy to render America weak and impotent. The General orders the bombing of Russia. One scene has a pilot jumping on a hydrogen bomb in order to release it and then riding the bomb cowboy style toward the ground.

Karl Deutsch and The American Political Nerves of Government

The political scientist Karl Deutsch, in the groundbreaking "The Nerves of Government" (published 1963), discusses a cybernetic model of society. The new developments of communications systems engineering with its extensive use of self-monitoring, self-controlling and self-steering automatic processes became the paradigm of the new information society. Deutsch discusses the "Pattern of Communication Flows" within cybernetic social organization in terms of political language games, consciousness, memory, learning, logic, decision making and free will. Your dream seems to incorporate many if not all these ideas about human information processing and behavior.

A mathematical theory of communication and human behavior has been theorized by various authorities including Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon etc. "Problems of flow in various organizations were studied in production engineering, traffic engineering, city planning and the design of telephone systems" (Deutsch). On a pragmatic level, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's systematic information filing system involved the surveillance of the American Public, providing a basis for McCarthyism and Senator Joseph McCarthy's Communist "Red Scare" witch hunts of the 1950's.

Pentagon of Power -or- The American Military Megamachine

Lewis Mumford, in "The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power", attempts to expose the "Secrets of the Temple". He begins with the technical inventions of the 16th century when forces began to coalesce in the unconscious which created the "myth of the machine" and provided the foundation for science fiction narratives. The constant surveillance and control of the public by the collection of intelligence data created the need for maintaining "sealed in" knowledge. Secrecy became valued as a military badge of authority and enforcing control. The secret of every totalitarian regime is secrecy itself.

For Mumford, the military, "with the pusillanimous aid of Congress has extended their tentacles throughout the industrial and academic world". "With the computer they will be able to find, to locate and to address instantly any individual on the planet: exercising control over every detail over the subject's daily life by commanding a dossier which would include parentage, birth and education record, an account of illness and medical breakdown if treated, his marriage, his sperm bank count, his income, loans, security payments, taxes and pensions and the disposition of organs" upon death. Sandra Bullock's portrayal of a computer hacker in the film "The Net" (video trailer) portrays the ability to control identity.

"In the end, no action, no conversation and in time no dream or thought would escape the wakeful and relentless eye of this deity (the megamachine). Every manifestation of life would be processed into the computer and brought under its all pervading system of control." (Mumford) "This would mean not just the invasion of privacy, but the total destruction of the human soul."

The Enemy -or- Political Personifications of the Problem of Evil

The problem of evil has been with us since before the beginnings of civilization. Fables and fairy tales teach children to fear evil, personified by some enemy or other. In many fairy tales the enemy is personified by a wolf that treacherously creeps towards its usually innocent victim. The ever-present enemy grows up with us, and is particularly important to politicians and national leaders. Jews were Hitler's enemy. Ronald Reagan politically personified the USSR as "the evil empire".

The enemy in your dream are "android like beings", perhaps similar to the Terminator (view video trailer) films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other "enemy" androids include the "Borg" (see video) species in the Star Trek franchise. As well, the androids in the dystopian film "Blade Runner" (see video trailer) fit the political description of your dream.

The Hollywood Military Generals -or- The Military Theatre of the Global Village

Since Homer's "The Iliad" war has been glorified. "The Iliad" has a clear moral message among others-- beware of those bearing false gifts.

Your dream at one point takes place in a theatre in LA. LA is a place where the Hollywood dream factory churns out war films and war scenarios. The IIDR articles about "War and Peace in the Global Village; Part 1, Part 2 explains more.

War has most likely gone on since prehistoric times. The American Revolution was led by General George Washington, a war that was billed as providing freedom in the face tyranny. Washington became the first President of the United States. In the American Civil War, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Apomattox signalling the nearing end of the Civil War. Grant would later become the 18th President of the United States. In the Spanish-American War the influence of the media became evident in what is known as "yellow journalism" fueling the American Public's appetite for war. The war was viewed by some as American imperialistic intentions. In this war we find Lieutentant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt who was second in command of the Rough Riders, Roosevelt would later become the 26th President of the United States. 

World War II featured General Dwight D. Eisenhauer and General "blood and guts" George S. Patton, Eisenhauer after the war became the 34th President of the United States. Patton's story was made into a film and featured a man who believed in reincarnation and had a dream (while commanding Third Army) of his victory against the defeated German Army.

President Eisenhower in his farewell address warned of the dystopian influence and power of the American military industrial complex (see video clip). This threat was parodied in the black comedy Dr Strangelove, when General Jack D. Ripper (watch video clip/notice the pun of the General's name?) orders his nuclear bomber Wing to target Russia. Situated in the US War Room, an advisor to President Merkin Muffley General Turgidson (view trailer) attempts to persuade Muffley to take advantage of the situation and order a full scale attack (see film clip).

The infinite variation of theatre, performance traditions and forms throughout history makes any definition of theatre art and science impossible. The Greek word theatron referred to a place where spectators sat during a performance. As a literary and visual art and science par excellence the theatre is an institutionalized voyeuristic space. Film and TV in the 20th century have replaced the theatre as a popular entertainment. The Theatre of the Mind is where future psychological battles will be fought.

The military form of theatre art and science has been designed to create combat scenarios. The Hollywood war film provides a historical narrative background to military character, motives, enemies, strategy and outcomes. Think of Alec Guinness and William Holden in the film Bridge on the River Kwai (watch video trailer). The next generation of theatre, namely popular computer video gaming (i.e. War Game simulations), has become the postmodern private form of war. With increasing computer power, virtual reality (VR) technology will become a reality in the 21st century taking war technologies a step further. 

The Case of the Missing General -or- The Stargate Program

Like out of a Hollywood script, Dale Graf River Dreams: The Case of the Missing General and Other Adventures of Psychic Research tells us the story of the US Department of Defence research program into parapsychological phenomena known as "psi". The remote viewing program code named "Stargate" was the pragmatic attempt to implement psi phenomena. Graf informs us that; "We can experience our psi nature in two ways; while awake or during dreams." The popular TV program The Dead Zone (based on the novel by Stephen King by the same name), features Johnny Smith (see TV trailer), a man who wakes up after being involved in a motor vehicle accident from a coma with psychic abilities. Smith has become a visionary, in one episode he is recruited by the military for the purpose of remote viewing.

MAD Science Fiction -or- Game Theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma

For Johan Huizinga "Homo Ludens" children learn patterns of social behaviour though their play, war being one domain of antagonistic play behaviour. The child learns of the enemy early on in its socialization in its culture.

Since you are successful in your attempt to persuade (turn) the "android-like being", to your side by logical argument, it is elementary to deduce that game theory is afoot. In their book "The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior", John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proposed a general theory of rational behaviour where interests were at least in part in conflict. Their model represented a revolutionary new way to study geo-political (i.e. military) and social decisions. Game theory applies to such situations as marriage, war, rivalry, political parties, the labour market generally and more specifically employer-worker negotiations. The US nuclear strategy which became known as MAD (Mutally Assured Destruction ) was a game theoretical application.

A science fiction (SF) story is a narrative that is not easily classifiable. Often SF stories are concerned with hypothetical utopian and dystopian visions. They stretch the imagination. Thomas More's "Utopia", published in 1516, was a prototype for future utopian schemes and adventures. In the 1890s H.G. Wells refashioned the SF genre with stories such as "The Time Machine", "The War of the Worlds" (watch video trailer) and "The First Men in the Moon". The fact that in your dream the ocean's (which is a metaphor that could be discussed at great length) level rose 8 feet can only lead one to hypothesize that the polar ice-caps have melted due to atomic fallout. Thank God this has only been hypothesized most likely at the Pentagon and never tested in reality. (An alternate hypothesis and reading is provided at the end of this article).

Dream Research of "Top Secrets"  -or- The Truth is Out There

I would like to tell you a lot more, but I don't want to give away all my secrets. The "top secret" information of the military industrial complex is not as secret as you or many others may think. Dreams provide keys to unlocking the secrets and understanding what is really happening on our planet. 

I am a Canadian civilian dream researcher whose sole aim is to help the community deal with all the social problems found in people's dreams. I will continue to make these problems transparent to the public who have a human and democratic right to know and understand their meaning. For a good read on the problem of an open versus closed society see David Brin's "The Transparent Society: Will Society Force us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom?". Also of interest is Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies".

The International Institute for Dream Research is organized as a virtual Asklepian Greek sleep and dream temple which is a descendant of Plato's Cave. The Greek philosopher Plato predicted modern film theory nearly 25 centuries ago. Dreams projected onto the communal dreamscreen like yours provides insight how the earth is viewed by the world's greatest superpower today from a military perspective. Modern social problems can no longer be solved by war; other peaceful and environmentally friendly avenues (read peace movement) must be found. The global satellite maps (such as in your dream) that we can now access as maps on Google, for example, can provide peaceful uses of information about the planet that were originally used for military purposes.

Press Release:
President Orders Declassification of Historic Satellite Imagery Citing
Value of Photography to Environmental Science, 24 February, 1995.
CIA Headquarters (Langley, Va.) -- "President Clinton today signed an Executive Order that directs the declassification of imagery obtained by the first generation of photo-reconnaissance satellites; the CORONA, ARGON and LANYARD systems. The order will cause the declassification of more than 800,000 satellite images of the earth's surface, collected by these satellites between 1960 and 1972. By the end of an eighteen-month transition period, the public will be given access to this imagery that can be used to assist environmental studies and other civilian applications."  

An Alternate Reading: An Inconvienient Truth

An alternate interpretation can be envisioned. Instead of nuclear war causing changes in the ice gradients, human (anthropogenic) activities are changing the ecological balances that are at work on the planet. Former Vice President Al Gore's Inconvienient Truth (see film trailer) provides an understanding of the human causes of climate change. A series of recent articles in the Hamilton Spectator underscores the story of a Planet in peril. On September 2, 2008 the Hamilton Spectator headline reads "After 125,000 years, northern passages (of the Arctic) open" (A11). On September 9, 2008 the headline reads "Climate-change clock ticking down" (A13). The Spectator headline reads; "Global warming's chilling reality: It will take a horrible disaster to make us wake up and act." (A17). Scientists believe that if the Greenland ice sheet were to completely melt the sea level would rise by 7 meters...you can imagine the rest.

In the Hamilton Spectator December 16, 2008 edition we can read an article by Gwynne Dyer, the headline reads, "It's almost too late to stop warming" (A17). The further title of the article perhaps provides a frame to understand your dream, "Militaries are making plans for chaos from climate meltdown". The article juxtaposes (comparing) two NASA satelight images of the polar (North) ice cap one taken on September 21, 2005 and another taken September 16, 2007, one can only factually deduce that a significant portion of the ice has receded.

There are numerous movies that dramatically screen and show us that the nature of the ecological balances of our planet are fragile. The Core (see video clip) and Waterworld (see film trailer) The Day After Tomorrow (see trailer) are but a few. In The Day After Tomorrow, a space station gives a bird's eye view of the weather effects caused by global warming.

Hope these thoughts are of help and provide some insight,

Mark H.

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