Alternative Editorial: Social Dreaming

Lauren Giordano / The Atlantic

Week 5 of lockdown and as the global figures of infection (2.3m) and death (161,000) continue to rise, so our shared future seems suspended in animation.

What we know about the turbulent present is vast and varied. We are reading about extraordinary expenditures across the globe – from building fully functioning hospitals in unprecedented haste, to supplying a brief universal basic income to households across the US – costing billions of whatever currency you are working in. 

A global economic depression seems inevitable. Even at the very moment that local councils in the UK are being supported to the tune of £1.6bn to help with the crisis, they are already being warned of inevitable drastic cuts to their budgets, as soon as we surface from Covid.

But it’s all reaction and warnings so far. It’s as if we are in the middle of a flood, unable to imagine what the scale of the mess will be, how much we’ll need to clean up.

There is much talk (and evidence) of the mental health effects of people being in lockdown. That shouldn’t surprise: what sentient being – including animals – can bear isolation for long? Those with a predisposition to anger and frustration have only become more dangerous to themselves and their families.

But even the young and healthy will be in danger of depression as they experience their loss of freedom acutely. Sadly we can’t take it for granted that people will simply snap out of it, as soon as we open our doors again. For the most affected, there are emotional and chemical changes in the brain that will need attention for some time into the future.

For good or bad, our brains have a very strong dreaming capacity – which can lead to catastrophising events, as much as healthy escapism. We are most familiar with the idea of dreaming at night – when the brain does its very important work of processing those strong emotions we haven’t been able to complete during the day. Being shocked or challenged in the course of day by a headline, or even a casual comment in our immediate environment, can lodge in our subconscious. It waits to be dealt with when we switch off our thinking brain while sleeping. 

Dr Joe Griffin’s book Why We Dream is a fascinating account of how the dreaming brain acts at night, like a psychological version of a flushing toilet. It uses the power of metaphor to pull any casual memory into a storyline – the dream – that can complete and close down any potentially troublesome emotions. 

However, at times of great anxiety, our brain can get emotionally overloaded: we wake up early, unable to complete this metaphorical work. While most of these dreams will remain in the personal realm never to be shared, we have public records of dreams that help document history. 

For example, take The Third Reich of Dreams by Charlotte Beradt, which captured dream-testimony in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939. In hindsight they can appear prophetic. Beradt shows how acutely German citizens were subconsciously aware of the breakdown of their society, even if they could not grapple with it consciously.

Here’s a recent piece from Vice magazine that is doing something similar for the Coronavirus lock-down. Although here, there are as many utopian dreams as there are nightmares. The deep yearning for something better is also felt emotionally; it might easily be resisted in the daylight hours, where we censor the impractical. Are we currently setting the scene, subconsciously, for enormous change?

Of course we don’t only activate our dreaming brain at night. To some extent we are constantly moving in and out of temporary trance states in daytime, as we give our attention to people and ideas we might learn from. This would explain the appetite for “long reads”, those huge pieces of prose – one or two of which we share on the Daily Alternative – which help to explain the significance of this moment. They draw us into another word of possibility and create an emotionally safe space to rest in, when the outside world is so uncertain.

While the mainstream news headlines attempt to define the public narrative, social and alternative media (like our own) actively draw attention to other ways of looking at the moment we are in. Whether we have more time or not on our hands – it varies widely – the change in the rhythm of our daily lives may have created a new space for daydreaming.

For some this will look like meditative stillness, being open to new thoughts and visions appearing in our consciousness (see Phil Teer’s piece this week). For others it’s allowing ourselves to gaze out the window. Or do our daily exercise without earphones blocking out the space for new thoughts to arise. 

In some cases, people actively pursue the insights a dreaming brain can offer when the usual boundaries are in place. But many go beyond those common limitations, using psychedelics or plant medicines. Others take part in group social dreaming experiments.

The question is, what can we do with our insights when they are harvested in such private and protected spaces? Won’t these dreams of a better – sometimes worse – future only frustrate us, when we return to our ‘real’ lives? Not necessarily. One part of the dreaming brain’s function is to help us rehearse new ways of being, to prepare us for different outcomes. If we begin to embrace our dreams actively, we could begin to see them as active incubators of change.

For example, we know a group of friends who are all up for a more regenerative economy – and they’re using this time to actively imagine a better future. Not unlike the “virtual reality” premise of Second Life technology they are designing and testing the limitations of their ideas. When they see something missing from their vision, they invite someone new into the group. It’s interesting, they’re telling us, how much more freedom they give their imaginations in times like these. It’s as if the slate is not exactly wiped clean, but certainly much more flexible and fluid than before.

Not everyone has ambitious groups of friends like these to join in with. But that doesn’t stop any one of us exploring our own dreams, in a time of enforced slowing down. We are off the predictable hamster wheel and onto unfamiliar territory, taking each challenge as it comes. It’s natural to be internally strategizing for the best conditions, like the adaptive mammals we are, working out what we would do if we had the choice. 

When has it ever been so obvious that one person’s health and well-being depends upon the health and well-being of the community around them - and that, in turn, depends upon the health and well-being of the planet? On a day-to-day basis, we are all now on the front line, obliged to pay attention to others in order to safeguard ourselves.

No doubt many are desperate for this time to end. Yet, according to Sky News, only 9% of people want to return to ‘normal’ after lockdown. The figures break down in interesting ways: 54% of the 4,343 who took part hope they will make changes in their own lives—but they also want the country as whole to learn from the crisis. 

Amongst the reasons given for resisting a return to the status quo ante, 61% are spending less money and 51% noticed cleaner air outdoors. 27% cite more wildlife appearing in their lives. 40% have noticed a stronger sense of community; 39% report more time for family and friends. 

This subtle noticing and paying attention to alternatives is a luxury we rarely afford ourselves. Which is why we’ve launched an App to make the most of it called Before&Now. We’re inviting everyone to make a note of what is changing for you, in real time. 

Use the app to note down what you’ve noticed about yourself, your wider community and your story of the wider world. The ongoing data will be visible at all times, so we can get a collective sense of our changing perceptions. Please download and share it with the outer edges of your community, so we can get as diverse a community of response as possible.

For our part, working with the Daily Alternative and the overwhelming evidence that a new socio-economic-political system is possible, our dream is of convergence. 

However we are still seeing disconnect between fertile fields of regenerative, transformative practice. Between the worlds of personal growth (I), community development (We) and the larger global and planetary economy (World), there are still barriers of language and sensibility that keep them well apart from each other 

It’s very rare to see collaboration between these realms, in forms that are mutually inclusive, rather than hierarchical. Yet these fields, once integrated, could cause a shift so powerful that its attraction could trigger nothing less than what we are increasingly describing as quantum social change. 

However, the responsibility for moving into integration does not lie with any one of these fields. None of them can lead the way for the other because each treasures its autonomy and agency, without which it cannot continue to push at the boundaries of change. 

Does that make a good future untenable? No more than a load of separate ingredients sitting in a fridge make a good meal impossible. But how we bring them together may suggest an infinity of dishes.

What we are already seeing is individuals, and a handful of communities, drawing down from our social information clouds an infinite range of new ideas, methods and practices – even systems designs – to make new realities for themselves. 

One person, inspired by Kate Raworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ living in Keighley, may think about the goals of their new neighbourhood network quite differently than before. A hospital manager, reading about the Covid-19 networks, might think quite differently about the partnership between the NHS and local food producers. It’s these new relationships between the parts of the new system arising that give birth to our new reality.

So let’s dream on, remembering that what we can powerfully imagine becomes at least a thinkable and felt possibility. And the more we work our dreams, exploring their context and implications, the better we can land our vision with others. But it’s in the way we cross old boundaries, make new relationship with others and share what dreams we have in common, that new realities are materialised. This goes for individuals, communities and the planet.