Wednesday 2 May 2001

Pic of the day: "...you can daydream of anything, including very innocent things..." (Screenshot from The Sims again.)

Daydreaming with dice

I know that a lot of people daydream, but I don't know how. It is by its nature a very private thing. (So of course I will write about it. Heh.) I don't think all people daydream, but I would not be surprised if it is a great majority. At least in our western culture. Unlike night dreams, it seems there is not a lot of research on it. What a shame.

I understand that to some people, daydreams are quite similar to nightdreams. That is, the dreams are vivid, immersive, lifelike. Kind of like hallucinations, except you are aware that they are just your own fantasies and you can terminate them at any time. On the other extreme, many people (especially the elderly) don't even have vivid dreams at night. They snore till the rafters groan, but you wake them and they tell you they have not fallen asleep yet; they were just lying in bed thinking about this thing or that. This is not just Norwegian anecdotes ... the pattern has been found known for a generation now. (It is documented in the popular book by Luce & Segal which brought sleep research fully into public knowledge).

Based on the pattern of night dreams, it is likely to expect that children and most young people have vivid daydreams too; while many elderly will tend to have few if any. (On the other hand, the elderly would have a vast array of colorful memories from their long life.)

As for my humble self, I guess I am somewhere inbetween. I tell myself stories. But, this is not just a function of my inbetween age. I have told myself stories since I was a small schoolboy; probably before. I think however that when I was younger, the stories were better illustrated: As I told them to myself, I could vaguely sense the things that happened. Intriguingly, my sense of sight was not very strong in this, while my tactile and kinestetic senses were quite active. I felt rather than saw much of what I daydreamed. Go figure.

***

One reason why daydreams tend to live in the shadow and silence of our society, is probably their contents. From what scattered bits I pick up, people often take liberties in their daydreams that they would not normally do in real life. I understand that quite a few commandments are often broken in daydreams by otherwise obedient people. This is quite understandable: It's not like you'll get arrested or anything. You are at best responsible to your conscience, and even those will eventually give up if ignored long enough.

I am of two minds about this. I can see how people may need some way to let off steam, as the English say. On the other hand, I feel that once you have done something in your daydreams, it will be easier to do so in real life. This is my personal experience, but the connection is not very strong.

I guess this ties in with another debate. It has been speculated that violent TV programs incite people to violence, and that pornography incite people to fornication. Others claim that these inputs instead function as a safe outlet. Research so far tentatively supports the idea that your output is correlated to your input, which may not be surprising. If our body is what it eats, would not the same apply to the soul? But there is also the small detail that not all people choose the same input. Some of us do not want to see violent movies; we dislike it. It should surprise no one that these same people tend to not pick fights either.

Again from the sporadic info I have picked up over the years (not all of it from myself) the contents of daydream range from a new picket fence to highly illegal perversities to cosmic powers. I'm all for cosmic powers personally, since it's unlikely you'll have any of those any other way. And chances are extremely small that it will rub off so that you make a habit of it and accidentally make the Earth explode because you confuse fantasy and reality. Well, unless you work at CERN. But my original point here is that you can daydream of anything, including very innocent things. Most people probably do just that, especially women. (Women are innocent until proven guilty, in my opinion.)

***

And now we arrive, after a long and winding journey, at the topic of my own recent daydreaming. I do that fairly often. In fact, much of my day is spent in fantasies, but not all of those are my daydreams. I also tend to escape to Daggerfall, or into the neighborhoods of Sim Lane, or various other people's fantasy books. But I also have outright daydreams. And I dream them with three six-sided dice.

Once upon a time, daydreams were left to chance. They came or not as they pleased, much like the bowel movements of a baby. But these days, my daydreams are fairly well researched. That does not mean they are really realistic; they are set in an alternate world, roughly a copy of our own but with some elements from the GURPS basic set handbook incorporated. This is where the dice come in, of course. And I'm sure some people would take exception to the way they behave in my daydreams, though I'm not sure how much. There are no known personality reversals.

Daydreaming with dice and rulebook is a somewhat slow approach. It has taken me from early March till now to get to San Diego.

I've never seen San Diego in my life, which is probably no loss to either of us. I was surprised to see that it had 2.5 million inhabitants in 1990, and presumably more now. I guess there was no reason to worry whether or not the place has its own airport. And the conference facilities there seem quite good. And there are the famous beaches that I had never heard of in my life. I assume that where there are beaches, there ar bound to be high quality hotels nearby. I mean, we're talking California. (For those who wondered "Where in the world is San Diego?")

For a Norwegian going to work in 7 degrees above freezing point, San Diego definitely sounds like a good setting for a daydream. Throw in a reasonable number of college girls ... hey, nothing kinky, just harmless wereporcupine play.

After all, I try to do unto others what I want them to do unto me. And I'm not at all bothered by the possibility that college girls in San Diego may daydream about chilly Norway and me. As long as they keep in mind that I am officially 94.8% pure. For practical purposes, roll 3 dice whenever I encounter anything hentai / ecchi (perverse / indecent). If I score 15 or less, I'll not like it.

If that sounds like your dream date, be my guest.
In your dreams.