The
most honest and also shortest answer to this is “I don’t know,” however based
on the work done to investigate our sleeping brains I can give you an idea of
some of my opinions on what may be the reasons behind why we visit the Mists of
Morphius when we fall asleep at night.
I’ve
mentioned previously that our brains don’t work in the way we think they do,
almost everything our brains do is unconscious, the fore-brain filtering out
what it thinks we need and then presenting us with choices (there is also some
evidence to suggest that we don’t actively make choices, our unconscious minds
do and simply give us the illusion we have independence, when really the
choices were made by our primitive hind-brain split seconds before they popped
up in our advanced clever nude-monkey fore-brains). Every evolutionary leap our
minds have taken has “tacked-on” another bit of brain that overrides some of
the pre-existing brain, slowly steering us further towards self-awareness and sentience.
So we still have a lot of stuff in our heads we have no use for, but we don’t discarded
most of it, we simply have another bit of brain that overrides it. This is why
it’s possible to hold your hand to something hot and deliberately burn yourself
despite every instinct in your body telling you to move your hand, it’s also
why when we lean on a hot stove we’ll pull our hands away without thinking about
it.
In
terms of dreams this is important because it goes some way to explaining why we
are suddenly presented with amazing situations and fantastic events when we
sleep that we 100% believe are real. Our different sections of brain are
communicating with one another outside the nanny-state of the prefrontal lobes
(or conscious minds) bulling them into subservience. The information leaks
through of course, so we become aware of it, but it’s also mostly held in the
un-thinking parts of your brain, which is why it’s so difficult to remember dreams.
It’s also handled in the memory/creative parts of our minds, it’s why in dreams
you will look at “writing” and know what it means, without actively reading it.
If you try and focus on the individual words, say to check the spelling of a
word, you’ll be unable to because the part of your mind that handles that process
is not connected to your dreaming mind, and by trying to do so you’ll likely
wake yourself up as your fore-brain pokes it and says “Oi! I need you! Wake up!”.
So
to answer the question “why do we dream” with a less frustrating answer. I’d
say it’s because the different parts of our brains need to interact to help
keep the balance of what bit does what thinking, and what bits gets to override
what other bit. I’d guess the reason we get more emotional and unstable when we’re
tired is because of things like stress and fatigue, obviously, but it’s also
because our fore-brain that has been working hard all day to supervise these
uppity throw-backs to our evolutionary past is less able to manage and mitigate
their constant input due to the fatigue mentioned prior.
So I
hope that answers your question! I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t filled out or
shared my survey yet to please do so, and I’ll see you all again at the next 50
participants!
