Like Matrix said, society as a whole is being filled by the minute with views of materialism. This is where I begin to diverge from his opinion.

I think the main reason why materialism is becoming such a popular perspective is because science helps back it up. Not only that, but the majority of science is based on events/things we can observe with our physical senses. In other words, it's tangible. The exceptions in science are like atoms, black holes, and some concepts such as quantum mechanics and the big bang theory. However, their effects can still be observed today. This is the major Western view. When you go into the East, information starts to incorporate a materialistic and a non-materialistic view, i.e. the supernatural with spirits in comparison to science and math. With society aging as time flies by, the desires of each country to become recognized in the world increases. Now you tell me; does it give you more comfort to know your country has the highest amount of psychics or the highest amount soldiers with sophisticated technology? While an afterlife does seem promising, the potential to stay alive in a reality which you experience daily, in my opinion, gives a greater sense of security. In other words, money, which is tangible, gives more potential happiness, especially where money practically equates to power in today's society In other words, beliefs aren't very helpful if they can't feed you or your family or give you the means of meeting daily necessities. And Westerners want their tummies to be full with a constant feeling of being safe and protected.

Obviously the world's economy is shifting from being based on labor to now being based on someones intelligence and education. The educational system follows a materialistic view towards the universe. In other words, people are being set up from birth to be a materialist for the sake of the country's income. Ones childhood highly influences their later adult-hood beliefs (I can try to find some articles); the individual is then set up from the beginning of their birth to incorporate materialism into their own personal ideology, yet they usually don't have a chance to change their beliefs on their own later on in their life.

If you take up the information and thinking I've proposed from before, it's not that surprising that the general world doesn't pay much attention to dreams. 1) It's completely subjective, 2) it doesn't give you money, and 3) you can spend tons of effort but might get no where within a span of a month in terms of lucid dreaming. Dreams are also very difficult to understand, while at least for the majority of people I know their recall is crap. From a logical stance, it's pretty pointless to even pay attention to dreams in the first place. There's no obvious gain from the whole system. Nightmares only further exacerbate an individual's lack of care for dreaming.

Of course, society is also changing. You can see people such as Chopra and the Dalai Llama, while Westerners began the incorporation of meditation as a stress-reducer in their daily lives. While dreams are largely ignored, there is still hope; dreams are being scrutinized under the name of science (Laberge work), movies are being made (Inception!!!), and people majoring in psychology is on the rise in the West, i.e. mostly America. With science and science fiction blurring the line in terms of what's possible, I don't think it's far off until more information is gleamed from dreams. Once information is gathered then scientists will learn more about its nature, since truthfully science still knows very little about the brain; this includes the nature of dreams and their purpose. Since science is heavily used in daily life and its effects are noticeable--and people depend on science--,once dreams are recognized as things that can be understood from an objective level then people will begin to become more interested. Luckily for them, dreams can also be manipulated; more traffic for DV!