Thread: Why is device failure common?

I believe as you do. Technology has not had enough time to become hard-wired into our brains yet.

It is not automatic to assume that when you flip this little piece of plastic on the wall that a light on the cieling comes on.

Birds have not yet adapted to the concept of glass. Groundhogs still do not comprehend roads, eagles still do not comprehend power lines. Maybe in a few hundred-thousand years, devices will work in out lucid dreams all the time?

electronics work in my dreams..so meh

Great question!

I think you have a good theory there with the electronics question.

As for the "leg-devices," this was explained in my biopsych class. We are all wired to become essentially paralyzed when we dream. Not exactly paralyzed, but we aren't able to run around acting out our dreams, like killing a family member or jumping off the roof.

When we're dreaming and we try to move or walk, and our bodies are actually trying to do this and being thwarted because of the paralysis. This shows up in your dreams as that, "Why can't I walk properly?" sensation.

Supposedly people who sleepwalk are deficient in the chemicals or mechanism that creates the paralysis.

It's also why we wake up sometimes into sleep paralysis, where we're awake and can't move. It's just lag between the time you wake up and when your body goes, "Oh yeah, it's ok to move again."

They always work for me. I don't know if this is the case but maybe people who have problems with them in dreams have problems with them in real life too. Like their computer keeps crashing or something. Or your just always worried something will go wrong. A little worrying in real life and end up in a dream as it never working.

Dear Mattthew,

I think that Device Failure could be related to the similar themes of Being Lost and Having Lost Something. The trap, I believe, is to get overinvolved in trying to regain one's way, or find the lost object, or in the case of having a broken device, trying to fix it or to be worried about it. You see, I think these dreams involve how we deal with our Mortality. We will all one day die, and when we die, if we have learned our lessons properly, we will be able to leave our broken bodies, and leave our lives that will be lost to us, and we will be able to move on and move forward.

Now, about the slowed down legs. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but since the subject has been brought up -- the legs are not really moving slow, but because of some stress in the dream, the dreamers sense of time has been slowed down. This is actually helpful, as it give you more effective time to consider each movement of the body. Martial Artists work for decades praying devoutly to whatever Buddhas they worships that they be given this gift of perceiving time as slowed down. You see, what is happening is that more conscious moments are being inserted into each unit of time, such that if there are 5 times more conscious moments per unit of time, then time will 'seem' to be 5 times slower, but actually one is 5 times more Conscious, having 5 times more opportunity to think about each unit of events.

Originally posted by Alric
They always work for me. I don't know if this is the case but maybe people who have problems with them in dreams have problems with them in real life too. Like their computer keeps crashing or something. Or your just always worried something will go wrong. A little worrying in real life and end up in a dream as it never working.

Actually, studies have shown that people who have anxiety dreams, about whatever they are anxious about, have LESS cause in real life to be anxious. So it seems that whatever lessons their dreams are attempting to teach, are being very effectively learned.

One famous Motif especially -- the one where one is back in school and is found late for Final Exams without having cracked a single book or attended a single class or lecture ... well, it was found that only above average students would have such dreams, and that the students who actually did have serious problems with their study habits were to these likely to have these anxiety dreams.

Originally posted by Leo Volont+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Leo Volont)</div>

One famous Motif especially -- the one where one is back in school and is found late for Final Exams without having cracked a single book or attended a single class or lecture... well, it was found that only above average students would have such dreams[/b]

Very interesting - but it make perfect sense that a bad student is not going to have anxiety dreams, because she's not anxious about school in waking life - she doesn't care about studying.

Sometimes I still get that very dream, many years after having taken my last exam. What does that mean? Also, do you know where I could find said study?

<!--QuoteBegin-Leo Volont
The trap, I believe, is to get overinvolved in trying to regain one's way, or find the lost object, or in the case of having a broken device, trying to fix it or to be worried about it.

Great point. Device failure dreams do seem to be characterized by obsessing on getting the device to work again.