P.P's Dream part I B #2

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

P.P's Dream Part I B #2  (to read part I A--second
industrial
revolution, go to archives and type "Mumford") I will refer
to Part I B #1-Aug.20th and a string of dream quotes from
Pynchon along the way. 

 "And to be honest, I haven't your resistance to this Wind.
It is driving me insane." Mason, M&D.173

Returning to REALITY, Nietzsche and Freud and Pirate's
dream.

"Is it any use for me to tell you that all you believe real
is illusion?"  (GR.165)

Nietzsche's statement that  "man believed that he was
discovering a second real world in dream, and here is the
origin of all metaphysics," is consistent with the reality
presented by his text. We can say that reality as
encountered or perceived by us is NOT reality, since our
encounter or perception of it involves a contribution from
ourselves as well as from the object. (1)
Following this view of reality, what is really real is the
object as it is in itself, apart from its effect on us.
Primary qualities (those that are really in the object),
must then be distinguished from secondary qualities (those
that are nothing in the objects themselves but the power to
produce effects in us by their primary qualities). In the
examples I am working with-the texts of Nietzsche and
Freud-- reality lies NOT in the effect on us (this would be
an Existential Reality), but in that which has the power to
produce effects on us. The world as it appears is the
manifestation of this underlying reality. This is what is
called a "Material Reality" or what Duns Scotus calls, an
Entitive Reality, or a Substrative -Gk, hupokeimenon, Lat,
substratum-reality. Note that Plato denies that appearances
are themselves the true reality, but Plato, rather than
treat these appearances as manifestations of an underlying
or material reality, treats them as intimations of a
transcendent reality.   


So turning to Pirate's Mutual Dream, with Freud and Nietzche
in mind we can now consider the traditional dichotomy
between dreams and reality, conscious and unconscious. 

"Franz loved films but this was how he watched them, nodding
in and out of sleep." (GR.159)


What are we to make of Nietzsche's claim about dreams and
the origin of metaphysics, ghosts, and gods? Nietzsche
accounts for consciousness by means of the material
realities that underlie it. In 'The Gay Science,' Nietzsche
surmises that consciousness has come about or developed from
the necessity to communicate. He argues that from the
get-go, communication was useful to humans (particularly
between those in control and those controlled or ruled) and
that it developed only in proportion to the degree of this
need or its utility. For Nietzsche, conscious meanings that
arise from the need to communicate are superficial. "Man,
like every living being, thinks continually without knowing
it, the thinking that arises to consciousness is only the
smallest part of this-the most superficial and worst
part-for only this conscious thinking takes the form of
words, which is to say signs of communication, and this fact
uncovers the origin of consciousness." So the world of which
we become conscious is merely a surface-and sign-world. (2)
Again, in 'Gay Science,' Nietzsche, "Owing to the nature of
animal consciousness, the world of which we can become
conscious is only a surface-and sign-world, a world that is
made common and meaner; whatever becomes conscious becomes
by the same token shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general,
sign, herd signal; all becoming conscious involves a great
and thorough corruption, falsification, reduction to
superficialities, and generalizations."    


(1) Reading GR we are familiar with the problem of the
influence of the observer, as it is concerns various
scientific and social science theories. 
(2) Signs, surfaces, and we can add symptoms (see GR.P.
136-144, Ch.17, Pointsman's  "mutual dream") or the
effect-existential reality.  

TBC with Nietzsche 'Beyond Good and Evil' -"mere foreground
estimates" and Freud's interpretations Not of dreams, but as
he tells us in that famous study, of "thoughts which are
shown by the work of interpretation to lie behind dreams." 

TF