Total Recall – Arnie Version

The other night we watched the 35 year-old version of “Total Recall” starring Arnie. I have reached the age when all remakes cannot ever be better than the original.

Spoiler alert….

The gist of the plot is that Hauser has his mind adjusted so that he thinks he is Doug Quaid a builder and wielder of pneumatic tools, who then goes on a convoluted journey to infiltrate the underground resistance on Mars whilst trying to restore his memory. After Kuato the leader of the resistance is killed Quaid then refuses to be mind  wiped back so that he becomes once again the fascist special agent Hauser. There is a plot twist where which reality is real is tested. Quaid is led to believe that he has paid for a secret agent mind-trip at a company called Rekall. The Quaid/Hauser superposition is unsure. In the end the Quaid nice guy dominates and he sets off an alien machine to provide Mars with a breathable atmosphere.

One scene suggests that the lowly manual worker Quaid is living out his fantasy as a Martian secret agent. It is all a bit far-fetched and the special effects, though leading at their time, now look a bit Blue Peter.

This is what co-pilot suggests for the above text.

“The plot follows Hauser, who is made to believe he is Doug Quaid, a builder on Mars. As Quaid, he becomes involved with the resistance, trying to regain his true identity. After the resistance leader Kuato is killed, Quaid refuses to revert to his former role as a ruthless agent. The story blurs reality and illusion, leaving Quaid uncertain whether his experiences are real or just a memory implant from Rekall. Ultimately, Quaid chooses his better nature and activates an alien device that gives Mars a breathable atmosphere.

One scene hints that Quaid’s life may just be a fantasy of being a secret agent. While the premise is a stretch, the once-impressive special effects now feel dated.”

AI has adjusted the reality…which is very considerate of it.

I guess we each choose our own narrative(s).

I have lost count how many dreams are in this blog. In the film Quaid is asked to consider if whatever he is experiencing is nothing more than a dream and therefore easily discounted.

With my feet grounded in everyday physical plane reality it is very simple to adopt the advice.

The everyday reality is simple enough. I can only rely on the measurable. Which tells me that around a dozen people read the blog according to WordPress stats. So were I to bin it only these would miss it. The basic reality is that I am a retired person with hip arthritis. Two decades ago I was a university teacher. {Assuming this is not a paid for implanted memory}. More recently I was a private tutor for ~6 years during which time I taught “A” level physics and chemistry. That is about it. I can still chop wood and do some gardening chores. My cooking skills are perhaps a little above average for savoury. The only “cakes” I ever made were hash cookies which were tasty and potent. Rocky was better than Leb, more chocolatey and unctuous…

In the circles I move in, life is very simple. On the cards is a visit to the hospital for a new hip. I will then be doing physio. Sometime around spring if we are not kicked out of France by the NF, I may be lucky enough to get a second operation after which I may eventually walk a bit better.

I am toying  with the idea of doing a blog / vlog about by incoming experience.

hip-hop-hip-op.fr and Bolshoi-hips.fr are currently available as is hippy-mchipface.fr

I’ll wager that such a blog would be more widely read…

I suspect that I could write something which is not dire, fearful and boring…perhaps when I was last at Rekall I purchased a mind-trip extension which includes delusions of creative writing capability…

Who can tell?

Dreaming Courses Dream – 14-08-2025

Here is this morning’s dream had between 4 and 6 AM. Again another one seemingly out of the blue.

The dream starts in a faculty office. Behind a large desk is a woman in her 40/50s. She is powerful and dressed in an expensive skirt and jacket suit with a royal blue shirt. She exudes wealth and she is very accustomed to getting her own way, obeyed even. She tells me that the faculty have agreed to my proposals for a course on dreaming and that I may go ahead with these courses on an experimental basis. She needs to be kept in the loop of developments. She thinks that I am fearful and subordinate to her. When I simply very relaxed and fluid. I know that she has other agendas which she is trying to forward and that there are politics going on behind the scene. She hands me a book of mounted photos like a book of material swatches used in fashion or decorating design. The book of “swatches” has covers and I cannot see the contents. She intimates that she wants these included in the courses.

Her office leads out onto a full or partial quadrangle with a covered ambulatory or walk way. It has a light reddish-brown brick. There are cobbles in the quad. It feels a little like Greenwich but also has a sense of Berkley CAL. There is a history and the word meridian is to mind. On the side wall of the ambulatory there is a small wooden display case with a lockable glass front. In this cabinet I will display course synopsis for the passing footfall of students.

I go into an open room with whitewashed walls and a dark red stone or painted concrete floor. I am met there by a younger woman who has been assigned as to help me and, to keep an eye on me. She asks me why I think that there are no definitive books on dream content. I say that by their very nature dreams are nebulous and not well suited to reductionist quasi-logical methods. Dreaming is dreaming and it has to be approached via dreaming and not structure. Sense-making can hinder dreaming significantly.

I open the book of swatches to show to her. Inside it are photos of some kind of Tibetan centre, out in the country. There are images of coloured prayer flags blowing in the wind. One of small stupa only a few metres high. There are western white participants and a very few Tibetans dressed monastically. I know the word Drukpa is associated. It is clear that a part of the agenda from the powerful woman relates to Tibetan dream practices. There is more agenda.

The young woman has a notion that in dreaming cultures there is always a myth and a mythos. That these grow up around the dreams and the reporting thereof. As a part or her research she would like to see if we can seed a myth and a mythos into those participating in the dreaming. Rather than that being an ancient hagiography she wants to seed an artificial mythos and see where it goes. She ushers me over to the back of the room where there is a museum style display case with a sloping horizontal glass covered display. Under this are full depth “admiralty” drawers containing specimens. She pulls out one draw and there packed in cotton wool nests are several rock specimens. She selects a grey and black speckled “agate” egg. The black is dark like obsidian

She says that this will or could be the dream egg around which we start to create a dream mythos or myth. She is excited and I say that I am happy to explore this avenue but that it needs fleshed out. We can use the egg for the birth of the course, metaphorically.

The power woman, the principle, from before knocks and enters the room.  She is wearing high heels which have been tricky on the cobbles. I show her two pages of A4 text which will serve as a flier for the course. This text will go into the cabinet. She asks what the syllabus will be and I say that the syllabus will be decided to a large extent by the attendees and mostly by dreams. She looks sceptical.

I usher her over to a tarpaulin. On which are several plants in black plastic pots tied to short bamboo supports. I say that these are going to go into the green house and that these will comment upon and be a part of the course. I ask if she would like to help us plant them. Yes. We load half the plants onto a flatbed trolley and head out of the quad-building to the university allotment where our greenhouse is. Together we all plant the plants. The principle comments that she found it very enjoyable and that it is the first time for a very long while that she has had dirt under her nails.

We go back to the quad room. The principle asks about a web presence or page. At her prompt I know that I have to send someone a link to the dream yoga blog as it currently stands. I will do this after I have written up and posted this dream.

The dream ends and I note with some surprise on my way back from the bathroom that its exactly 6:00 AM…

1984 Quotes – George Orwell


“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”


“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”


“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”


“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”


“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”


“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”


“Sanity is not statistical.”


“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”


“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”


“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”


“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”


“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”


“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”


“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.”


“All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.”


The Slippery Slope to Totalitarianism

Postulate:

Humanity has a short memory and fails to learn from the past.

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The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until 1976. Its publicly stated goal was to preserve Chinese socialism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society.

In May 1966, with the help of the Cultural Revolution Group, Mao launched the Revolution and said that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society with the aim of restoring capitalism. Mao called on young people to bombard the headquarters and proclaimed that “to rebel is justified”. Mass upheaval began in Beijing with Red August in 1966. Many young people, mainly students, responded by forming cadres of Red Guards throughout the country. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung became revered within his cult of personality. In 1967, emboldened radicals began seizing power from local governments and party branches, establishing new revolutionary committees in their place while smashing public security, procuratorate and judicial systems. These committees often split into rival factions, precipitating armed clashes among the radicals. After the fall of Lin Biao in 1971, the Gang of Four became influential in 1972, and the Revolution continued until Mao’s death in 1976, soon followed by the arrest of the Gang of Four.

From Wikipedia

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The first step towards totalitarianism is to purge those who are against you and promote loyal brown nosers and supporters. Sycophantic yes-men are preferred over anyone who queries even if said queries are wise.

The intelligentsia must be crippled and undermined, democracy called into question and belittled. Propaganda is more important than fact. Short adamant statements hook and are preferred over detail.

Any voice to the contrary must be silenced, preferably in public and painfully so.

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Postulate:

The cult of the personality is on the rise in humanity at large.

Substance and ethics are demoted and no longer important. Mini-me types are cloning themselves. We are sleep walking into very retrograde times.

People are easily drawn into group mind which prevents true thinking. Grievance can be exploited to garner support. Give someone an enemy and they will fall in behind you against them. Enemies unite rabbles and crowds.

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Postulate:

Humanity has an anathema for inconvenient truths.

Humanity prefers any story or “plan” which means that they do not have to change their ways. If someone says that anthropogenic climate change is exaggerated that is easier to believe, because they want to. There is confirmation bias. People prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than change. The bringer of messages which go against the inconvenient truths is a hero, a friend, “I told you so!”

Goebbels comments here on the power of mantra, the repetition of which can be black magic.

Postulate:

There is no such thing as a sustainable quick fix, this is an inconvenient truth.

Immediacy does not solve anything, knee jerks are never considered they are at best reactive.

Focused blame cultures and look-at-me attempts to fix “single-issue” problems are misguided if popular. It is easier to blame external factors than to accept responsibility and work hard at root cause.

Postulate:

China and Russia were never communist despite finger pointing to the contrary. They were / are totalitarian or authoritarian at best.

The bogey man of communism is an American invention, it has never been realised. Western quasi-socialism of the last century is the closest humanity has come to that ideal.

Postulate:

The cult of the personality is a very dangerous and a slippery slope. This too is an inconvenient truth.

There are numerous examples of this cult currently active and perhaps growing in the so-called democratic West. People can get easily caught up in the faux-euphoria of group mind and its sense of belonging.

Narcissists however have absolutely zero notion of loyalty and are fickle, motivated only by their own desires. Supporters are not shown the loyalty expected and demanded of them.

Postulate:

Humanity is again on the slippery slope to widespread totalitarianism pretending to be democracy.