The gods of science should reward me, I have realized the true meaning of dreams. Even today, there is no scientific consensus about what causes them, perhaps because too much emphasis has been on psychology in the past. But if we were to take the biological perspective, things become much clearer.
Dreams happen because they are the only evolutionary advantage we can perceive while sleeping. Our dreams are most frequently about ways to prolong the species: danger, sex, and love. Our nightmares prepare us for difficulties in the real world, a sort of playground for testing what could happen. How we react in dreams is frequently the wrong decision, which sets us up for what we should do if it really happens.
Preparing for danger is one of the best ways to play the cards of Natural selection, and a vast number of animals are doing it unconsciously while sleeping. Imagine the world on fire, water is running out, the air is difficult to breathe. The collective frequency of dreams about dealing with catastrophes skyrockets, as are the subconscious worries of every species on the planet. We essentially all have the same dreams, as our minds prepare us for the natural changes coming, priming us for the decisions we need to make, for if we make the wrong decisions, the evolutionary branch falls from the tree.
The perfect corollary is that memories are most easily stored by the brain while dreaming, as proven by experiments. As it is critical to remember our emotional reactions to dream situations, so do trivial facts become more efficient at lodging themselves in our brain during this time. You wouldn't know it, but memory and dreams are key evolutionary adaptations that the first mobile animals likely invented, since you can't make decisions about where to move without foresight. They go hand in hand; you probably can't have one without the other. They are the undetected, neurological cornerstones of mobility. A tree doesn't dream or think for that matter, because it doesn't need foresight. Its evolutionary progress is ecological, not neurological.
This isn't to say neurology is what determines how mobile species evolve. It is more like a generator that reacts to how the ecology is changing. Trees and plants can only go where the wind blows. With animals there is far greater flexibility.
Sex and love are also critical for species progression, particularly the former. This may be why men are even capable of having nocturnal emissions. Nature is priming us for procreation; there is no possible way to ignore it. Thus Freud was wrong. Dreams are not about wish fulfillment, only survival, in all its rich and subtle varieties. Think about all the dreams you have had lately. Was there a threat in each of them, or an intense desire? If not, I would be interested to hear it. All mine have one of these criteria.
Last night I dreamed I was playing basketball, desperately trying to do well, succeeding at moments, failing out others. While this may not appear to be a survival situation, it can be inferred that the intense desire for peer acceptance and impression is rooted in the drive to procreate, since most females are heavily persuaded by social or athletic skill, especially a combination of them. The dream is evidence of a need to display superior genes that would attract females, no different from a peacock who needs to display his elaborate feathers. It may seem like a dream has nothing to do with survival, but if one looks deeper it does.
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