The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty six: 25^th July 2012

Sweet Dreams

Every time we wake from our sleep , some deep instinct protests the restoration of consciousness. The Thatcherite view of sleep saw it as an indulgence of shiftless layabouts. One such would remain forever dormant , a year-round hibernator , if only he could. Once in bed , rather than counting sheep , he quells any unwelcome twinges of restlessness by constructing mantras of palliative phrases. Reclining in an easy chair , composure on a davenport , stretching out on a settee , undisturbed on a chesterfield. The committed day-dreamer does not confine his reveries to bedtime. Having lost the name of action , dreaming is all that remains to fill his days. A sense of purpose and a plan of attack lay the foundations upon which viable relationships and a stable family life are built. Alas , he had been unable to muster either of these. While others listed their aims and objectives as they prepared themselves for job interviews , he whiled away his time reading thick tomes with no contemporary relevance. As they honed up their DIY skills in carpentry and household maintenance , he tarried in the halls of fruitless speculation. The tempo of everyday life seemed to be picking up with every passing year but he was ever more inclined to slow things down to an ambling , sometimes imperceptible pace. The System held out no appeal , its rewards were illusory and its demands clearly unacceptable but no clear-cut alternatives presented themselves to him.

Urban “civilisation” was The Eternal Racket , with its well-heeled curators of art and literature , its self-perpetuating administrative hierarchies , its tax-dodging commercial leviathans , its love of sport and its media circus , its military-technological bias , its unquestioned myths of human progress. Action and work both preserve a sense of identity that reflection dispels. No , its not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality in prolonged and peaceful gazing at the clouds in the sky. The notion of ‘the self’ is not real in itself , it's just a dream , despite the droves of philosophers scurrying over the fields to pronounce on that concept of identity. The true escapees are the practical folk who turn to a life of action and work as a refuge from insignificance. The proposed cornerstones of western democracy are property rights , competitive trade , a consumer society and the work ethic. Now although the rambler detested all four , he had to acknowledge that Natural Selection operated with its own versions of them. Territory and nests , the acquisition of food , even courtships , required incessant struggle , while available resources were at the same sort of premium reserved for occasional rest and relaxation. As he dozed , Shakespearean fragments floated before him. We are such stuff as dreams are made on , and our little life is rounded with a sleep⁽¹⁾.

Fruitless speculation. It possesses the same sort of enigmatic structure as that cinematic touchstone of inconsequence , Last Year at Marienbad ⁽²⁾. One such speculator puts forward a desirable mode of government that solicits the realist's response , “In your dreams !” What sane people expect of their governors is a public-spirited body of well-informed legislators who will modestly supervise the infrastructures of communal life. They would regard necessities such as water , power supplies and an efficient public transport system as social services rather than opportunities for private profit. As such , they would be subsidised by taxes accrued from each according to their means. There would be a return to extensive public housing programs , and a scrupulous regulation of business and financial interests. Borrowing from the Book of Common Prayer , sanity’s expectation of those governors would be that they hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and the meek. They hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich they have sent empty away. If we have to put up with toffs , let them be toffs who are happier with Beat poetry , fifties’ Rockabilly and Zen haikus than they are with free markets and macro-economic imbalances.


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Prospero in The Tempest. ⁽²⁾ A 1961 film that baffled both audiences and critics , some hailing it as a masterpiece , others finding it as dull as it was incomprehensible.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014