A Superficial World

I dreamt, this morning just before I woke, of a superficial world. A world where deep thought and meaning were prohibited. Interactions were always superficial. Small talk only. No exploration of a subject or how someone felt about it was permitted. And no one really cared or listened to the answers others gave. All smiles were fake, and all people making conversation were just biding time until it was their turn to speak.

You proceeded from one area to the next in this world, solving problems that didn’t matter. Like making your car finish slightly faster on a short race course than another car. But a clever solution, like modifying your car to be faster, wasn’t allowed. The only way you could solve the problem was by shoving your car forward a couple feet before the race started. All tasks were busywork with boring solutions.

When you finished at one place, you moved on to the next. All problems were small, piddling things that had to be solved, or you couldn’t move on. Yet there was no joy or satisfaction in solving them, because they were so meaningless. The solutions were never difficult, challenging, clever, or fun. They were just time consuming.

The people of this world flitted from one distraction to the next. Gossip and small time news were the distractions of choice. TV screens were everywhere, so no one would ever be out of the loop.

Sex was sometimes offered on the spot as a reward for finishing tasks, if the person was so inclined based on your appearance. But no actual intimacy, excitement, sharing, or closeness was ever involved in the experience. It was literally just a bland “you look good, and solved this problem, want to hop in bed?” deal.

Nothing truly changed in this world. The tasks you completed reset as you walked away, ready for the next person to pass by. The people in the world didn’t work towards a better life or future for themselves or their children. I couldn’t tell whether it was because they didn’t care, or they did but were too distracted by the TV, the gossip, and the news.

And in all this, there was me. Hiding in this superficial world, still thinking my deep thoughts and caring about the answers to small talk. Feeling my emotions. All alone.

I spent some time on a conveyer belt, pretending to be zoned out mindlessly as the system demanded. Like an object. But it was just a cover so I could live, think, and feel as myself, with all the depth I possess, without alarming anyone or being reported. Being on the conveyer belt was a refreshing experience, a break from the constant distractions of this superficial world. But it was also sad, because I was all alone.

Meaning

I don’t typically dream. I’m not honestly sure why. It may be that I simply don’t typically get enough quality sleep, or that my anxiety is normally too high to let me experience such things. All this to say that when I do dream, I try to pay attention to it.

In all honesty, this dream feels like an exaggerated version of reality. I dreamt of TVs, not smartphones and computer screens, but the never-ending stream of distracting information is a reality. There’s news services, there’s social media, there’s other people… You could spend a whole life doing nothing but looking out for yourself and barely experiencing other people in their depth and complexity. And I’m afraid some people do.

Generally speaking, I don’t think people really listen to or care about the answers to small talk. If they do, it’s because it’s a form of connection, rather than a legitimate exchange of ideas or information. I’ve always thought that was strange. If you ask about someone’s wife and kids, shouldn’t you care about the answer? If you care about that person, shouldn’t the wellbeing of their dog or kids or family matter to you? Or the weather. If it’s good weather, shouldn’t you take a moment to exult in the sunshine? And if it’s bad, isn’t it relevant to appreciate raincoats or air conditioning or roofs?

Maybe what was most depressing about this dream, to me, was how nothing changed. Nothing you did really mattered. Nothing you said to people made a lasting impression. Everything you did was automatically reset back to where it was before you arrived. Every day went by for people, the same as the one before.

The real world isn’t like that, but sometimes it really feels like it is. Police continue to brutalize marginalized humans, and no one holds them accountable. Corrupt people in power get richer and richer while most of us scramble to make ends meet. Systems become soulless machinery, uncaring of the people they’re meant to serve and the higher purpose for which they were created.

I know that in some ways, I’m very different than the people around me. It’s not just the autism. I spent a lot of my childhood without friends, and as a result, spent a lot of time thinking about the rules and systems we live in. Most people do that to some extent as teenagers, but not usually, it seems, with the intensity and specificity that I did. Maybe most people don’t have the kind of pattern-seeking brain I do. Or maybe having friends shifts your priorities to other things, at least some of the time. I don’t honestly know.

I wasn’t really sad in the dream. Or at least not the kind of sad where you cry. It was more the old lonely melancholy, the feeling I had in high school where I was just putting one foot in front of the other. Surviving as myself, but always, always alone.

This dream, it wasn’t real… but like a caricature represents a person, it feels to me like the dream represented reality. I don’t want to live in that kind of superficial world. But I don’t know how to reverse the patterns we find ourselves trapped in.