Interpreting my own dreams

 Recently I am reading "The Interpretation of Dreams" by the great Sigmund Freud, one of his brilliant writings. So far I have ended one-quarter of the book, which is mostly about the brief introduction of the existing dream theories at that time.

While reading it, of late I have become conscious of my own dreams and trying to relate with the theories that I have come across so far. One of which put forward by Hildebrandt; says that the dream state is nothing but the continuation of the waking state. Those thoughts that got suppressed while in the waking state find their way to flourish through dreams. Not only that, dreams work through symbolic images. That means one who dreams about something doesn't dream exactly like the way you see the real world while being awake, instead dreams about it through images that represent that particular idea. For example and I quote from the book about various dreams that typically occurs with almost the same content,  'Among these are well-known dreams of falling from a height, of the dropping out of teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because one is naked or scantily clad. This last type of dream is said to be caused simply by the dreamer's perception, felt in his sleep, that he has thrown off the bedclothes and is uncovered'.

Here I want to talk about my own dream which exactly resonates with the above description. So, today I woke up after a nap at noon. And I started crying !! It happened to me a couple of times before it too. And I remember now, when I thought hard about it, as a child sometimes I used to see dreams that make me angry at my parents for no reason. Those were like they refused to buy me my favorite chocolate and I am crying near the store but they didn't bother about it and took me away. And its effects were still strong when I woke up. I got angry but didn't know why? I think I know the answer now. Maybe, there was something I was upset with them but I suppressed those feelings in my waking state they got manifested in my dreams, and if you are still thinking what about the chocolates that came up in the dream; The refusal of it represented all the reasons for which I was upset with my parents, the so-called 'symbolic image' that I mentioned earlier.

Back to my original query. So, the dream was like I was in the middle of a class and suddenly the teacher(I also vividly remember the name of the teacher whom I don't want to name here for obvious reasons) asked me to come in front of the board to write something. Then he started to scold me as if I wrote it wrong. I went closer to him and discovered that he has an acute fever; I told him to sit and take rest but he didn't listen and the next thing I remember he was on the death bed. All of a sudden there were too many emotions that embodied me and I woke up feeling dismal.

Naturally, I was curious about the dream. I thought hard and here's what I interpret. Basically for the last 8 months, I was home only once due to my busy academic schedule but frankly, I wasn't feeling any strong emotions for not being at home for that long. But I remember before going to sleep, I saw a post of someone showing immense affection for her father and it was really heart-touching. It's these 'external sensory stimuli', as described by Freud in the book, that evokes the thought of feeling homesick. The teacher in the dream was representing my father. The professor was strict, disciplined, and caretaking at the same time; which perfectly describes my father. He called me to solve a problem on the board which portrays brilliantly how he always wanted me to face my problems up front and to become the very best in whatever I do by doing the things that needed to be done. And the last part of 'dying' was summoning the fact that I was missing him.

Now, the question can arise, like, why should we even bother to interpret our dreams in the first place? I think I have an answer to it. You see, just like in my case dreams are not always useless. It can be used to underlie the unconscious feeling that we can't solve in the waking state. Like sometimes when we feel to be bothered about something that we don't know the real reason for, dreams can help us to mitigate those in some manner if we paid enough attention to them; that's my understanding. Also as Robert (1886), a physician from Hamburg points out, dreams can also be caused by the incomplete activities that are needed to be done in the waking state but it's not. Maybe that can help us to navigate through the unwelcome consequences that we don't want to feel in real life and be better prepared for it.

Man, this is fun!!!! 

Importance of Reading Books

 I am doing my master's right now in Physics and one thing that I learned so far is the importance of reading books. It may look typical for some but for me, it's an important realization. Let me elaborate -

Till now, I was the sort of person who just read the theories somehow and then start working on the problems or worse, moved to another one. In that way, it seems like you understood something but in reality, you don't have any in-depth knowledge whatsoever. So definitely, you gotta read books. But maybe, may not be the same reason as you think.

Recently, I have been leaning toward Philosophy a little bit. I am finding this branch very satisfactory and challenging. A deadly combination indeed. One concept I came across is 'Logos and Mythos'. In ancient Greece, it was recognized that these were two distinct ways of thinking and acquiring knowledge. Logos is referred to the logical and rational analysis of the phenomena in question. Whereas Mythos or Myths means word or story, understood as a tale or invented story which has nothing to do with reality and is solely perceived as a figment of human imagination.

The latter one is irrational in a way, right? Because it's not true. So, how the hell it survives for almost the span of whole human history? One of the reasons may be that we perceive the world as a sequence of stories. We all value material success but at the same time, we are also constantly going behind a meaningful story that we can resonate with. For example like, we all know to work hard to achieve our goals. Then the question comes, how do you know that you will live that long enough to even enjoy your success? Or, why we are assuming that working hard or working towards anything will bring any kind of change in our miserable lives, kind of a nihilistic view? But still, we prefer it because it gives meaning, it gives a sense of purpose. And when people do become successful like this, that is where the Mythos meets the Logos. This is also a sign of a healthy functional society.

Back to my original claim. When we read good books, we come across stories. For example, Let's say you are studying Quantum mechanics and choose to study David J. Griffiths. Whenever you are learning a new concept it's not like reciting just some formulas and exercises. He will walk you through the reason why we need those theories, the problems associated with other ones, etc. It's much more practical and easy to remember or implement as we are perceiving it using stories of one kind. 

I realized it after I started doing my masters and seriously helped me in a way by being a book warm. It's not about just reading Physics books either, I like to read books of any kind as long as they align with my curiosity; David Epstein talks about it too in his book 'Range'. I am about to finish '12 Rules For Life' by Dr. Jordon B. Peterson. Also, tried to read 'Will to Power' by Friedrich Nietzsche; but man! it's too complex to understand in one go.

But it's fascinating and helpful to have different perspectives about one thing. It widens your possibility of success, I guess. Indeed, Success is a smart process.  

Why do some people keep denying Climate Change? So, is Climate Change Manmade or Natural?

 Okay, first of all, let's discuss what is Climate change and how it differs from Global Warming.

Climate Change, in simple words, refers to the increasing changes in the measures of climate over a long period of time- including precipitation, temperature, and wind patterns. Global Warming refers only to the Earth's rising surface temperature, while Climate Change includes warming and the "side effects" of warming- like melting glaciers in regions like Greenland, and Antarctica; rising sea levels, and many more.

The severity of Climate Change:

The effects of Climate Change in recent times have only become severe. The average temperature of 2020 tied with that of 2016 to be the hottest year on record, according to NASA. Heat waves have become more frequent than ever. The 2022 European heat waves were an eye-catcher. The United Kingdom saw the first red extreme heat warning to ever be issued in the country, causing it to be declared a national emergency on 15th July. 'This heatwave is the new normal' says WMO Secretary-General. Since Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature had increased by about 1 degree Celsius. According to various estimates, Global temperature is projected to warm by about 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 and 2-4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

So all these are not a joke at all. If we don't give attention now to climate change then that will definitely be disastrous.

Importance of Venus in this context:

For now, let's focus on one of the biggest symptoms of climate change i.e. Global Warming. It occurs due to the phenomenon called the 'Green house' effect. This roughly refers to the entrapment of heat by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, etc between the ozone layer and the surface of the Earth, creating more and more heat as it remains trapped. This effect was already theorized in the 19th century. But that has never been taken seriously as it hadn't been observed naturally. 

Well, this is where Venus plays a huge role. In 1960, now world-renowned Astronomer Carl Sagan, taking data from tables for steam boiler engineering, confirmed that Venus is in a greenhouse effect furnace. Well, now we know more precisely what's really happening in the atmosphere of Venus. 

Measurements by NASA's pioneer mission to Venus in the 1980s first suggested Venus originally may have had an ocean. But due to being such close to the Sun, it evaporated. Water molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to the greenhouse effect that Carl Sagan mentioned earlier.

Initiatives:

It was really a time Scientists around the world started to take this seriously. Organizations like IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) were founded in 1988. The Paris Agreement often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change, adopted in 2015.

 Contradictory viewpoint on Climate Change:

Okay, let me play the role of a denier of climate change for a moment to make you understand this point.

Firstly, we know for a fact that there's no intelligent life on Venus. So, for venus, its position in the solar system plays a key role in its runaway greenhouse effect existence. We might conclude that for venus this happened completely naturally.

The Sunspot Number and Global climate correlation

Second of all, in this whole situation, we just can't ignore the Sun and the role it might play. Let me show you a graph for a moment. If you study a little bit about Sun, you might frequently come up with the term 'Sunspots', they are the regions where the magnetic fields form arcs on the surface of the Sun. Sunspots are the seat of Solar Storm which single-handedly dominate the space weather. So, tracking and counting the sunspots is a vital job. This is where this data comes in handy. Here, you can see the term called 'Maunder Minimum', a period where solar activity almost stopped. And you also can
observe that this is the same time period that coincides with the severest part of the Little Ice Age, during which the Thames and the Seine were supposedly frozen. 

So, there's no doubt that the Sun plays a vital role in our climate forecast. Maybe, the Sun is the culprit for the Climate Change issue that has certainly caught the eye of billions of people. In that case, we can't do much about it, can we? So, what's the need to call it Climate Change when we merely have nothing to do with it, right? Well, let's dig deeper, shall we?  

The Reconstructed Story:

Here's another one. This is a graph plot between the Sunspot cycle and Global temperature (Celcius). The graph clearly shows a strong correlation between these two factors. Whenever there was an

increment or decrement of Sunspot cycle length, the Global temperature behaved accordingly. But here's a twist. The green line denoting the Carbon dioxide concentration has increased exponentially after 1900. And if you noticed the case of Venus earlier, we may find this element recognizable. This is almost single-handedly responsible for the greenhouse effect on Venus which makes it one of the most hostile and warmest planets in the entire solar system although mercury is the closest one to the Sun.

And we're continually pouring more and more of this type of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Since Industrial Age, the concentration of Carbon dioxide has increased by 47 percent and an 11 percent increase since 2000. So, this is not a joke. We are making our atmosphere venomous for our own selves. And we have to rethink our strategy right away.

So Climate Change is manmade? 

The present warming

Well, of course. Maybe we could speculate about it if it is before the 1900s. But now there should not
be any doubt. If we observe the increase in the Global temperature, it's mostly Human and Nature driven, that natural part is also artificially influenced by us humans by the way. And there's hardly any increase in temperature due to completely natural causes.

So definitely, we put ourselves in this situation, and we have to get out of it by ourselves. And the path through it is also not going to be easy. We just can't put a full stop to the things that emit deadly greenhouse gases. Our life heavily depends on them too. So, What we should do? Well, that's a whole new discussion. 

   

 

Why most of us are ordinary?

 "We choose to be great". Yeah! I love this quote from Elon Musk.

Ever since I was a kid, I always wondered why most of the people around me are unsuccessful. It looked like successful people sacrifice so many things to be successful but on the other side people around me are sacrificing so much to be ordinary. Why do most of us fear being successful? That seems so counterintuitive but I can say it´s pretty common from my own experiences.

So, to answer the question let me give some points from my personal experience that I think is valid for this discussion.

1. Expectation Vs Reality: As young people, we used to have so many big dreams but most of them faded away pretty much when we are adults, why? Well, one of the reasons may be when we had those dreams, we always consider an ideal world, a world where everything will go as planned. But as you might guess this never happens. And most of us can't take those adversities and give up. That is also one of the reasons why in most jobs, recruiters seek experienced people. One of the reasons being they are more familiar with the adversities and likely to find ways to get out of them. 

2. Not knowing the Why: Author Simon Sinek in his famous book 'Start with why: how Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action' states the importance of having a strong reason to follow one's ambition. But for most of us, we decide our goals based on others' expectations of us or blindly following someone. And if we don't enjoy that journey of pursuing then it is so tough to continue with that. That is exactly what happens to most of us. If you are doing something you absolutely love, you tend to exceed in that job than your peers no matter how good they are; as they give extra effort to even get along with their job.

3. Looser mindset: Most of us have a low-achieving mindset, I don't know because of personal experience or whether it is embedded into us by the environment we were brought up in. Therefore we create this looser mindset even before starting to play the game. From my personal experience, I can say when I was telling my big ambitions to my parents they were somewhat negative about it. They are like: we are middle-class families those dreams are not for us, they are unachievable. So, it is really tough to continue with your big goals when your closest ones are not with you at such a young age. And I must say I am not trying to make my parents like any villains or something. They love me a lot. It's just they don't want to see me heartbroken if I fail to live my expectation. But the world is a cruel place. You will face adversities or struggles one way or another.                                                                                                A song perfectly fits with this point: 'Famous' by French Montana. This song is about him and his grandmother who raised him. The song explores when he wanted to become a singer and for that, he left his home country, how his grandmother wished that he would fail and come back to his native place so that she could love him the most.

4. Fear of being apart: Most of us want to be part of a group, right? We develop this habit as kids. No one wants to feel left out! Especially when you have a special bond with that group, like a friends' circle. For most of us, friendships defined us. So, so many times we try to get almost the same level of job as our friends so that they don't treat us differently. I know it may seem so wrong but I feel this is indeed a point. Just recently I saw a '60 minutes' interview of the "first man" Neil Armstrong where he was talking about the moon landing experience. He told that when he came back his peers starts to treat him differently than before and he was not particularly happy about it as he could not interact with them as raw and real s before. Now, this can be a little extreme example but if this makes people like Armstrong uncomfortable then it can surely be whole more troublesome for common people especially if they have a lack of confidence and fear of being unique.

Some intriguing Questions which I always want to know answer of

 Who doesn't like Mystery? Everybody like to have a scroll with a hidden map directing towards mystery. But as a Physics student, we like mysteries about the reality. Indeed, it's so interesting. If you are a physics lover or generally curious about nature then I think you'll also have the same questions as mine.                    N.B: The questions that I'm putting right now are based on my current knowledge (2nd year undergraduate student). So, It is mutable during any time of my Physics journey. Also some high qualified people may find it stupid too. 

1. About Big Bang: How one bang can create such a massive universe which has trillions of trillions of galaxies which contains more stars, nebulas, clusters etc. It looks so unrealistic. It is heard that time has begun after Big Bang. So, what about the Space? What causes the Big Bang? I heard about the fine tuning of the universe. How all the constants are finely tuned? And does it predict about all the possible other universes where the values of the constants are different? 

2. About Consciousness: How can we say that we are the only being that has consciousness specially when we can't even know it's proper definition. What about the work of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose on plants where he proved the plant's sensitivity towards external stimuli, is it not an example of consciousness. Or consciousness came because of our intelligence? So, then how can we say that when AI would excessed human excellence, they would not get consciousness.  

3. About Teaching: I just want to know why most people are too bad at teaching. I mean if I look back at my high school days, now I can realize how bad my teachers were. They did everything to make the subjects boring and difficult. I just think sometimes that maybe I able to manage myself and carried myself in such a way that now I could able to follow my childhood dream, but what about those students who became completely uninterested because of those teachers and their teaching style. They never got to see the beautiful side of learning, right?

4. About the Origin of Life: More specifically about the origin of life in Earth. I am curious to know whether the environment of ancient earth or other external planets where life had already began, responsible for the source of life in earth. 

5. About the So Called General People: Why most people are so negative about others. When I say most people I mean educated, illiterate all sorts of people. Why can't we live like brothers and sisters. Why most people don't understand we all are living under the same sky, we all the people of Earth. Why they don't understand when you are being toxic about others, how you can live a peaceful life yourselves. I am a big fan of the word "Cosmopolitan".

6. About the Energy Crisis: We all know within a century or so, we will be in deep crisis as far so the reserved energy in concern. So why still countries are not in a driver seat to find it's solution? What are they waiting for? And it's not about just crisis, the environment is also getting damaged. When will we start giving more attention in this? Time is running out.

7. About Space Voyages: We first went to the moon in 1970s. What happened after that? Why we stopped making progress after that? It's 50 years after that first moon landing, we can't able to step foot in any planets. Did Those historical things occur because some countries want to show their powers or they were genuinely interested? 

Is Mathematics an Invention or Discovery?

 Okay first thing first, What's the difference between Invention and Discovery?                                             Invention means creating something which doesn't exist previously. Like Graham Bell "invented" the Telephone. Telephone doesn't exist before 1876, it's a purely new concept and thing that's why it's an invention.. Discovery means something that exists before but nobody witnessed, finding such a thing is an Discovery. Like Columbus "discovered" America because before 1492 America never had been known or put into a global map. So it was an discovery of America.  

 Now as you understand the difference, let's analyze the title of this blog. Shall we?                                      This gonna be my personal views. Your point of view can be different than mine. First I shall give some facts I know, then from those I shall assume a possible answer. Obviously it's really hard to come a conclusion of this type of questions. But I want you to think of your own.                                                                 Let's analyze both sides first. Then we will try to give some conclusions.

• What if Mathematics an Invention:                                                                                                         In this scenario, maybe some ancient Greeks were trying to solve some advance problems and they managed to find 'Mathematics', an analytical tool to find a reasonable solution. As we know from the definition of Invention, then Mathematics is just a concept which seems to work great.                                                                                                                                                             Now what does that mean? It means that Mathematics is an Idea that humans have created. And we're not perfect. We may be the most advanced and developed species out there but we are also the product of this universe. There are lots of examples you can find in internet which easily trick our brain. So something that have come from our brain will able to conquer all the secrets of the universe -  looks like too optimistic. Now definitely AI have the potential. But it seems unlikely that they could be any help in the field of innovation. So, Mathematics as an invention doesn't look to fulfill our ultimate goals.                                                                                              
• What if Mathematics a Discovery:                                                                                                            Consider a situation where we able to get the Nature as the way it is through Mathematics, as the Astrophysicists describe Mathematics " The language of the Universe". Then this could be undoubtedly the most significant discovery by mankind. As this is the way nature works we could definitely find those answers that we are looking for thousands of years.                                                   We can draw another significant conclusion from here. We are never assured about how we should contact the Aliens. Well if Mathematics is the Universal Language and Aliens are advanced enough to contact and reach us back then by that time Aliens would have also come across to the universal language. So undoubtedly Mathematics would be the way to contact with ET. So, Mathematics as a discovery has infinite consequences.                                                                                     
• My Conclusion:                                                                                                                                          I know this is not best of a question. Because this type of questions don't have any answers. This is just an argument. But I think particularly this question has so much significance. So there's nothing wrong to explore it more.                                                                                                     Now my turn. Have you ever wondered how a theory got approved? It's not just you make a mathematically correct theory and it got approved. You may wonder if Mathematics is a discovery then there's no wrong with the mathematics here. But why the theory has to go with reality check before approving?                                                                                                                  Everybody know Albert Einstein right? One of his greatest contributions is General Theory of Relativity. But do you know this theory was published in 1916 but never got accepted until 1919 when English Astronomer Arthur Eddington and later by other scientists proved his theory right by checking natural phenomenon(bending of light around sun during total solar eclipse).                                                     You can feel it right where I'm going with this !!! That means, it's not about just about Mathematics. Mathematics is just working as a stimulation to better explain the Nature. This couldn't be the consequence if Mathematics is a Discovery.                                                                                                                     So, the conclusion that I get from the entire discussion is that Mathematics may be just an Invention but undoubtedly it has make us the most advanced species in the world. But being the part of the nature it would be tough for us to conquer it with our own inventions. But who knows may be just may be our inventions became that advance that it would be able to give some reasonable answers of the questions that our ancestors were looking for thousands of years. Let's hope for the best.      

How Dopamine is responsible for Everyday Struggle in your life

 Okay first of all I wanna clarify this is my personal experience. But I'm a human being too (though I'm better than everybody else or the 'best' as the cool kids call me) so I guess you guys can relate to this. These points mainly applicable for students as this is my experience and I am a Student.

1. Connection between Dopamine and Your Problems: 

• Start with a late night. Assuming you are not taking caffeine before sleep, have you ever wondered why you stay up late at night? Well one of the reasons could be your brain find sleep a boring thing. Didn't understand? Think for a minute. All day long you are doing high dopamine activities like playing video games, watching Netflix, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, hanging out with friends and now all of a sudden you are telling your brain to stop everything and sleep. Isn't it boring? Though you are dripping in sleep, your brain is forcing you not to sleep and you are still watching YouTube or scrolling Social Media pages with a half naked eyes.                           
• Now because of this as expected you wake up late. As usual you are angry for sleeping late in the morning cause you made a lot of plans. So you are not happy in the very beginning of your day. Remember you can't even happily brush your teeth or talk to your family members. One of reasons cause you are pissed of for waking up late another reason is as in the night you do all of those high dopamine stuff and fall asleep unconsciously your brain find brushing your teeth or talking with somebody boring and naturally you got frustrated.                                                           
• Let's get into the most important thing in your life now which is Studying(Assuming you want to make a carrier in Education). You are already frustrated for waking up late, then you have done all those stupid stuff like brushing teeth, eating and now you are going to do Study !!! How boring is that!! Now you have taken enough. You can't take any bad things anymore. To escape from all of this you start doing something which gives you nice feelings, you start watching YouTube or scrolling your Social Media pages just to give yourself momentary pleasures.                      
• Like this you have killed your study time, skipped your online classes. Now you have taken bath, have your lunch; by that time your head is aching cause you just had consume internet for last 24 hours. You wanna sleep  now but you can't because it's low dopamine activity.  As you are in a no mood of consuming internet but your brain still want dopamine so you start thinking about fapping, cause it not only releases dopamine but also throw Testosterone out of your body which makes you feel less energetic and sleepy. But at that same time you start becoming anxious for make yourself dirty. That's a whole new chapter.

                                                            So, basically the things that you go through may look random but Dopamine could be the one reason for all of this if analyze carefully.

      

      2.  Possible Solutions:

• One of the way I control my action is by analyzing my day to day activity. Like, give yourself a little time to go through your day, I do this before sleep where I ask myself what are the things I did right or didn't, where I just genuinely waste my time, how can I avoid procrastination next time if I am in a same situation.                                                                                                                                   Basically you have to talk with yourself about everything in a day to day schedule.                                                                                                                                                
• I always try to remember that quote " When boring things become interesting, then you never feel bored in your life". Do some meditation, try to connect with nature, give yourself little boredom and use that time to think about your life, future, daily scheduling. Try to make it a habit.
• Last but definitely not least you need a strong "Why" in your life. Why this urge to change yourself to make a better person, why the necessity to feel yourself bored where you could just waste your time in things which would release huge amount of dopamine to make you feel better. So my point is you need a long term vision to tackle this time of daily problems.                                               I know this is not easy. But you shouldn't stop trying. "A little Progress each day adds up to big result".                                                                                                                               I hope these points will help you tackle your daily problems to increase your productivity and happiness.