Ursula K Le Guin - BBC Investigation TV - Malcolm X - Eugene O’Neill - William Shakespeare - Martin Luther King - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 1999 - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - The Borgias TV - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Rab C Nesbitt TV - R H Barham - Elias Canetti - Horizon TV - Job 7:14 - Enoch 4:83:7&8 - II Esdras 13:1-3&11 - Weird or What? TV - The Vanishing 1988 - In Search of TV - Adam Curtis TV - esias -
I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep. Ursula K Le Guin
Why is the nightmare still so fresh? ... People who refuse to believe that a crime of this magnitude could have such a simple, pathetic conclusion. BBC investigation 1966
You and I have never seen democracy – all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare. Malcolm X
Life is perhaps most wisely regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings, and every day is a life in miniature. Eugene O’Neill, Marco Millions 1928
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,
Whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth III iii @19, Macbeth
The dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare. Martin Luther King, cited King in the Wilderness, Sky Atlantic 2018
It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it was only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 1999 starring Forest Whitaker & John Tormey & Henry Silva & Cliff Gorman & Isaach De Bankole & Camille Winbush & Tricia Vessey & Richard Portnow et al, director Jim Jarmusch
24,746. Kira: What do Klingons dream about?
Worf: Things that will send cold chills down your spine and wake you in the middle of the night. No, it is better that you do not know. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s4e6: Rejoined
I had a dream, my son, or a nightmare. I had dreamed that the whole of Italy had deserted us. The Borgias s1e8: The Art of War, Pope to Cesare, Showtime 2011
Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then ... Well, then I woke up. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
I had a terrible dream. A nightmare. I dreamt there was a Church of Scotland minister sitting on my bed trying to give me hope. Rab C Nesbitt s6e4: Semmitry, BBC 1997
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night
He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright. R H Barham, 1788-1845, The Ingoldsby Legends, 1840
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. Elias Canetti
Sadly, more than three-quarters of our dreams are negative. Horizon: Why Do We Dream? BBC 2009
Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions. Job 7:14
Dost thou make such lamentation? And I recounted to him the whole vision which I had seen, and he said unto me: A terrible thing hast thou seen, my son, and of grave moment is thy dream – vision as to the secrets if all the sin of the earth: it must sink into the abyss and be destroyed with a great destruction. Enoch 4:83:7&8
And it came to pass after seven days, I dreamed a dream by night:
And, lo, there arose a wind from the sea, that it moved all the waves thereof.
And I beheld, and, lo, that man waxed strong with the thousands of heaven: and when he turned his countenance to look, all the things trembled that were seen under him.
And they were all mixed together; the blast of fire, the flaming breath, and the great tempest; and fell with violence upon the multitude which was prepared to fight, and burned them up every one, so that upon a sudden of an innumerable multitude nothing was to be perceived, but only dust and smell of smoke: when I saw this I was afraid. II Esdras 13:1-3&11
Cincinnati, Ohio 1979: David Booth is the office manager of a car rental agency … An extreme nightmare: ‘he had this dream of an aeroplane taking off and the engine falling off and the plane crashing in flames killing everyone … The next night he had the same dream again’ … It continues night after night … Finally, David decides to warn the authorities … Again and again, each night more vivid than the last … David’s nightmare becomes a tragedy. Weird or What? s3e7: Premonitions, 2012
Her: My nightmare. I had it again last night.
Him: That you’re inside a golden egg and you can’t get out and you float all alone through space for ever. The Vanishing aka Spoorloos 1988 starring Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu & Gene Bervoets & Johanna ter Steege & Gwen Eckhaus & Bernadette le Sache & Tania Latarjet & Lucille Glenn et al, director George Sluizer
Dreams and nightmares have long haunted the dark regions of the human mind. Today however we are finding ways to solve the age-old riddle of our subconscious. It may not be long before we can control and plan our own dreams. In Search of s3e14 … Dreams & Nightmares, 1979
When a major airliner crashes the tragedy is overwhelming, the destruction sudden and complete. In the spring of 1979 a New York woman has a series of dreams of an airliner disaster in the mid-west; two months later a Cincinnati man dreams of a large jet in peril: it crashes and explodes. The dream repeats ten nights in a row and no matter what he does, it will not leave him alone. Were these dreams just nightmares or will they prove to be prophecies? In Search of s4e21 … Air Disaster Prediction, 1980
In the past politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people had lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen increasingly as managers in public life … Politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares; they say that they will rescue us from terrible dangers that we cannot see and do not understand, and the greatest danger of all is international terrorism, a powerful and sinister network with sleeper cells in countries across the world, a threat that needs to be fought by a War on Terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. Adam Curtis: The Power of Nightmares I: Baby It’s Cold Outside, BBC 2004
Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful. ibid.
What Qutb believed that he was seeing was a hidden and dangerous reality underneath the surface of ordinary American life … American society was not going forwards; it was taking people backwards; they were becoming isolated beings. ibid.
[Leo] Strauss believed that the liberal idea of individual freedom led people to question everything. All values, all moral truths. Instead, people were led by their own selfish desires and this threatened to tear apart the shared values which held society together. ibid.
On his return Qutb became politically active in Egypt; he joined a group called the Muslim Brotherhood who wanted Islam to play a major role in the governing of Egyptian society. And in 1952 the Brotherhood supported the revolution led by General Nasser that overthrew the last remnants of British rule. But Nasser very quickly made it clear that the new Egypt was going to be a secular society that emulated western models. ibid.
Sayid Qutb’s ideas were now spreading rapidly in Egypt above all among students. Because his predictions about the corruption from the West seemed to have come true. The government of President [Anwar] Sadat was controlled by a small group of millionaires who were backed by Western banks. The banks had been let in by what Sadat called his open-door policy. ibid.
This group became known as the Neo-Conservatives. The Neo-Conservatives were idealists; their aim was to try and stop the social disintegration they believed personal freedoms had unleashed. ibid.