EPISODE 3: THE COLLAPSE OF THE DREAM

Welcome all Patreon subscribers! In this episode we're going to be tackling what, exactly, causes the Dream to collapse. We start with a very brief recap of the previous episodes, as well as a few clarifications. Then we move on to explore what causes depression from what we know today, as well as a continued discussion of Federico Campagna's Technic and Magic. Finally, we begin to tackle one of the fundamental concepts in this model—the capacity to imagine a "radical elsewhere."  This will give us the foundational knowledge we need to tackle the next stage, The Failed Return to the Garden... you can think of this episode as being a two-parter, with the second part coming later this week. 

The Collapse of the Dream/The Failed Return to the Garden (text from the original guide): 

"A collapsing dream brings with it a sense of paradox—the dreamer may feel both a deep detachment and an inability to fully let go. This stage is characterized by nostalgia, hedonism, loss of interest and/or rumination… as the dream collapses, the psychological world of the dreamer literally grows smaller. Most of what we characterize as untreated depression happens at this stage. As the system of meaning-making erodes, nothing can be seen to matter in any real sense. There may be attempts to return to an earlier, happier time, or to anxiously work toward a perceived better future. This stage had no set endpoint—the collapsing Dream will never fully collapse without conscious action on the part of the dreamer. Many people never leave this stage."

Quote mentioned in the episode, from Technic and Magic: 

"Understood symbolically, the image of a flat earth points to two intuitive objects of human experience: that the inhabitable world of each of us is at once shaped and enhanced by its limits, and that beyond these limits lies, not 'nothing' but something at once altogether different and yet contiguous. Conversely, the symbol of the spherical Earth hints at a different ontological vision, according to which the world stretches without boundaries, seamlessly closed onto itself, while outside of its smooth surface it is possible to find either nothing at all, or other equivalent spheres; that is repetitions of the same form of existence. A sphere... at once boundless, unitary, seamless, and also safe from the impending presence of anything radically different from it.” (48)