industrial living as a frozen dream, and our awakening

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I came to this idea, or it came to me, when I
noticed in my classification of a brainstorm on
dreaming that some industrial activities, or even
all of them, resemble dreaming: dreaming with eyes
open but with mind detached or uncoupled, because
of economic imperatives like profit and
specialisation, the conditions of what is called
realism, or because of the subjection of ourselves
to material things and money, more than spirit,
more than love.

I presented this to an affirmative group as notes
for a chapter in this book. Several of those in
the group advised me to separate the notion of
industrial-living-as-dreaming from the book, which
they thought should be limited to more factual
things. But some of them encouraged me to persist
in combining the dream with reality and this I am
attempting in the fragment of text above.

I came to these words of wisdom by a chance
selection from The Bhagavad Gita, translated by
Juan Mascaro, which reminded me of ancient notions
of goodness in human life, which perhaps are
excluded from industrial dreamlife as we know it.
The chance quotation provided a list of 16
qualities which I supposed Utopia to be typing in
the awakening from the dream.

Intelligence, spiritual vision, victory over
delusion, patient forgiveness, truth,
self-harmony, peacefulness, joys and sorrows, to
be and not to be, fear and freedom from fear,
harmlessness and non-violence, an ever-quietness,
satisfaction, simple austerity, generosity, honour
and dishonour: these are the conditions of mortals

(says Krishna, the god of love).

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