Footnote to “Emotion Management”
[1] Of course, to say that dreams have an emotion-regulating function is not to say that they have no other function—they might be multi-functional. They might aid in memory retention or help with cognitive tasks or allow us to blow off steam or provide a space for adaptive simulation or even provide sexual release. There is a tendency among dream theorists to assign a single function to dreams, but this may be quite false to the facts; certainly, an organ that evolved for one purpose might acquire others as evolutionary time passes. Still, I rather fancy that emotion regulation is the main function of dreams, and the reason for their original appearance. The dreaming part of the brain evolved to deal with the emotional part, a kind of in-house corrective.
Speaking of emotion management. Massive thundering bass beats from the electric dance “music” concert two miles away. Every fucking November me and my mostly black neighbors have to put up with this shit. A bunch of tripped-out idiotic white boys hopping up and down to the most noisome of alleged music. My poor cat tends the while in the closet.
What general lessons can we draw? American white boys have no idea about music or good behavior (the two are linked). And they will stay this way.