The dream that sustains the system
It was 170 AD, the ninth year of Marcus Aurelius' reign, the 'last of the Five Good Emperors.' Far from the Forum and the Palatine Hill (which lends its name to the 'palace'), Gaius Verus, a 14-year-old from a prestigious merchant family in Rome, walked the city's streets in search of Acia Flavia, a 12-year-old girl he had taken an interest in.
His interest had been proclaimed by his family even before him, as Acia's family was prominent in the slave business in Hostia - and it was mutual. For Gaius, who would soon depart for his first military campaign in the wild north, life was a delight! He passed by a small tavern where the vendor of a Roman-style x-burger assured him of a quick meal, something not very common but always welcome.
The two cups of sweet wine left him a bit 'high,' but not enough to hinder his way to Villa Flaviana. At the entrance, of course, Gaius found Lucius, Acia's older brother - his true passion. The torrid and swift act of love happened right there, in a small room with no doors or partitions, next to the front door. Acia heard it, but chose to pretend she didn't, she was bored with the same old thing: he never brought sandwiches for her.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with a long meal with the entire family and some friends. Gaio's family also arrived to participate, and everything continued into the night. Acia's and Gaio's parents arranged their wedding a few weeks ahead, just before Gaio's departure for military campaign in Gaul. Everything was so harmonious that Gaio even had the honor of offering food to the Penates at the family altar before the meal.
On that occasion, Gaio and Lucius went out to have sex a few times, while the other household members also had their own escapades, even with some servants more inclined to sexual play.
Of course, it wasn't a bacchanal party, but you can't expect anything less at an event that lasts for hours and hours, fueled by wine and celebration. After all, Gaio was now a respected man; he had his future wife, knew he had enough virility to produce children, had an intimate and mutual relationship with his brother-in-law, and the Penates and Lares were happy. Their families were prosperous and prominent, and finally, he could debut in experiencing the joy and honor of his first war very soon.
Returning to 2023, it's important to remember: none of this happened. Or it did, we'll never know. It definitely could have happened. That's not the issue.
Understanding someone's daily life in the year 170 is important to arrive at the contrast I want to build with this article: dreams change, we know that. But what we might forget is that dreams sustain systems and tend to disrupt them when they begin to change.
Not all things we attribute great value to are objective. In fact, the vast majority of what we believe to be important and valuable - at all levels of society - are the products of society itself, born subjectively from someone's mindset and cultivated as agreements in each community.
When Richard Dawkins created the theory of memes as the genes of memory, he referred to an immense composition of fragments of social memory to which we attribute value and which, in one way or another, shape the way we understand and manifest ourselves in the world. Unlike genes, memes are altered by the very fluid nature of society, meaning by ourselves, and not by random events in nature.
A large number of memes acting together make up the social body, helping to determine the sociocultural climate of a region at a given time. Above all, they are sustained only when there is memetic feedback composing the fabric of social mentality.
This solid set of memes with similar purposes is what we will call the 'dream' in this text. A dream, as we well know, not in the sense of the oneiric but in the utopian sense, is our great goal, the ultimate goal. It is the dream that sustains all other objectives. This dream doesn't have a name, a well-defined face, or absolutely standardized and entirely clear characteristics when seen together, but they are solid and quite noticeable when we observe case by case.
The best-selling author Simon Sinek, who revealed the theory of the 'golden circles,' tells us that everything needs a 'why,' everything is born and should be born from a 'why,' the deepest purpose, so to speak, the dream. I say, I believe we can make this analogy.
Entire societies are sustained solely through an intersubjective fabric of agreements, composed by a dense layer of memes with the same direction. When the Beatles released 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' the dream of romantic love was quite clear, to find someone to hold your hand, build a future together - 'settle down.' This was part of an immense dream that gave rise to several other questions.
The dream is the 'speculative framework' for the future of society, as it is from there, as Plato already said, that we draw the ideas with which we will build the world. It is from there that speculations about the future originate, which is why we speculate on what marriages of the future will be like, instead of speculating if there will be marriages in the future because marriage and family formation are part of the current dream. It wasn't always like this, and it won't always be.
The question is that even today it might not be.
There is a corrosion in this (what we can call) 'current dream fabric' that has been built for decades, like any oxidation, meaning it's not something that happens overnight, but it's also something that always happens, time also has an effect on the dream.
Much of our current worldview, and by that, I mean a system of beliefs and moral, ethical, and social manifestations of a time, has been drastically altered in recent decades to the point that we may be experiencing a great moment, a moment of transition from one dream to another - these are tectonic changes (not climatic) in society: it's a slow and continuous movement that reshapes the face of the world.
There is also another question about what the face of the next dream will be. The truth is that right now, there's no way to know very well, things haven't settled enough to become visible.
The dream of financial prosperity, home ownership, debt repayment, family formation, work and employment, and many (MANY) other issues that kept the 'world system wheel' in the Western world of the 20th century functioning, is taking its last breaths.
Isn't it an ordinary fact that the West has given up having children? But it's even less ordinary that this has become the theme of the melody. The idea of security, home, work, legacy, social behavior, among many others, was born from the 'child-dream' and could have been solely sustained by it.
How are we going to maintain an economic system based on work when people don't work? How are we going to maintain a social system based on daily life when people don't feel comfortable with it?
There are certainly many more questions than answers, but one certainty we can begin to weave: the dream is over. Is it? Was this what John Lennon wanted to say? We won't know, but he was right - few Beatles songs would still make sense if released today.