Dreams in a Time of Horror

We've never needed empathy more, but some argue it can only ever come from a place of selfishness. Between self-indulgence and dispassion, which is the lesser of two evils?

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

I can’t watch horror films, period. Even say Scream (whether it’s I, II or VVV). I was too young to catch the first one at the cinema, so it was instead hustled on VHS out of Blockbuster for a girlfriend’s sleepover. After screaming out loud so many times, I resorted to just looking at the floor for the last 90 minutes. This is no hyperbole, I’ve watched the floor at several picture houses totally topped out with adrenaline, doing anything I could to stop the images metastasising from the silverscreen into my body as I shuddered in sheer dread.  I can’t really watch psychological thrillers or read anything remotely of the genre either. I still think about Se7en, a film I watched at this point nearly 20 years ago, most days. After I first saw it, I didn’t sleep for weeks, and manifestations of several scenes continue to stalk my nightmares two decades later. I will never watch a single Stephen King film; The Silence of the Lambs will remain noiseless to me in this lifetime.

I obviously have no idea what your dreams are like, but the intensity of mine has always been terrifying, so all-encompassing and chillingly believable that they cloud my waking days. When I say they feel so real, it’s like someone has first punched me in the stomach and then the face. I wake believing that whatever it is I’ve hallucinated about has actually happened and it takes me at least until midway through my shower to talk myself down. My mum has terrible night terrors and often screeches blue murder in the early hours; I often try to scream but find my throat bone dry. Perhaps it runs in the family, or else I was conditioned by her fear as a child. I can’t say, though both my brother and mama love horror films and laugh at my off the scale feebleness. I can’t understand why anyone would put themselves through that kind of fear, the kind of fear that has your scraping your scalp for lice or scrutinizing every inch of your skin for sores come daybreak. The kind of fear that might stop you getting on a tube or walking alone anywhere. The kind of fear that impacts your actual behaviour.  

These days we are all living through now, where the horrors of terrorism, war, indiscriminate loss of life and assault on humanity have been described by so many reporters on the ground ‘as if it was a film’ will have inevitably impacted our collective subconscious and the fears we harbour beyond words. For so many of us, so comfortable and so far, far away from the fray, the level of brutality meted out on a daily basis still feels like the stuff of horror films—and perhaps our nightmares too. The fact that we are watching it happen live on our devices feels like the glass has been broken between what is real and what is imaginary. If ever any of us needed a wakeup call about our web of privilege, here it is loud and clear.

Over the past three weeks, there have been moments when I have looked at the ground and shielded my eyes from what I knew I couldn’t take and couldn’t unsee. Bearing witness en masse to so much callousness in the moment feels out of body and while I feel guilty and complicit to say it, there are accounts online I’ve muted and disturbing images I’ve declined to tap to see. I have had moments every day when I just couldn’t look any more. I agree that makes me a feeble witness. But if I am to keep witnessing, I cannot be catatonic with fear.

I’ve jetlagged myself twice over the past week and have spent hours in the half-wake state so beautifully captured in Lost in Translation (a film I could manage). Over these seven days, my dreams have been palpable and terrifying, as I’m sure have many of yours, especially anyone with friends or family trapped in this tragedy. Some of them have been brutal, but dreams are usually a little more abstract in the way they reveal your terrors and anxieties. I’ve had my classic ‘someone is in the house and a knife is missing from the drawer,’ panic party. I’ve dreamt of cradling a baby propped up in my bed, enjoying the newborn bubble when I look down and see my child has no face, features smoothed into putty. But I’ve also had a dream about my boyfriend leaving me after an infidelity. Most often, we do not dream directly of the fear we see in the light – the fear of mass murder, kidnap, torture, bombing or losing our children. Instead, the brain refracts it to create seemingly disassociated imagery and storylines.

What we need now more than ever is empathy, but the problem with empathy is it makes you centre yourself in any narrative. To have empathy you have to imagine yourself walking in other people’s shoes which makes it about your nervous system and its response to someone else’s pain. It is my dreams I speak of, though they are the refraction of someone else’s reality. I do not know what those in peril dream of, if they manage to sleep, meaning there is a level of self-indulgence involved. It is of course, a necessary step for many towards compassion, and to feel even a facsimile of someone else’s distress trembling through your veins is so much more potent than the more detached emotions of pity or sympathy.

Empathy is predicated on the ‘theory of mind’, or the cognitive understanding that there are multiple perspectives based on different belief systems, individual desires and that each human views and experiences the world through a different lens. Theory of mind first comes into view around the age of four—it is what helps us work out other people’s intentions and how they may or may not act in any given situation. Science suggests that this theory of mind is based in mirror neurons first discovered in macaque monkeys. If you see someone else get a paper cut and you flinch as you feel a shadow of their pain, that’s your mirror neurons in action. These nerve cells appear to help us simulate emotion and feeling from other people’s actions and it is argued that mirror neuron abnormalities may be the cause of certain cognitive conditions including autism spectrum disorders (the ‘broken mirror hypothesis’).

Many psychologists argue that empathy and indeed any following altruism are merely tools of selfishness and self-preservation. Empathizing and acting through compassion not only leaves us with euphoria (the so called ‘helper’s high’) but can lead to feelings of pride in our own kindness or courage, the expectation of honour within our communities, or for the religious, a place behind the pearly gates come judgement day. At the very least it can relieve feelings of guilt and shame for not having acted to aid someone in their time of need. But of course, if we don’t feel a connection to the plight of others, we don’t use our voice or act to help. Any horror which we aren’t personally involved in isn’t about us. Yet if we don’t at least mirror it to be something about us, we remain unmoved, uninvolved, dispassionate.

To know we live in the 21^st century, the time of A.I and cancer cures and hoverboards and yet we still kill and maim each other in the medieval way feels anachronistic. And while we know that there are as many lenses on the world as there are humans who walk the earth, to truly see how different those vantage points can be, how wildly and fundamentally disparate our perceptions on reality truly are, is undoubtedly dislocating. To remain dispassionate or unmoved seems inconceivable. Up is up and down is down. But war is peace and freedom is slavery. Depending on how you see it of course.

Who am I to say you are devoid of humanity if you don’t weep for the death of innocents no matter what their creed. I have not walked in your shoes; I have not experienced your mirrors. People have committed atrocities in the name of unquantifiable causes since time immemorial. My ancestors were slave masters and conquerors, subjugators and defilers of innocents across the world. Some of my people still won’t condemn that even to this day (‘colonialism brought many benefits’). And yet. As a pacifist I don’t believe there is ever any justification for war or violence. That is my personal lens and I’m well aware that many believe it to be immoral or else delusional. I’m not an absolute pacifist—it would take another essay to unpick the qualifications of non-aggression, but I can promise you I’ve explored every line of thinking from self defence, to eye for an eye, to stopping totalitarianism from sweeping through the world. Conscientious objectors are generally branded as cowards or gullible day dreamers and pacifism often makes people furious with you. Conversely, the fact that other people’s mirrors and slant on empathy lead them to believe that random violence and killing is actually an act of altruism—to avenge the past or protect the future—is almost impossible for me to process. But here we are. It’s not about me, it’s not about you. It's about them. How we feel doesn’t matter; also how we feel matters.