World Affairs
World Affairs is the realm of waking-life where people act and interact, making things happen. In contrast to the realm of Art, typically the goals in this sphere are not concerned with creating beauty or discovering meaning, but have to do with the practical business of living. Nonetheless, every aspect of World Affairs can be viewed as a type of dream.
World Affairs is the territory of news and gossip. It consists of what people at all levels say and do. World Affairs creates the fodder for reports and records, stories and tales, fan magazines and YouTube. World Affairs is the infinite variety of activities that occupy all of humanity in the course of 24 hours, day in and day out. Each of our lives is an aspect of World Affairs, as are the lives of all other humans, whether as individuals or as members of groups.
All the various sections and subsections of a newspaper demonstrate the various bailiwicks of human interest and activity that comprise the land of World Affairs. World Affairs as a type of dream includes each and every section, page and article, the whole newspaper enchilada: International, national, regional, state, and local events; arts and entertainment; science and medicine; law and politics; sports, business and commerce; lifestyles and fashion; real estate, and want ads; society page and comics.
World Affairs also deals with non-human events, mostly as they impact human life. This includes topics such as weather (which, contrary to Mark Twain, man can have an impact upon - unfortunately, it is most deleterious) and ecology.
In terms of human affairs, there are the stories that each of us participates in every day. We can view each event of our own waking lives as a dream that can be interacted with dreamfully in order to discover the significance of the event. Rather than blindly moving through our stories, we can discern patterns and make meaning in all of our own life events.
There are the stories that everyone else participates in every minute of every day. Each event that we witness or learn about can be conceived of as a dream. All the procedures we employ to work with a sleep dream can effectively be used to work with world events in order to create coherence of them and even beauty. Events can be explored to see what their significance might be for the participants. Perhaps more profitably, we can explore world events with an eye to their significance for us. What events evoke particularly strong emotions in us? Which particpant do I most identify with? What does the event seem to be telling me?
World Affairs comprise the bulk of the external world. Rather than engaging and encouraging approaches that are internal, contemplative and reflective, this realm thrives on movement and results. Rather than insight and compassion, this realm rewards quick judgments, savviness and success. This is the realm in which all too many people, unconsciously following its cruel dictates, wind up getting battered and bashed and feel reduced to lives empty of coherence and meaning. Dreamfulness is a quest for beauty and coherence. But beauty and coherence are created by each dreamer herself, they are not something "out there", somewhere to be found. Just as the meaning of sleep dreams is not to be found "out there," so too, finding meaning in the events of our lives and the world around us, does not occur outside of ourselves. Rather, establishing a dreamful approach to world affairs, we can discover and create our own beauty, significance and coherence out of even the most chaotic events.
For the most part, we cannot control the events around us. As the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderon de la Barca noted centuries ago in the title of perhaps his best-known play - Life Is a Dream, La Vida Es Sueño. But, as with all types of dream, we can become much more aware of the dreams that are World Affairs, that are the world, understanding how they impact us, what their significance is for us and how we ourselves may change so as to create a life of beauty and significance.