Designing Light Switches for Dreams

[squirmelia]

Light switches are often used in reality tests to tell if you're actually dreaming, because light levels tend to not be adjusted much in dreams.

Since studying ergonomics, I have wondered whether there is a design fault in dream light switches.

Light switches in the UK are usually pressed down for on, where as in the US, they are pressed up for on, so perhaps in dreams we press the light switches in the wrong direction? A solution for this could be to use a different kind of switch or perhaps one switch for on and one for off, but then they would need to be labelled, and reading can prove difficult in dreams.

One problem that I suspect hinders the functionality of dream light switches is insufficient mapping. Perhaps we are unable to mentally connect the light switch with the light in our dreams. A light-emitting source, such as a bulb you put in, that lights up immediately, when it is in the bendable lamp-post might help. Lamp-posts are quite dreamy. Is electricity the problem? Do candles work better in dreams? Fire causing light might seem more tangible than electricity in dreams.

Imagining a room getting brighter might seem problematic, so maybe you could use green bulbs and blue bulbs and bulbs that make stars float out from a lampshade, like fireflies. Or you could just go and catch the sun to light up your imaginary room.

Next time you attempt to light up your dreams, perhaps you will have designed the light switches better, so that your dream self can actually use them, but then how will you tell whether you are dreaming or not?

Comments

[mordantcarnival.livejournal.com]

That's a fantastic idea. I'm going to get right on it. Maybe something as simple as a dimmer switch to slowly alter the light level would help.

[grey-area.livejournal.com]

In my dreams there is usually uniform light. No light means bad things. But, from what I remember, when there is the opportunity for switching lights on the switch tends to be a large, chunky bakelite switch of a style that my grandmother had in her cellar in Germany. Never seen a switch like that before or since.

[albatros.livejournal.com]

I was often (<12) scared by the dark, and dreamt a lot of being in the dark (or dark areas), feeling for a light switch, and finding they don't work (argh!).

Nowadays, I have the occasional dream where I room I know has been outfitted with several (overkill) lighting sets, with their controls dotted all over the place around the room. I spend a lot of time working out which controls do what, and often can't find what I need.

[retinadarling.livejournal.com]

i've never flipped a lightswitch in a dream. for some reason, the lights are always on.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I recall, from a dream, turning down the dimmer switch and the light becoming painfully brighter, no matter which way I turned it.

No doubt the twiddling action has some deep symbolic significance in the Freudian depths of my psyche.

I dream of work and non stop patients coming through the doors and windows-

[bickichick.livejournal.com]

-even when the lights are flicked off.
or I dream of Porn! no lights on there either
the lightswitch in my front room in my place is Brit way- or upsidedown to the North American way.

[http://users.livejournal.com/--zeitgeist/]

Have you been watching Waking Life? :) [that's the only reason I know about the light switch reality thing]

[kevandotorg.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I hadn't heard the lightbulb thing before, and last night I had my first lucid dream in five or ten years, by thinking to check the light switch when things started getting a bit weird - it clicked on and off without doing anything, and I looking back I wasn't conscious of a specific light source.

I spent the rest of the dream trying to remember other tests to try, and only being able to think of "read some text, then look away and read it again" (which turned out to be quite entertaining, because I'd picked up a Shakespeare play and some line about pigs was being auto-regenerated with an earnest, blind authority).

Pretty much all of the standard dreams tests are seeing whether cause-and-effect break down, aren't they? I think you're right that we can't follow the mapping through.