Dreaming ~ and reading

I dozed off with my computer on my lap and awoke with a smile on my face and the dream still lingering.  I was sitting in a narrow chapel, looking up at a butterfly over the center aisle to my right.  I had just realized the butterfly was not real, but hanging down from the high ceiling on a long string.  And then I saw another and another hanging there along the aisle, fluttering a little, as a tall dark-skinned priest robed in regal-red started quietly saying something like "vroom-vroom-vroom" and backed up the aisle toward the front of the chapel.  I was smiling because I'd just realized those butterflies were to be part of the service, somehow.  They were monarch butterflies, but I have no idea what any of this means.

What I'd been reading before getting on the computer couldn't have been more different.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century ~ by Yuval Noah Harari, 2018

How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human?  How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news?  Are nations and religions still relevant?  What should we teach our children?  This is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future.  As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.  He does this by untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in:

• How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us?
• What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it?
• How should we deal with the threat of terrorism?
• Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

He invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty.  When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power.

From the back cover of the book (and the table of contents), here are the 21 lessons:

1. Disillusionment ~ The end of history has been postponed.
2. Work ~ When you grow up, you might not have a job.
3. Liberty ~ Big Data is watching you.
4. Equality ~ Those who own the data own the future.
5. Community ~ Humans have bodies.
6. Civilization ~ There is just one civilization in the world.
7. Nationalism ~ Global problems need global answers.
8. Religion ~ God now serves the nation.
9. Immigration ~ Some cultures might be better than others.
10. Terrorism ~ Don't panic.
11. War ~ Never underestimate human stupidity.
12. Humility ~ You are not the center of the world.
13. God ~ Don't take the name of God in vain.
14. Secularism ~ Acknowledge your shadow.
15. Ignorance ~ You know less than you think.
16. Justice ~ Our sense of justice might be out of date.
17. Post-Truth ~ Some fake news lasts forever.
18. Science Fiction ~ The future is not what you see in the movies.
19. Education ~ Change is the only constant.
20. Meaning ~ Life is not a story.
21. Meditation ~ Just observe.

Tune in tomorrow morning for the 2016 word of the year, thanks to Oxford Dictionaries.  Yes, the word is here in this blog post.  Yes, we live in what seems to me to be a very odd world.  Maybe I'm getting too old.

Update:  Word of the Year posted 11/14/2018.

Update:  11/29/18
This photo was on Facebook today with these words:

"Salisbury Cathedral, England, UK (photo by steffi_daydreamer)
Installation of around 2,500 origami doves to symbolise peace and hope."

This is very similar to my dream (above), but my monarch butterflies were not massed together with others.  I saw only a handful of butterflies fluttering above the center aisle from the high ceilings.