Waking up from the Dream

Rude awakenings, when sleepers awake from a long dream they are often angry,

This happened to the PSU students who rioted after Paterno was fired.  They were distressed that his exit was swift and disgraceful, but they were also more broadly angry that the football myth had been betrayed from within.  They attacked the messenger, a media truck, --the medium that had fed them the illusion was now blamed for its demise.  They were not initially angry about Sandusky’s crimes, rather they were upset that their “college experience” had been spoiled.

“Awakening as a graduated process that goes on in the life of the individual as in that of a generation.  Sleep is its initial stage.  A generation’s experience of youth has much in common with the experience of dreams.” 

 --Walter Benjamin, note on the Arcades Project

By no means is this desire to keep dreaming confined to students or the young.  This week’s Time magazine cover shows directly how American readers generally are encouraged to worry about staying in their dreamy beds rather than listening to the rumbling outside.