Dreams-Do they have a life of their own?

I have always had a fascination with dreams since I was young. They seem to be one of life's greatest mysteries that people over the centuries have tried to define. There are all kinds of answers for dreams; interpretations and definitions which I am not quite sure totally define the realism of a dream.
These dream definitions try to take every aspect of your dream literally and break it down into words. For instance, a bear in your dreams could mean victory over an enemy or a rat can mean sneaky and untrustworthy. In order to understand your dream it would mean to break it into a million definitions this way in hopes of finding a logical meaning, and who knows, maybe there is some truth to this.
What I wanted to write about though, was some questions I have pondered about different aspects of my dreams-the more abstract or less concrete. Questions I am sure no one has ever been able to answer.

**Say, you dream of a large group of people or there are lots of people in your dream around you. They may be talking or carrying on conversation and you may not be able to hear or comprehend what everyone is saying. Even if you cannot see or hear them, are they talking real dialogue even without you acknowledging them? Maybe you only hear some people and some are too far away or your back may be turned to them. Even if your ears can't hear the conversation, are there true conversations going on?

**When you dream of places and say for instance, you walk outside or into another room, does the place you just left disappear or is it still there just waiting there for you to possibly re-enter? Has the whole dream already been played out even before you dream it, or are things are being made in your head as the dream progresses?

**Do the people you meet know they aren't real? Do they have any substinence or any thought of who they are? I've also heard that groups of people can carry on the same dream, so are we linked somehow maybe not conciously, but do we really interact with real people in our dreams across our souls or subconcious? How do we know for sure what we dream isn't shared with others? Sometimes we do meet people in real life that seem familiar to us. That would be a quite interesting thought.

There are a lot of people who don't remember their dreams or think they don't dream at all. Maybe there is something more to that. Who knows what the human mind can conceive or the power it can do.

I have had many lucid dreams where I know I am dreaming. I will look around and listen, touch everything, smell, feel, and taste things. I have all these feelings in my dreams. I have died many deaths and know how to get out of bad dreams even when I am not lucid dreaming. Yet, those questions have always baffled me. I have told people in my dreams that I know they aren't real and I ask them if they know they aren't real and they just look at me. Sometimes it's weird that way, but I will always enjoy my dreams even without all the answers.

Technology is good...or is it?

For thousands and thousands of years this world stood without us, void of any worries. It was truly paradise here on earth. There was no fear of humans and what they could do to destroy this wonderful place. There was only earth's natural elemental enemies. Plants and animals found their own way to survive but did this without destroying this precious earth. They survived through their own natural means-not by destroying the ozone, ripping up the land, causing massive pollution, which in turn causes disease and famine. Nature did what it had to for survival, but we as a people today don't do it for survival. Well, we did once, maybe, a long time ago, but then our ancestors got hungrier and the hungrier they got the worse it became. Maybe at one time it was for the mere thought of staying warm and well fed, but we are far beyond those needs now. Our ancestors couldn't stay where they were, no, they had to venture outward to what else they could find. In a way, they got bored, and this boredom led to war, abuse, slavery, hunger and whatever else you can think of.
This past hundred years or more has made the human race real busy. Our ancestors urge to push forward-MORE! MORE! MORE! has now led to us. What our ancestors were is not what we have become. We have become something far worse. We can blame them, but we are supposed to be learning from our past WRONG! We haven't learned anything except to keep fighting forward for what has now become MINE! MINE! MINE!
Maybe our ancestors thought Technology would be good, that it would move us forward, improve us, make us better, but no, we are now lost in the Ipod shuffle. You think it would be better-a world where communication is rampant, we can talk to people all over the world using telephone, e-mail, webcam and instant messaging. I see all this, and I pay attention, and I see that this has made it worse somehow. Everywhere I go, someone has their ear to the phone or earphones up to the ears, and if you look back and really visualize it all, it's somewhat frightening. We are loosing touch with our everday world that is right in front of us. Not only that, but we have lost touch with so many other things as well. Many of us depend on microwaves to cook, televisions to babysit and phones to keep tabs on what everyone else is doing while we ourselves walk around in some sort of labyrinth, thinking we know what's going on but really, many of us don't. I am so glad that there are still a few wise people out there that can still find their way amidst it all.
What would happen if we ever lost all this technology we have come to depend on? Sure, there are those who may have seen it coming or were wise enough to not depend solely on it and will triumph over the ones that didn't really care and never learned how to truly survive. Yet, so many will inevitably perish in it's downfall. Someday we may have to learn to live at one with nature and realize it should have been something we had learned to do a long time ago.