Why Are People Worldwide Dreaming About This Man?

Have you ever dreamed about “This Man”? If you did, did he comfort or befriend you in your dreams? Or was he a malevolent entity that attempted to harm you in your nightmares? If you have dreamed of him, then you are one of thousands across that world who believe to have encountered “This Man” in their dreams at one point or several instances of their lives. This phenomenon became a viral Internet legend several years ago, and websites are also available online which are specially dedicated to describe people’s personal experiences of dreaming of “This Man.”

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Background on “This Man”

According to the “This Man” website allegedly set up by those who have dreamed about the strange man, every night throughout the world, hundreds of people dream about this man’s face. This dream-related phenomenon supposedly dates back in January 2006 in New York. As the story goes, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist drew the face of a man repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion, the man had provided her some advice concerning her private life, but the woman swears that she never met the man in real life. 

The portrait of the man was set aside on the psychiatrist’s desk for a few days until one day another patient pointed out the portrait. He recognized the face in the drawing, saying that the man had often visited him in his dreams. Similar to the claims of the female patient of the psychiatrist, he claims that he has never seen the man in his waking life. 

Finding it odd for two people to dream the same stranger, the psychiatrist decided to send the portrait of the man to some of his colleagues who had patients with recurrent dreams. Within just a few months, four patients turned up, claiming to recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients referred to the man appearing their dream as “This Man.”

Since the first reported appearance of “This Man” in people’s dreams in 2006, at least 2000 people have reportedly claimed to have all seen the same man in their dreams. The man has allegedly appeared in the dreams of many people in many cities all over the world, including Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Delhi and Moscow.

According to the “This Man” website, there are currently no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of the strange man. What’s even stranger is that supposedly no real man in the waking world has ever been recognized as resembling the man drawn on the portrait by those who have seen him in their dreams. 

Because of this mystery, it has become the ultimate objective of some people to find out the real identity of “This Man” and figure out the reason why he randomly appears in the dreams of a diverse set of human subjects in a variety of unrelated situations. 

Theories Allegedly Explaining About “This Man”

The website dedicated to the “This Man” phenomenon has also enumerated and discussed several theories which have supposedly been developed to explain the mysteriously recurring presence of the man in the dreams of a wide variety of people who are not related with each other in any way. Some of these theories are said to have elicited great interest among those who have dreamed of the strange man, and these include the archetype theory, the religious theory, the dream surfer theory, the dream imitation theory and the daytime recognition theory. 

Based on Carl Jung’s psychoanalytic theory, “This Man” is speculated to be an archetypal image belonging to humanity’s collective unconscious. This archetype appears in times of a person’s hardship, emotional development, dramatic changes in life and stressful circumstances. And because it is part of the collective unconscious of all people, it makes sense that the man shows up in the dreams of several individuals over the course of several years though they not-at-all related with each other. 

There is also another theory about the phenomenon that is founded on religious beliefs. According to this theory, “This Man” is the image of the Creator himself, and that this particular form is one of the many faces in which God manifests himself before mortal beings. And because the appearance of this man is God’s way of revealing himself to people, it is also believed that whatever he utters during the dreams he appears in should be decidedly followed by the dreamers. 

The “Dream Surfer” theory is probably the most interesting theory involving the appearance of the same man in the dreams of many people. But while it promises the greatest and most amazing implications, it is also a theory with the lowest scientific credibility. According to this theory, “This Man” is a real person who happens to have the ability to enter the dreams of other people using specific yet unknown psychological skills. There are those who supposedly believe that the man who appears in their dreams looks exactly the same in real life. However, others, on the other hand, think that the man in the dreams looks entirely different from his real-life counterpart. There are also speculations that the man is part of an elaborate mental conditioning plan developed by a powerful corporation. 

There is also a scientific psycho-sociological theory which claims that the phenomenon arose casually but has since progressively spread among members of the public by imitation. This means that people who have read or heard about this phenomenon online or through other people who claims to have personally dreamt of the man have become so fascinated and involved with the phenomenon that they started seeing this man in their dreams as well. 

Another theory states that apparitions of “This Man” in dreams of people are purely casual. Ordinarily, people do not recall the exact appearance and faces of people they see in their dreams. And so, the image of “This Man” is supposedly an instrument which facilitates the recognition of an undefined image that have appeared during people’s dream states. 

“This Man” Is A Hoax

For years, the mysterious story about the same man visiting the dreams of people have spread across various online blogs, discussion forums and even social media communities, where lengthy conversations about the alleged phenomenon’s validity and debunking have ensued. 

And so, this leads us to ask a one simple and very important question: Is there really a strange man appearing in the dreams of unrelated people? As it turns out, we never really needed a special theory to explain the “This Man” phenomenon after all, because the whole thing was just one big hoax.

The website – ThisMan.org – is actually the creation of Italian sociologist and marketing strategist Andrea Natella. It was also revealed that Natella runs a company called Guerrilla Marketing, which stages “subversive hoaxes” and creates weird art projects that are mostly about pornography, politics and advertising. The site was also briefly acquired by horror movie production company Ghost House Pictures as part of the promotion for a planned film titled “This Man,” which was supposed to be directed by Bryan Bertino based on a screenplay he also penned. 

Regardless of the validity or falsity of this phenomenon, it cannot be ignored that the most-likely real reason “This Man” has gone viral as an internet story is that this fictional entity actually represents the image of “Every Man.” The Face of “This Man” is an amalgamation of many common facial features, which were probably added into the fake portrait showing the man’s face to rouse a sense of familiarity among the public. This myriad of common features may have been the reason why many people from all over the world thought “This Man” looked very familiar as if they had seen him before. And it is this familiarity in this fictional person’s face that has probably perpetuated the viral nature of “This Man.” 

Although the “This Man” phenomenon turned out to be just one of many false stories and urban myths that are found online and have gone viral among members of the global internet community, the way that it has piqued the people’s interest and the extent of its impact as a sensationalized, fabricated internet legend cannot be easily dismissed. Neither are the rest of us allowed to be so quick in putting down and ridiculing those who still continue to insist that “This Man” actually exists and that he has actually appeared in people’s dreams. Who knows? Maybe we just don’t have enough evidence to prove that “This Man” is real after all. 

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Sources:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5388286/why-are-thousands-of-people-dreaming-about-this-man
http://www.thisman.org/history.htm
http://www.thisman.org/theories.htm
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/have-you-ever-dreamed-of-this-man-111
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-man-ever-dream-this-man
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/we-got-hoaxed-about-that-this-man-dream-haunter-979
http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/ever-dream-this-man.html
http://www.andreanatella.it/
https://www.facebook.com/thisman.org

Six Mind Blowing Theories About Our Reality

Understanding reality is never as easy and as simple as we would like it to be. To question everything, especially our existence, has always been an integral part of our human nature. As children, our innate and endless curiosity constantly led us to wonder why things are how they are. When we got older, we still possess the same curious minds that we had in our youth, only the questions we ask ourselves, and other people have gotten a lot more complicated since then. For most people, the ultimate question that drives our existence is the search for the meaning of life. But beyond this question lies a vast subset of ones possibly even more difficult to answer.

Is our reality even real? Are we real? Are we alone in the universe? How did all this come to be? How will all of this end? For now, though we do not have definite answers to these questions, scientists and philosophers have formulated complex theories about reality as we know it as well as our existence. Some of them operate on the basic principles of common sense, but there those that have gone far and beyond what most people can grasp and even more so, willing to accept. The evidence and arguments presented for such theories are quite compelling, and efforts to fully understand them could lead to enormous ramifications that could break one’s sanity.

And so, here are six of the most mind-blowing theories about our reality that will make you question your entire existence and what the rest of the universe holds!

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1. Big Freeze / Great Glaciation Theory

Also referred to by some as “The Great Glaciation” or “Heat Death,” the “Big Freeze” is a plausible scientific theory on the possible end of the universe. This ending is theorized to be the direct consequence of an ever-expanding universe, which is proven by indications of an increasing rate of expansion in the regions farthest from Earth. Because of this, it is also a widely-accepted model about the ultimate fate of our universe.

According to this theory, the universe will slowly cool as it expands until it is no longer capable of sustaining life. The process itself is a lot more capable than that as this theory is founded on the idea that entropy – a principle of thermodynamics that measures the shift of all energy in the universe from a state of order to disorder – will eventually reach its “maximum value.” And should that happen, the heat in the universe will be distributed evenly to the point that there would be no usable energy or heat left, which means the mechanical motion within the universe will cease to exist. And because of this “heat death,” time becomes an endless void in which nothing ever happens.

2. Solipsism / “Nothing Exists Except Your Mind”

The philosophical theory of Solipsism states that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. Some may argue that this argument was specially made for narcissists for being ego-centric, but once you get past the notion that your mind is the center of the universe, this philosophical believe is actually pretty simple.

Solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside a person’s own mind is unsure, and so, the external worlds as well as other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. For the solipsist, it is not merely that he believes his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions there are, but rather, he attaches no meaning that there could be other thoughts, experiences, and emotions than his own.

For example, a true solipsist understands the word “pain” to mean his own pain. Therefore, he cannot conceive how the word is applied in any sense other than his exclusively egocentric understanding of it.

3. Presentism / “The Now and Nothing Else”

Philosophical presentism is the view that neither the future nor the past exists. The only events and objects which exist are those that exist in the present. So, the only things which exist now – right now – are actually real. According to Saint Augustine, the future and the past does not exist, as time cannot be both behind and ahead. Fyodor Shcherbatskoy, leading modern era scholar on Buddhist philosophy, wrote extensively on Buddhist presentism, saying: "Everything past is unreal, everything future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental... is unreal. Ultimately, real is only the present moment of physical efficiency.”

4. Eternalism / “Everything at Once”

Taking the opposite approach to presentism is eternalism. According to this theory, the past, present, future, the simple past, and continuous future are all happening right now. All points in time are equally real. This philosophical theory postulates that time actually has many layers which exist simultaneously. However, the layer seen by a particular observer depends on where he is standing.

This means, the dinosaurs, the World Wars, and Lady Gaga performing at the Super Bowl all exist at the same time but can only be seen from a certain point. And so, based on this theory, the future is not only deterministic, but free will is also merely an illusion.

5. Multiverse Theory & Fictional Realism

From science fiction to science fact, there is a proposal suggesting that there could be other universes aside from our own, where all the choices that a person makes are played out in alternate realities. These parallel worlds are said to be very similar to ours, but with only a few minor or major differences, and the number of these universes are infinite. One possible implication of parallel universes is the idea that there are infinite copies of us in infinite universes carrying out every possible version of existence.

One type of theory about parallel universes envisions countless bubble universes arising and disappearing. This means the beginning of our universe, the Big Bang, could just be the creation of one bubble in a sea of inflating universes, each eventually “popping” when unstable. A second theory is the Brane Multiverse, which is based on String Theory, and proposes our entire universe exists on a membrane floating in a higher dimension or “bulk”. In this bulk, are other membranes with their own universes. These universes interact with one another and, when they collide, the violence and energy produced are more than enough to produce a “big bang.” The membranes float near each other in bulk and, every few trillion years, attracted by some gravitational force, smash into each other. This repeated contact allegedly creates multiple or “cyclic” big bangs.

6. Simulation Theory / “The Matrix” Theory

The simulation hypothesis proposes that reality is, in fact, a simulation, and even most likely, a computer simulation. This theory postulates that due to the overwhelming likelihood of technological singularities occurring in the universe, it also likely that advanced civilizations – either aliens from a distant galaxy or humanity later on in the future – have created or will create simulations. And because the number of these simulations would be infinite, philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that it is very likely that we, right now, are actually living in a computer simulation.

The simulation theory bears similarity with the “Brain in the Vat” thought experiment, which is also just a modern and updated version of Rene Descartes’ Evil Demon thought experiment originated by Gilbert Harman. Common to many science fiction stories, a mad scientist or AI robot puts someone's brain in a jar and connects it to a supercomputer simulating a physical reality.

According to this thought experiment, the computer simulates reality, and the "disembodied" brain continues normal conscious experiences and feeling like in the real world. If this sounds eerily similar to “The Matrix” movies starring Keanu Reeves, that’s because the Matrix was based on this particular scenario.

We may never really know for certain if any of these theories provide the right explanation about our universe, our reality, and our existence. Nevertheless, these speculations and theories are telling of how intelligent and determined we are in finding the key that will unlock all the mysteries that plague our consciousness.

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Sources:

• http://listverse.com/2013/04/15/10-mind-blowing-theories-about-the-universe-and-reality/
• https://omni.media/creepy-mind-blowing-theories-about-the-universe
• http://elitedaily.com/envision/5-philosophical-theories-mind-blowing/1473123/
• http://www.oddee.com/item_98991.aspx

Big Freeze / Heat Death Theory

• https://www.universetoday.com/36917/big-freeze/
• https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_fate.html
• http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-will-universe-end
• http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_bigbang_bigcrunch.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#Big_Freeze_or_heat_death
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe

Solipsism

• http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/solipsism
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/solipsism
• http://www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

Presentism & Eternalism

• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#PreEteGroUniThe
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/presentism_(philosophy_of_time).htm
• http://www.samwoolfe.com/2013/05/presentism-and-eternalism-two.html

Multiverse Theory & Fictional Realism

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
• http://www.space.com/32728-parallel-universes.html
• http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-physicists-ever-prove-multiverse-real-180958813/
• https://societyofmodernastronomy.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/the-brane-multiverse/

Simulation Theory / “The Matrix” Theory / “Brain in the Jar”

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis