Living a another lifetime in a dream (a policeman dozens of years ago)

This morning I had a long dream where I was a policeman who lived maybe 70-100 years ago or so. (I’m not very good with times.) I need to mention that I was a white policeman, because this becomes important as the dream/story goes on.

At first there were mundane crimes to work on, but then there was a murder case, and the person who committed the murder was a non-white person. I noticed in myself (my character in the dream) and in others that there was prejudice in us, because we all thought to some extent, “This never happened when we were all white.” Of course it did happen, because there have been murders forever, but it was the first one we were exposed to.

When we caught the person, I told everyone, “We need to handle this properly. Remember to read him his Miranda Rights.”

When I said that, everyone looked at me like, “What are you talking about?”

So I said, “You know, ‘You have the right to be silent and so on.’” After a few moments of everyone staring at me, I realized that the time of this dream was before whatever time Miranda Rights came into being. (When I woke up, I looked this up and found it to be in 1966.)

But getting back to what I think the main point of the dream was, I think it was intended to make me feel racism. That it’s easy to say I’m not a racist, but once you live a life of being around all white people, and then a non-white person commits a crime in your neighborhood, you instantly have that “We didn’t have this problem before” feeling.

Again, it’s one think to think that, and another to live that through a long period of time, and AFAIK, this dream went on for nearly two hours on and off.

STNG and The Inner Light

Dreams like this always remind me of the Star Trek: Next Generation episode titled The Inner Light (here and here). Here’s a description of that episode:

In this episode, Captain Picard is struck unconscious by a probe and experiences an entire lifetime as Kamin, a member of the now-extinct Kataan civilization. Over the course of the episode, he lives as one of their people, forming relationships, raising a family, and coming to understand their way of life.

When the experience ends, he wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise, discovering that only minutes have passed in real time. The probe was sent to preserve the memory of the Kataan people, and Picard carries their legacy through the experience. It’s widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series.

I have long dreams like this several times every year, where when you wake up it’s hard to remember who you are, and they always seem like they are intended to teach me a lesson like this.