Semiotic Diagnostics of the Trajectory Splitting between a Dream of the Past and Dream of the Future

Abstract

All areas of humanitarian and social knowledge include the study of the interactions between the individual, society and culture. Such an interaction is considered in the article through the prism of the phenomenon of a dream. In society, among the forces are acting there, a collective dream has a special power. In culture, the collective dream creates two forms: myth (dream of the past) and utopia (dream of the future). The measure of adherence to the forms of the collective dream and/or the degree of independent interpretation of the symbolism of myth and utopia becomes a characteristic of the individual. The proposed perspective is justified by the fact that the trajectories of the collective dream symbolism translation are visualised by the sociocultural dynamics model. The model combines ideas of the semiotic mechanism of culture (Ju. Lotman, B. Uspensky) and the basic stages of information processes. The distribution of information characteristics across the stages of sociocultural dynamics, firstly, reveals the trajectories of a dream transformation. Secondly, it opens up methodological possibilities of verifying the study results for the role and place of the “dreaming subject” obscured by the “big processes” of the history of culture.