In dreams begin responsibility

From some academic website:

"An old proverb, quoted by the poet WB Yeats, insists that 'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities'. This lovely if somewhat demanding line reflects at once the poetry of Yeats, the psychology of Freud, and the lyrical prose of American writer Delmore Schwartz. All three have focused attention on the work of creativity in its social and aesthetic senses, and all three have offered the possibility that the dream world that is the space of art may afford the possibility of refracting the 'state of things', so that those 'things' are seen differently, different stories told, and different truths posited."

I thought about this quote after watching Linklater's "Waking Life" which is a long meditation on dreams, reality, and dreamers. Bob never got an answer when he asked what it meant. I didn't even try offering an answer at the time, not even a bullshit answer I didn't really believe. Obviously my mental capacity was debilitated at altitude.

One could easily intrepret it in the context of art and creativity, as the author above does. But I think it can be viewed more broadly--in terms of freedom. Dreams take us out of reality, the world of logic and rules. Dreamers free themselves from the world of logic and rules. They think and live outside the box. In the known world, there are expected forms of behavior determined by laws, logic, and social conventions. The only responsibility is to follow those rules. Once you decide to step outside that world, to dream of something other than what already is, then true personal responsility begins, because you are no longer bound by the accepted rules. You are then, to quote another author, beyond "good and evil". That's not to say amoral. You're just not living by the conventional definitions of good and evil. If you're truly free, all sense of responsibility arises from within and not imposed on you. Buckminster Fuller was a dreamer. Da Vinci and Che Guevera were dreamers. So was Ted Kazcynski.