The meaning of dreams.
Athough I claim no expertise in this area, I am willing to venture a few thoughts on this subject:
In the next 10 to 15 years we will have a world wide disaster that will collapse our normal economic system. There will be no electrical power from the power grid. No gasoline. Most factories will be shutdown. It will only last for 8 to 10 months before everything is back up again. It was/ or will be global. The third world countries will fare better than highly industrialized ones.
<i><b>Speculation by Arturo:</b> It has occured to me that many people have a subconscious fear of the future. The meaning of such a collapse to these people would be a total disruption of their everyday lives which they comfortably live in, at present. The fear factor should be more pronounced in people who have tendency to jump to conclusions, or believe the worst <b>(Y2K fears for instance)</b>. This fear factor also may well appear in people who are actually quite self-sufficient (the entrepreneur, who refuses to put his future in the hands of an employer).</i>
The 10-15 year time period that you mention seems to be rather universal among people who are living in developed countries or among people who have aspirations of greater future accomplishments. High School and College graduates often ponder a future which is along the 10-15 year period. <b>To me, this is long term fear (or concern) that people have in regard to their total life long accomplishments</b>. I have noted however, that this concern for the future is less pronounced among the very successful. I can only speculate that these very successful people expend more of their time making their dreams happen, and thus do not dwell on the possible failures, as does the rest.
That many people recount their dreams from a child's perspective would seem to me that these people may be reacting to possible future fears from an emotional level of helplessness that they similarly experienced in their childhood. In other words, an adult who recounts fears of such a future, from a childs perspective, simply may not have had the same kind of emotional reaction since (s)he was (x) years old.
Fear of the future is a driving instinct within us all. I believe that it is one of those things that separates us from animals. Fear is the great motivator. Those who have such dreams will also have a deeper concern for the well being of the human race, although they may not express it in ways that most of us can see. Often I have been aquainted with persons who outwardly seem to have nothing but contempt for everything and everyone. But as one comes to know such a person, he finds that this is an act, or a smokescreen to cover the persons' true feelings about the world around him.
In my lifetime, I have noted that my dreams often reflect my emotional state at the time. Example: I recently had a dream that was very pessimistic in regard to someone that I know. Although I hadn't seen this person in quite a while (or even thought of this person), my subconscious put together a dream, with such characters of my past, to form a dream that expressed my obviously pessimistic viewpoint of recent weeks. Upon waking and considering this dream, I came to realize that I <b>had</b> actually become more pessimistic recently, without realizing it at all!
I believe that dreams are a way for the more primal parts of the human mind to interact in a positive way, to subconsciously guide and warn us of those things that we are not consciously aware of.