Raw Vayeshev Thoughts

Today at Parsha Club we discussed a couple of semi-isolated points that I'm hoping will one day become the building blocks of an actual idea, but I'll share them here & see if any of you can help put together the puzzle.

• Note that Yosef's dreams are actually the two ends of his father Yaakov's dream - or that Yaakov's ladder is the bridge between Yosef's two dreams - one about the land and the other about the sky.  In a bizarre twist, about 12 hours after I shared this with my chavruta trying to pick his brain on the subject, he e-mailed me this article by Rabbi Schachter which quoted Rav Aharon Soloveitchik pointing this out and defending his brother, the Rav.  Baruch shkivanti, at least a bit.
• The two dreams also seem to almost parallel the metaphors that Hashem used to promise Avraham that he would grow to be a great nation - as numerous as the sand and the stars.  Again we see the ground and the constellation, but sand is not grain and Yosef's dream expanded to include the sun and moon too.
• Chani Dubin had an interesting and promising thought.  The original vision of the sand and stars were an egalitarian model - almost Korach-esque - of כל העדה כולם קדושים.  Yosef's dreams, in the first generation where this actually became relevant with multiple members of the covenant, illustrates that among the people there needs to be leadership.  This is a chiddush to the brothers, and a potentially offensive one.  Until now they may have thought that they would live as a nation of equals.  If so the dreams set off the chain of events where the brothers vying for the leadership they now know is out there make mistakes that end up doing great damage to themselves and others.
• This wouldn't explain the shift from sand to wheat, except for the logistical problem of having stalks of grain bow.
• My preliminary thought is a lot less ambitious.  Maybe Yosef's dreams took the general symbols of the previous ברכות and transformed them from empty symbolic objects like sand and stars into items of great practical utility like food (wheat), heat and light (the sun).  This ability to draw productivity from what had been mere theory or art is what has everyone else bowing to him.

I know that there isn't much here yet, but that's where you come in.  Thoughts?