Would you always behave ethically towards a real life DC in a shared LD ?

[VagalTone]

First i don´t know if it's possible to be sure it's a shared dream within the dream. Many people don´t believe in shared dreaming, but this question is for them too.

[JoannaB]

I believe that my ethics are with me no matter whether there are other people I interact with. Part of that is due to my religion: I believe that God is always with me, including in my dreams, so I am never really alone. Part of it is also that I am always there and my conscience, and I could not live with myself if I acted unethically. I also believe that thoughts can be unethical, so dreams can be as well, and thus I strive to correct my thinking and my dreams. I would like to dream in a way that I would not have reason to regret no matter what: whether it is a shared dream or those DCs are a part of me. I would not want to act unethically toward a part of me either, and if the DCs are just my imagination then they are a part of me. Now that is the ideal anyway. In practice, will I always live up to my own high standards? Well, I try, and probably fail at times, and then try again. And I have exceptions in that I daydream, and for example in one of my daydreams I killed an evil witch. But I would not call that unethical, even though I would consider it unethical to kill in real life, and would probably have trouble with it even if the other person was evil unless they like attacked my kids or something then I would have no remorse. Also sometimes I fudge in that if I am not being myself in a dream, then I feel less guilty over having done something unethical in that dream. Even though technically that makes no sense. Btw, I tend to feel guilty even if I do something unethical in a non-lucid dream, even though I know it cannot technically be my fault because I was not in control, but I cannot help feeling guilty.

[Darkmatters]

This thread begs the question - do you always behave ethically toward all real people in waking life?

[JoannaB]

This thread begs the question - do you always behave ethically toward all real people in waking life? Excellent question, Darkmatters. And the answer for me is no unfortunately, however, I try and I try to improve. I think the question in this thread is more along the lines of: does the fact that one is dreaming mean that one can act unethically toward DCs, and more so than toward real people in real life? And to some extent the answer is that yes, one can act more unethically with less guit, but I don't think the answer should be ethics does not apply and there is no guilt, at least for me.

[Darkmatters]

^ It's a bit more complicated than that, since it's a shared lucid dream. The DC you're interacting with is actually a person, a real living person and they feel what you do to them. Of course if you kill their DC it won't kill them - they'll still wake up, but it could traumatize them, and most certainly it would piss them off. So far in my lucids I've been quite ethical. In my highest level lucid I did grab a guy's head and squeeze as hard as I could with one of my fingers partly in his eye socket, but then he was one of three intruders who were crouching in my closet looking into my room and apparently frozen (motionless, not cold), and I knew they were up to no good. I just gave him a good head-squeeze in passing though, didn't stop to properly punish them or anything. Nothing unethical about giving back to someone who's wronged you. Ok wait - in my first lucid (since joining DV) I did tongue-probe Lady Gaga, without getting any consent from her first, but then the way she was sticking it out in front of me made it pretty clear that was not unwelcome. Hmmm.. I ought to go through and re-read all my lucids - I can't remember how ethical my behavior was in some of them. Ok, I did try to pinch the heads off of giant gorillas, but then they were an invading army preparing to take over the earth, so I think that was called for. And it didn't work. Not that that makes a difference to my intent. But if I knew it was a shared dream I'd definitely be sure to treat people right. Of course if somebody starts something, then I'm gonna finish it. Humanely if possible. ** Edit Ok, thinking more about it, it would depend. Do people feel pain inflicted on them n this shared dream, and does it last or is it just a clean slate when we all wake up? Because if we could kill each other without inflicting any real damage aside from maybe a little in-dream pain and anger, then hell yeah, that could be more fun than paintball!! But it would depend on how it feels to me when somebody does something to me - how bad I can feel pan, and whether it lasts after I wake up. I think we'd all have to learn the parameters of this shared dreaming reality and then determine our behavior. It would be new territory, we'd be able to (need to) experiment and determine what the consequences of our dream actions actually are, just as we had to learn that growing up as children, sometimes learning it the hard way. And how about the possibility of dream sex with someone that it might feel totally wrong to do in waking life, but since it's a dream you might both be like "aw screw it!" and just go at it like bunny rabbits. And maybe have an awesome ninja sword battle afterwards. Then the next night find somebody else. Think about it - no STDs in dream sex..

[JoannaB]

Lol. Ok, I admit I am of two minds now. Definitely very amused.

[Darkmatters]

Lol I *THINK* you wrote that before I added the last couple of sentences...

[JoannaB]

Lol I *THINK* you wrote that before I added the last couple of sentences... Most definitely. Given how I am definitely not comfortable with dream sex with others than my husband. Unless I am not being myself, and the others are not anyone I know in real life then ... probably not either, but maybe.

[Darkmatters]

Oh of course - if one of the people is married or committed that would change things. Think about it though - if you weren't married or in a relationship, would dream sex in a shared dream be wrong? I suppose it would for a Christian? Though I'm not sure how your denomination feels about premarital sex. And I have no idea how they feel about awesome shared-dream ninja sword battles...

[JoannaB]

I have no problem with ninja sword battles as long as it is between two consenting ninjas.

[Linkzelda]

The thread title itself that has this vibe of "shared dreaming" being probable is a bit deceptive. Shared dreaming itself clearly is debatable, and most of the time when I have no intention to "attempt" the presumptive ways of trying to do it, how I behave towards them is subjective. I think it's with any person that you like or dislike, you might want to vent frustration at the dream character so you don't have to worry about trying to attack or insult the person in waking life. Sometimes there's strong sexual feelings that we're too afraid to admit to the other person, so we can use LDing as an outlet for that. And if I'm good friends with that person, or respect them very much, then I would naturally just be civil towards them. Even so, I'm more of thinking that unless there's an intent to actually play out the presumptive roles of attempting a "shared dream" (keyword being presumptive), I would treat the dream character as a figment of my own imagination and whatever reason my subconscious has for putting them out there. And as for family, which might entice a person to feel it's really "them" in their supposed "shared LD" (probably because there's speculation that familial roots might fit that presumption more since they would share similar biological data, etc). I guess with things flying around like genetics or DNA code or whatever abstract comes to mind to try and make the "shared dream" plausible, people would presume if they dreamed about their relatives, it's more likely that it might fit the presumptive conditions of a "shared dream" if they talked to that person in waking life and things the other relative dreamed about were mostly the same. Especially when people try to contact the lives that have been passed already (and someone that knows the person who died more than the person looking for information on them in their dreams), there seems to be this borderline conflict of wanting the experience to be one where it really could be them, or at least the subconscious' way of making a near-perfect projection of the totality of that relative's character and existence. Anyway, for me, it's subjective, but currently, I have been letting dreams go on auto-pilot as if I were a person who never knew you could recall and try to find meaning in your dreams in the first place. But before (and hopefully soon), I treated dream characters (the ones who were attractive to me) as sentient beings, and slightly deluding myself into thinking they're separate and otherworldly beings happens occasionally. For me, I'm constantly attempting to connect with aspects of my mind and learning self-love and being responsible for how I react to anyone, whether it's dreaming life or waking life. So my general reaction and behavior will be to be civil and ethical unless convinced otherwise.

[Darkmatters]

Yeah, it's a shame we have to keep presuming to know what the OP intended, since he didn't explain it in his post and so far hasn't popped in here to elaborate. But I think the whole idea is it's a given that shared dreaming is real. Of course the next question is - what is the nature of that shared dream experience? Is a dreamer's entire self invested in his DC, so that he fully experiences whatever happens to it, or are the DCs just avatars? If the dream telepathy theory is correct then the DCs are just avatars, sort of like mmorpg characters, and the dreamer wouldn't experience any pain or trauma if the DC were to be tortured or killed or raped or whatever. Maybe just wake up a bit disturbed like after a bad dream or nightmare, and then be fine half an hour later. But then an interesting aspect of a thread like this is seeing what each person assumes - it says a lot about their personality and ethics.

[Linkzelda]

Yeah, it's a shame we have to keep presuming to know what the OP intended, since he didn't explain it in his post and so far hasn't popped in here to elaborate. But I think the whole idea is it's a given that shared dreaming is real. Of course the next question is - what is the nature of that shared dream experience? Is a dreamer's entire self invested in his DC, so that he fully experiences whatever happens to it, or are the DCs just avatars? If the dream telepathy theory is correct then the DCs are just avatars, sort of like mmorpg characters, and the dreamer wouldn't experience any pain or trauma if the DC were to be tortured or killed or raped or whatever. Maybe just wake up a bit disturbed like after a bad dream or nightmare, and then be fine half an hour later. But then an interesting aspect of a thread like this is seeing what each person assumes - it says a lot about their personality and ethics. Yeah, that's what I find very interesting as well, just when I think I have myself solved and defined, there's someone that makes me curious and realize I have to continue thinking there's more to know about consciousness and sense of self. The dream telepathy theory itself, to me personally, is whether or not the person can handle dreams potentially being just Apophenia (making meaning from almost meaningless data) or a Self-fulfilling prophecy. Since thought-energy and what have you can really shine in a lucid dream, presumably, if a person (or two people) can get into a state of heightened inward attention that leads to a higher state of suggestibility, there could be a chance that they would fit the conditions of the dream telepathy theory (and potentially the presumptive conditions of shared dreaming). But then things like trying to make accuracy out of incomplete information in those experiences, and just learning how to be in a suggestive state itself makes experimenting difficult. For me, the anecdotes with shared dreaming, even though they can't be plausible evidence, I don't deny that there were some moments myself where I felt I was having "dream telepathy" with someone else. But again, there's no way I could prove that or even come close to making the phenomenon probable, so I personally end up just keeping it in my mind for later speculation, or I just drop the ambition completely and it might slip back to my awareness once more. It's things like this that makes people want to give up so easily, and I think to make any progress is to have a communal effort (with critics and believers). Unfortunately the communal effort is hard to come by because some people are probably too ashamed or afraid to be embarrassed to others that they're "crazy" or "delusional" for trying to explore and take some risks into understanding theories like this, or they're too busy with life to pitch in. There's just not a system established by communities like Dream Views where people actually put aside their differences and feelings for each other to exchange thoughts that gradually creates some totality in making a theory like the Dream Telepathy theory probable instead of it mostly being filled with anecdotes. It's very hard to make a system like that, almost too idealistic because it's a social cluster focusing more on who's more crazy than the other rather than being open-minded. If the dream telepathy theory is correct then the DCs are just avatars, sort of like mmorpg characters, and the dreamer wouldn't experience any pain or trauma if the DC were to be tortured or killed or raped or whatever. Maybe just wake up a bit disturbed like after a bad dream or nightmare, and then be fine half an hour later. Yeah, I completely agree with this. I think for newcomers to lucid dreaming, it's easy for us to try and be thoughtful of dream characters and treating them as sentient beings equal to those in waking life. However, it's also easy for newcomers to be even more apathetic towards being civil and ethical to their DCs. Even experienced Lucid Dreamers can have conflicts with this, but I would presume the apathy or thoughtfulness is mapped out and interpreted decently by that time. Dream characters are so interesting because for them to really be called dream characters, they have to fit into the subjective and often conflicting aspects of dreaming. Filtering out the nonsense and things that just feel impractical leads to people having many perspectives on this that it's just mind-boggling. And if we talk about the Solipsism that's pretty much inevitable when someone becomes proficient in Lucid dreaming, that's another mental block that's difficult to come to personal resolve with. I'm sure every dreamer has reveled in the thought of Solipsism occasionally, even without them being aware of it, and that might lead them into those famous sets of "dream disorders" and such. There's just so many mental blocks to be aware of, and for a person to make a personal schema/schemata in coping with them can be long, tedious, and often easy to give up before we can actually make progress with abstract things like shared dreaming and dream telepathy. Gosh, way too much, I apologize for that, but that's some of my perspective on this.

[VagalTone]

Yeah, it's a shame we have to keep presuming to know what the OP intended, since he didn't explain it in his post and so far hasn't popped in here to elaborate. But I think the whole idea is it's a given that shared dreaming is real. I don´t know if shared dreaming is real, i am agnostic. I posed this question to myself and i thought it could generate a fertile discussion. I don´t want to narrow the question, but i am thinking about a normal dream body in a random dream plot.

[Darkmatters]

I didn't mean it's a given that you personally believe shared dreaming is real - I just meant that for purposes of answering the question it's a given - in other words it's a thought experiment that begins with the assumption. I can see why you'd want to leave it open as to the nature of shared dreaming - but I can also see that a lot of people might think it's too open-ended and just not respond. One thing I want to respond to - Joanna said earlier that she feels guilty for things she does even in totally non-lucid dreams. I can understand that if you're a person who suffers from an overdeveloped sense of guilt, but I consider things I do in non-lucids to actually be things that happened to me. I wasn't making decisions - it was just part of the random dream schema. I mean, I have woken feeling guilty before, like when I was about 13 and dreamed I was jumping off the railroad-tie retaining wall in the back yard and landed on some guy who was laying there in a sleeping bag and I felt his ribs crunch and he started moaning piteously, then I was horrified and though "Oh my god - I've screwed him up totally! The most humane thing would be to kill him off" so I jumped up and down on his chest as hard as I could and totally crushed his ribcage, but it just hurt him worse and he screamed "Oh god STOP!!! Why are you doing this to me??!!" Yeah, I woke feeling terrible and wondering if that dream said something about me for a long time. Now of course I know better. For instance I know terrible dreams like this often thrust us into bad situations just to run a diagnostic check on the alarm system - make sure the adrenaline flows when it's supposed to etc, just to keep us primed for when emergency strikes. Wish I would have known that then!

[JoannaB]

Sometimes I consider the post dream analysis to be part of the whole experience, and if I was not lucid then no I cannot really have been guilty, though I will feel guilty of course (grew up Roman Catholic), but my more rational part of me realizes that if the dream was not lucid then I could not help it. However, in that case I consider that the ethics comes in during the analysis: if I had an unethical dream, and do not feel uneasy about it after the fact, then that's an issue. (So if i am content but should not be that is worse then if i am uneasy but should not be.) So those kinds of dreams are a test of my ethics, and I self-evaluate my own reaction to them to see whether my moral values are as I think they ought to be, and whether I approve of my own initial reaction to the dream I recalled, or whether I think that I am too blasé about it. I am the kind of person who questions myself, and then questions my questioning, and then reprimands myself for questioning myself too much, and don't be ridiculous Joanna that was just a dream!