Thread: Is it ethical to hurt your DCs?

Originally Posted by sivason

I will just offer a few simple questions. Do you wish to be a calm spiritual person? Do you really find violent video game dreams more entertaining then any other dream setting? What do you feel you get out of violent fantasies?

If you have little concern for developing into a remarkable and spiritual person, then go crazy and do what ever occurs to you. I may find it sad, but to each their own. What can it hurt other than your own sense of self? I personally do not want to be a person who thrills at violence more than say flying or controlling a storm.
I may suggest that context can make a huge difference! In one dream maybe you murder everyone at your school and in another you break inti a pirate hide out in Somalia and free the poor hostages. I think the second could be thrilling and involve killing a blowing things up without meaning much. So context matters.

This is a great post! However, I've had very violent dream characters in my dreams, and it wasn't because of anything that *I* did. Even last night, I remember someone beating a helpless young man, and I stood my guard -- prepared to defend myself. Typical of me in real life; I recognize an injustice where I see it, and I will defend myself if I have to.

But the dream character brought the violence to me. I wasn't searching for violence.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

This is a great post! However, I've had very violent dream characters in my dreams, and it wasn't because of anything that *I* did. Even last night, I remember someone beating a helpless young man, and I stood my guard -- prepared to defend myself. Typical of me in real life; I recognize an injustice where I see it, and I will defend myself if I have to.

But the dream character brought the violence to me. I wasn't searching for violence.

But if your dream characters bring stuff like that to u, doesn't that mean that deep inside u want it to happen?
Found this on the internet, it has nothing to do with dreams. But i agree that in the end we all have a killer instinct and sometimes it may come in our dreams in a strange way. Maybe not us, but just other dream characters can show u what we really can do. But it's your actions that makes the person u are today, but i don't think anybody in this world is truly a 'pure' person. We are all animals in the end.

I think the reason we are so violent is because during the millions of years we evolved to become homo sapiens we had to kill prey, preditor, or one another. I think that this killer instinct is with us for good in our genes. In the modern age a majority of us prefer peace, perhaps you can argue this, but that killer instinct is always there just beneath the surface.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

This is a great post! However, I've had very violent dream characters in my dreams, and it wasn't because of anything that *I* did. Even last night, I remember someone beating a helpless young man, and I stood my guard -- prepared to defend myself. Typical of me in real life; I recognize an injustice where I see it, and I will defend myself if I have to.

But the dream character brought the violence to me. I wasn't searching for violence.

Well in your case you are defending yourself or another, so the context issue is taken care of. Dreams of standing up for yourself or being heroic are not phsycologically the same as violent fantacies. I assume that you may still desire to have fewer of these dreams given a choice, but the thing it is revieling about your nature may be an honest desire to become strong enough to not be afraid. Here is all I would suggest as I do not find your dream disturbing in general due to the context. That is, you have many types of dream control you will learn to play with. Here is a useful power "turn off DC' where you use a jedi type jesture and the DC freezes and no longer can continue what it was doing. You can also use attacks that spare gorey results yet are effective. A non-lethal lightning that leaves them smoking, but still twitching for example lets you combat evil with out the need to experience bloody violence.
Other dream control options exist that may be good ways to deal with dreams of being a defender. You can learn to 'believe' a DC has only limited power. With you playing a super hero and the DC funny and pathetic there is no need to deal lethal bloody attacks. Then you could pick them up with 'the force' and shake them unconcious and so on, or fly away, telport them to a room neck deep in dirty diapers or what ever yyou find entertaining.

Originally Posted by Mindraker

This is a great post! However, I've had very violent dream characters in my dreams, and it wasn't because of anything that *I* did. Even last night, I remember someone beating a helpless young man, and I stood my guard -- prepared to defend myself. Typical of me in real life; I recognize an injustice where I see it, and I will defend myself if I have to. But the dream character brought the violence to me. I wasn't searching for violence.

Mindraker, I think what we're talking about here is choosing to do violence to DC's during LD's.

No, I think Sivason's excellent post somewhere above relates to dreamers who choose to kill or do other very bad things to their DC's that they wouldn't dare do -- or even think about -- in waking life. If you are not lucid, there's really nothing you can do, or blame yourself about, when violence ensues ... though it would be very cool if your DC "You" did the right thing too (as yours seemed to), because it reflects well on the dreamer!

To ignore your sense of morality and your sense of Self to find joy in hurting others is never, I think, a good thing. Also, you may be able to convince yourself that DC's are not real and thus can be tortured, raped, killed, etc, no-harm-no-foul, but in truth all those DC's are reflections of you; projections of your own dreaming mind. All the pain you bring upon them is pain brought upon yourself -- and a part of you will remember that.

Somewhere else up there Ekyu mentioned the killer instinct ... isn't a LD the perfect opportunity for we learning and growing humans test, and prove, our ability to rise above instinct? I think so.

I was just pointing out that we are not perfect beings, and i agree that lucid dreaming shouldn't be about killing or hurting other people for fun. There are far more intresting stuff to do. But u also need to look it from my point of view on this matter, is it really that hard to beleve that some people just enjoy being a 'bad' guy once in a while in there dreams? I don't think it's that strange..

Is it wrong? That's for themself to decide, it doesn't effect anybody else but them.
We don't have any right to judge people in situations like this.

Originally Posted by Ekyu

I was just pointing out that we are not perfect beings, and i agree that lucid dreaming shouldn't be about killing or hurting other people for fun. There are far more intresting stuff to do. But u also need to look it from my point of view on this matter, is it really that hard to believe that some people just enjoy being a 'bad' guy once in a while in there dreams? I don't think it's that strange...

Sadly, it's not strange at all. I was actually not disagreeing with you, Ekyu; your point is more than sound. I was mentioning only that LD'ing could be a tool for rising above mindless instinct.

Is it wrong? That's for themself to decide, it doesn't effect anybody else but them. We don't have any right to judge people in situations like this.

Perhaps not a right to judge (people's dreams are their own worlds, after all), but maybe an obligation to look into the nature of doing harm to DC's, and indirectly our selves, and using the process of discussing things like this to raise warning flags to folks who are currently convincing themselves that it is okay to become a sociopath in their dreams.

I do agree that u shouldn't go sociopath in ur dreams, but the question is where do u draw the line? When are u being a sociopath? stuff like torture is pretty obvious, but i was talking more about the 'gray' zone if u understand what i mean? Is being a demon in ur dreams and blowing random stuff up, does this make u a sociopath? Is stuff like that really harmfull for u? I just think it depends person on person.

I think we agree with each other, but it's just where is the line where it becomes wrong?