Lucid Dreaming? Sociopathic Dreaming

[jamous]

I keep seeing this thread about ways of murdering dream characters. You know, I believe there is no solid evidence that there are conscious minds outside of my own mind. Correct me if I'm wrong. Because you only experience the universe wholly through your eyes, right? But it goes without saying then that there is no proof to me that you guys aren't conscious and percieving the universe as I am. So, what's to say that when you fall asleep at night the DC's aren't conscious? Because we don't consistantly fall into the same, cohesive world every night? We don't have a body in our dreams, and we don't have senses. We subconscioulsy build a face or or perceivable environment in our dreams based on our waking world, which is preceived with physical senses. Who knows what a dream would be without this mask. Maybe we do enter in to a consistant plane of energy or alternate reality every night and the people we see are in fact beings, which we asign faces to. There are many reasons why we don't believe that dream characters are conscious beings, I see that, but ultimately we have as much solid evidence of "RL" characters being conscious as we do with dream characters, which is nill. So how can we go around murdering and raping in our sleep? With this, I believe in dreaming ethically. Anybody agree? Disagree?

[Oneironaut Zero]

I definitely wouldn't say that the evidence is the same (being nil) but this is a reasonable point that's been brought up a few times. I would argue, though, that the nonsensical way that DC's can act, and the things that they can do (in the terms of them living in a concrete, physical reality) is evidence to the contrary. In dreams, we (the dreamers) can morph, can teleport, can even split into multiple versions of ourselves that we perceive through and "experience" simultaneously. These kinds of actions (in relation to the physical reality that we experience while awake) can only be done in a dream (or otherwise "immaterial") realm. Likewise, our DC's can also do the same things. Just the other night I had a lucid dream where I was on a mission to do something, and a DC representation of a friend of mine pulled up in my drive-way to visit. I closed the door after seeing him pull up and went back in the house, because I didn't feel like dealing with another DC that might distract me from my task. Then, as I was walking through the house, I thought "Well, since he's just a DC, there is no reason to believe that my closing the door on him would keep him out of my house" and just as I came to that realization, the same DC that I'd closed out of my house walks out of my bathroom, like "Hey, what's up man?! How's it going?!" If this was another conscious entity, he exists in an immaterial realm where such things are possible, and "killing him" would, mostly likely, (and often does) result in the same in the same thing that happens when we die in dreams: If the DC is another person's consciousness in a dream world, he would wake up. Or, he would respawn in another place, or simply come back to life right where he fell. I also had a dream where my ex attacked me with one of my swords. I grabbed another sword and defended myself. Then, I got the upper-hand, and ended up chopping her head off (this was non-lucid, by the way). After a while, the cops came, and I was about to get arrested for murder. The decapitated head of my ex then looks up and says some smart-ass comment to me, got up and put her head back on. Completely freaked the cop out and it was fuckin hilarious. Hahaha. And I had a dream just last night (that I haven't put in my DV Journal yet) that I killed Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th...again. Haha. But he just kept disappearing and reappearing and trying to attack me. So, no, off the bat, I would say there is much more evidence to the notion that these characters are either completely imaginary or, somehow, immortal.

[Kromoh]

I would say I treat dreams with mild ethics. I don't go down ths street murdering anyone I see, as they are also part of myself. But that is only valid to somehow close DCs. I won't mind blowing things up if I'm stressed and in need of freedom. I sometimes blow up things and it seems no DC was ever hurt. When I do kill one, they never even notice it. But if a DC ever asked me not to hurt him/her, I wouldn't.

[Abra]

"I would argue, though, that the nonsensical way that DC's can act, and the things that they can do (in the terms of them living in a concrete, physical reality) is evidence to the contrary." Of course... What if these characters are not lucid themselves? Thus, they act just as irrational as we do in our own non-lucid states. I like to treat DCs as beings, even if I know they are n... Odd. I first typed up "even if I think they are not," when I wanted to say "know." What a peculiar slip. Anyway, I find it much more rewarding to treat dream characters with respect. This adds great depth to the dream, and makes it much more meaningful. When I am lucid, I intuitively share my lucidity to my dream characters. How realistic and rewarding would it be to walk around a crowd of empty shells? No, I want people/creatures that would interact in a logical way. I want them to act how I'd expect them to act if it were real life. It makes the dream feel so much more meaningful that way. I mean, sure, some people treat their dreams as some type of masturbation... Really, sex isn't all that great! Why waste the gift of lucidity on a crude, instinctual fantasy? If all one does in a lucid is try to screw/kill, I doubt they deserve to be lucid in the first place. A total waste of consciousness, if you ask me. So for me, I don't kill/rape dream characters for ethics necessarily (unless I put on the facade that there's such a thing as 'dream ethics'), but instead because it drastically heightens the worth and vividness of the experience.

[jamous]

My point is that the only absolute proof that there are conscious operators behind the characters of our reality would be to literally get inside their heads, which we generally think to be impossible. Right? And we can't get inside a dc's mind either of course, we just assume they don't exist, based souly on the notion that dreams are completrly in our heads. In our dreams, the rules are absurd, so we believe--in comparison to real life--that dreams are not relevant realities. But what we see, hear, and feel (which is what we base our opinion of the dream's cohesiveness and validity off of) is just a face we create for the dream, because we don't actually sense (see, hear, feel, etc.) anything at all considering we don't have a body with eyes or ears or anything. The abstract dimmension we call a dream is completely existent, just as any thought exists, we just assume that since it is in fact abstract that the beings don't exist. But what's to say that this "real life" isn't abstract too?

[Oneironaut Zero]

Again, I disagree. (Not entirely, because there is always the uncertainty principle, but...) For example: We had a "Lucid Task" a while back that was to control a DC's mind. Also, people often have dreams (both lucid and not) to where their own perspectives switch to and from different DC's or (like I said) assume the perspective of multiple DC's at once. Vex Kitten just had one where she fought another version of herself, and her perspective switched back and forth between the two of them, multiple times during the fight. If these were conscious beings, what does that suggest? That another person can, spontaneously, jump in and out of their mind, and assume their consciousness? Where, then, would their consciousness go? Would they switch into the consciousness of the person that jumped into theirs? Does any of this seem plausible unless in an immaterial world? What, then, would "dying" really do, since there is really no body to "kill?" And, trust me, I'm pretty familiar with the whole "this world may not be material" concept (Check out the book The Holographic Universe or any background on physicist David Bohm if you'd like to read more about it. Really fascinating stuff, when you read about the scientific plausibility of it), but if none of this is material, then "dying" here is probably just as abstract as the dream world, in the grand scheme of it all. None of us really know what happens on the other side (if there is another side) but I do know that if I cut someone's head off, they are not going to put it back on, and assume the same consciousness, in this world. With that being said, as far as dreaming ethically, I do - for the most part. Even in lucid dreams, I really only attack those that are attacking me first (except for the rare time when I just feel like being a nuisance), and I've got plenty of malicious DC's to keep me occupied. I've saved children from gunmen, even while knowing it's a dream, and I often treat many of my DC's as if they were real people. I do agree that this is something that I enjoy doing and it helps heighten the experience. But, do I believe it is a matter of "sparing other conscious entities?" Not really. I believe there is, as of now, enough evidence to believe that that's not the case.

[jamous]

For example: We had a "Lucid Task" a while back that was to control a DC's mind. Also, people often have dreams (both lucid and not) to where their own perspectives switch to and from different DC's or (like I said) assume the perspective of multiple DC's at once. very good point. Now I'm gonna have to put more thought into this. For now I guess I'll remain ethical even in dreaming, because who knows?

[Abra]

Wouldn't it be neat if, when we died, we could only 'live' through dreams? A DC told me something like that once... But it'd be super freaky if dream characters were actually a newly discovered type of life form, feeding off of our illusions and providing us with stress relief and the capacity for conscious thought. But then, man intervenes with his research, and mutates this symbiotic cycle... That would make a killer story, eh? One more thing I wish to explain (I approached this thread in a contemplative state, and want to clear up my views): Occam's Razor. Sure, there could be conscious entities entering our head at the time of dreaming, or our consciousness floating to a separate plane or whatever. And sure, perhaps these conscious entities have feelings, and are immortal, and can regenerate themselves, and remember us. Or they are projections of people created by our minds, acting out logically because we expect them to. Occam's razor says it's the second, simpler one. We kill a DC, we expect them to groan in agony, and the crowd to be frightened. They do. What else are they supposed to be? Happy? In love? No, that wouldn't make sense at all. And again, the theoretical side of me speaks: Perhaps, instead of them being separate entities, they show us things. They show us how we'd like to feel, or how we know how to feel, or do, or say, in a given situation. That's what they do, so that is what we may learn from them.