Thread: A theory about DCs

I entirely disagree with your theory. Brains do not work in that way, and they never will. The brain is much more complicated than you seem to think.

And as for dreams, scenarios which have never cropped up before in waking life can appear in dreams. This is because your subconciousness is as intellegent as the rest of your brain. It is fully capable of stimulating a realistic enviroment with realistic people and realistic dialogue because your imagination is good enough to do this. Ever since you were born your brain has taken in information, and so your subconciousness has plenty to base its dreams on. Your subconciousness can remember things that you didn't think you could.

Anyway, dreams do not follow a set pattern. Your brain can act erratically and produce unexpected things, it is not a simulation of waking life.

You are seriously underestimating how good your mind is at dreaming.

Originally Posted by Barns

I entirely disagree with your theory. Brains do not work in that way, and they never will. The brain is much more complicated than you seem to think.

I disagree with you here. Sometimes our brains do owrk that way. We don't have to think about walking, we do it automatically. A "walking program". Martial Arts students train themselves so that when under attack, their body will respond in a different way than basic instinct. "Switching programs" Whether these aspects make into our dreams as DC's, or into our dreams at all, is a different matter though.

I would guess that a great many such useful mini-programs are stored in our brains, ready for use. The simpler ones are probably for things such as “making tea”, “taking the bus”, or “getting dressed for work”. Slightly more complex programs might be “visiting Grandma on a Sunday afternoon”, or “dinner with the in-laws” – events that require certain patterns of behavior.

doesnt really work that way

This is kind of like Stephen Laberge's theory in Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, except he was explaining dreams in general not just DCs. Acording to the theory your dreams run on "scripts" your mind has on situations, and scripts will lead you to think of other scripts. Stephen's example was if you are in a dark street you might think of a mugging script and therefore someone will mug you. So it is possible that your DCs are running on different personality/conversational scripts which is kind of like what you are saying.

If what you are saying is true, it could be possible to ask DC's questions to help you learn more about yourself. I think a lot of times people are running on automatic. I know I am; I often have to remind myself to try and be more aware of what's going on--I get that "I drove here but I don't remember the trip at all" kind of feeling a lot.

Anyway, to find out things going on in your mind beneath the surface, questioning DC's might be a good way to find out. If you can find some that will give you a straight answer, that is.

I was thinking I might test out how much of what DC's say is your own conscious expectation, maybe by asking some really obvious questions that my mind would fill in if it is in control, like "What's my favorite color?" or something like that.

Originally Posted by aceboy

doesnt really work that way

Would you care to tell us how it DOES work?

Thanks, frostyelf, I looked into EWOLD and found a passage about "schemas", which are described as "building blocks of the mind", in Chapter 5. (I must have read that a while ago and forgotten about it".

The idea is that we do often run scripts, which define how we do things. So I think my point remains valid: I'm not saying I'm certain that DCs represent scripts that we have developed, I'm just saying that they seem to sometimes be behaving in a way that seems scripted, and therefore I wonder if there might be some relationship between our DCs and our scripts...

Moonbeam, have you ever asked one of your DCs to tell you about yourself?

Hey there,

I'm a little surprised by your surprise about how DCs can have complex conversations. Why does this require an explanation or a theorem? I mean, a writer can write down the most amazing dialogues between several people in a book or a play, a poet can write down great lines that move millions of people.

So why would the ability of a dreamcharacter to have a complex conversation surprise you? Surely, the writer and the poet too are just 'working alone'. Our mind simply has a great creative depth to it that we can tap in to. It seems quite natural and normal to me, and I fail to see what this has to do with behavioral and cognitive scripts.

Just my 2 cents,

-Redrivertears-

Good point, Redrivertears!

I guess what I find so surprising is the notion that the DC is talking to me as if he really had a mind of his own. I mean, it certainly doesn't feel like I'm telling him what to say - I'm "me" in my dream, and he's... well, who exactly IS he?

Last night in one of my lucids i was watching a football match up the football pitch (my brother was playing on one team) and shortly after becoming lucid he approached me and asked me what was the matter (perhaps he noticed i wasn't following the dream script) and i said i just realized i was dreaming and he said i thought so, can't recall anything after that annoyingly.

I don't know whether this was my dream guide, sub-conscious, or what but i do not believe it was a dream character. (just the way he was acting)

Originally Posted by three and four

Moonbeam, have you ever asked one of your DCs to tell you about yourself?

I'm working on that one now.