Thread: Doublethink, lucids and self-delusion: A summary

These are just some connections that might interest you guys. The common overlap of Doublethink, self delusion in general (although, they're pretty much synonyms) and lucid dreaming. First lets take a look at what doublethink is:

DoublethinkIf you want the one-liner, doublethink is "the act of simultaneously and fervently holding two mutually contradictory beliefs". Meaning you tell yourself one thing is true (and believe it) while at the same time knowing that the exact opposite is true.

Whats the relation to LDs? Well... pretty much everything to tell you the truth. To LD, you need to believe that the dream reality is true while still maintaining that the dream reality is indeed fake and created entirely by us.

To effectively use doublethink, one reality is generally chosen as the one that you "believe". This will be your dream reality. Then, you take ideas from the real reality and apply them whenever needed then "forget" they ever existed. Read the quotes on the wikipedia page linked above for this to make more sense. So, example...

You're in a dream and you're bull broke no money whatsoever. =( You have 2 options: 1. Pursue a course deemed logical by your dream logic in order to obtain money or 2. "Realize" it is all a dream and spawn the money. Lets look a at no. 2. Applying the fundamentals of doublethink, you reach over to reality, understand that its just a dream and you can simply make the money up then promptly "forget" that it's just a dream as soon as you have the money in order to preserve the illusion.

Not much more to say on the subject... I hope my random splatter of ideas up there comes together better then I think it probably does.... On to the next topic =P

Self-doubt and Self-delusion

In this section I want to focus on the following statements...

The realism of the dream is governed almost entirely based upon how well you can delude yourself.

and

The ability to become lucid implies the ability to doubt yourself.

Lets begin with the first one. It's pretty much the same thing that was talked about above. Good self-delusion makes really realistic dreams. Well, of course you're going to believe it more if you trick yourself into believing it more but this is an important concept to really think about. Doublethink is the main mode of application for this but... whats really going on?

I'll use pretty text drawings to explain

In real life, this can represent what you experience.

Experiences ----------> senses ----------> conscious mind ----------> reasoning core -----------> mental schemata

Over simplified (not as over-simplified as the next example is gonna be tho XD) but it shows it pretty accurately. You pick up experiences through your senses and it travels through your head to your "reasoning core" which attempts to determine if what you are seeing is real. To do this, it looks it up in your mental schemata. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of mental schemata, Billy has a good tut on the basics. The system works seamlessly and everything is A'OK.

Heres what happens in a dream...

Mental schemata --------> "senses" ---------> conscious mind -----------> reasoning core ---------> mental schemata

Now... does anybody see a problem with this? Essentially, your mental schemata feeds information to itself and thus tells you that everything matches, is A'OK and is real. The breakdown is: Your dreams are created through your mental schemata and are fed into what I can only think to describe as your "senses". From there, you treat it as you would normal input through the real senses. The "fatal flaw" being that everything is "true" because your mental schemata (or more loosely defined, whatever in your head that defines reality) both creates and checks reality according to the same precepts.

Example time again. Through the garbled and twisted sea of concepts (that I'm not even going to take a shot at trying to explain, let alone fully understand myself) in our schemata, we get a connection between pink and hamburgers. This is interpreted as a pink hamburger which we "see", is passed to our reasoning core which looks up for a connection between pink and hamburger and LO AND BEHOLD, It finds the same think from which the concept was created. The pink hamburger gets an A'OK by the reality checker and the dream logic is that pink hamburgers do indeed exist!

Huzzah, full explanation! Anybody left that I didn't lose along the way? Use this info how you will I guess... I think I had more to add in the ways of usage-wise but I forgots =/

Also, over, over simplification. I stripped it down to the bare bones and raped it a couple times to get it into something easily conveyed over the internet through words. Lets leave it at "some things aren't exactly accurate about that model".

It's really late so i'll do the second one quick-like..

The ability to become lucid implies the ability to doubt yourself. Whats the proof for this? Well, building on the above, mainly... A dream IS what you believe. Dream and what you believe are pretty much synonyms. Thus, to make yourself lucid, it is essentially the act of doubting yourself.

I think there was supposed to be alot more to that too but now I forgets =/ I think I've probably confused you guys enough anyway..

So... thoughts?

After reading 1984 I started trying to figure out when I used doublethink in my life, and eliminate it, but I never made the connection with Lucid Dreaming.

A logical and helpful application of Doublethink...hmmm

Good read, and interesting.

Nice theory.
I never thought of lucid dreaming like that

There is an english term entitled "willful suspension of disbelief". This is when you choose to, as it says, suspend your disbelief.

Such as when you watch a horror movie, and you don't believe in ghosts... yet for the sake of enjoying the film you allow yourself to believe in them for the duration of the show.

Spiderman was an awesome movie. Do I really believe someone could do all the stuff that he can? No. But I suspended that disbelief so that I could enjoy the movie. It just wouldn't have been entertaining had I been shaking my head and saying "That can't happen!" the entire time.

Everyone does it. And I believe it is the same thing you do while Lucid Dreaming.

Thoughts?

I'm quite interested by your posted opinion on doublethink and LDing as well. Thanks!

Now the big question is, do you think that this doublethink eliminates lucidity? If we doublethink too much, don't you think we'd become unlucid merely to preserve/enjoy the illusion?

Originally Posted by Einherjar

Spiderman was an awesome movie. Do I really believe someone could do all the stuff that he can? No. But I suspended that disbelief so that I could enjoy the movie. It just wouldn't have been entertaining had I been shaking my head and saying "That can't happen!" the entire time.

What do you mean "Spiderman isn't real?!"

So, your saying we should just doubt ourselves that we can't have a lucid dream and we will have a lucid dream? lol i'm confused.