Time to clarify once again !!! Everyone is insistent on putting things in black or white when in reality life is not like that. I have said on numerous occasions that people should not do negative things in every dream. I don’t. At least 89% (probably more) of my LD ‘s are positive experiences. However, I openly admit that I have, in a small number of my LD’s: blasted DC, sought forms of creative fictional revenge, and explored my darker thoughts. I will tell you that often felt much better afterwards. Like a controlled release. I continue to maintain that there is nothing wrong with this. I have always said that it is ok to (pick your negative action) but to balance them out with positive dreams as well.
Now I will repeat again that: If someone where to use all there LD ‘s to (insert negative action) that would probably not be good. Though I don’t think it would be as harmful as some here suggest. The bottom line is that in my opinion you should have positive LD ‘s but don not be afraid to explore other aspects of your self either.
I was actually just wandered onto the forum for the first time in a while and was going to post a topic on this, but I saw there was already a discussion… o.O
How can one be sure if dream characters aren’t alive? I mean, I’ve even heard of some religion where everything that happens in human existance is just a brief moment of a dream someone’s having under some kind of tree.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if you can really walk into others dreams and so on, then all dream characters are also just other dreamers, some less lucid than others.
And in my opinion, if in doubt if anything has any spark of life/intelligence, you err on the side of caution. I’m not willing to risk others lives on my perception if they’re alive or not.
However, my only real moral rules are: A version of the golden rule: that which is distasteful to yourself do not do onto others and defending any creature being made to do something against it’s will, although often using minimum force neccessary to stop the force.
Personally, I’m not that afraid of God’s judgement, assuming they do exist. However, I think this is basically a example of Gyges’ ring. Personally, I don’t want to be the kind of person who subverts others wills and harms them when I have omnipotence, or even more limited powers.
Now admittedly, I haven’t always followed this perfectly. A few fights in self defense, and a few mind control type things. However, this is usually when I’m not very lucid. Actually, one of the main points in becoming lucid to me would be so one could control ones actions.
I’ve been killing DCs, watching violent movies, played violent Video games since I was a tiny little kid. The human mind IS capable of separating reality from non reality.
You who worry a lot and are from America, remember that your country has more than 250 MILLION inhabitants. While it may seem that the world is going to hell because 100 people per year go bananas it equates to nothing if you divide it up.
Also, for goodness sakes, think back! In the middle ages people were crowding marketplaces to cheer for every hanging! And these were REAL things.
I mean, we have dream to thank in the end I guess. However powerful I can be in an LD I still get more enjoyement from eating dinner IRL! What does this mean? It means that the mind properly emphasises importance on what is real and what is not. Video games bring more enjoyement because of several factors, save your progress, bragging rights, consistency.
And the pleasure in GTA is not to kill in itself it’s to kill without consequence… I can feel the moralists squirming, let me explain. The greatest consequence that is lost is not risk of ‘getting caught’ or some such but rather that the NPC you just killed has no family, no friends… No one REAL cares. Anyone with a healthy upbringing will NOT go over some kind of edge however many violent games he/she plays.
I’ve been threatened with a knife and while it would have been nice to beat up the perp, loot his body and sell his equipment for 20 gold, you know what. I fucking trembled in fear!
What?! Hasn’t fighting hellspawn in my LDs for 10 years made me unafraid of knives?!?! prepostorous.
In our dreams, for DC’s, we are true GODS. And god doesn’t have to obey any rules.
And despite their (partial) free will, DC’s are parts of yourself. So killing them would be actually something like masochism
A human being must always obey the certain judgement of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.
A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgements according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. Everyone must avail himself of the means to form his conscience.
Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.
Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed.
Judgement from God is the final encounter with Christ.
As I’ve said before: in contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject - in this case the dreamer.
A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together.
One must judge the morality of human acts by considering everything NOT JUST THE INTENTION OR CIRCUMSTANCES. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object eg. murder.
One may not do evil so that good may result from it.
The definition you gave is of discernment, a different fish of kettle and is still related to the above!
I mean since DC’s are a part of your psyche, is your psyche real?
If DC’s are not real, then your psyche is not real and you are not real. But I know you are real , of course, unless you are an Eliza type program which I don’t think you are.
The ‘free will’ of DC’s is the subconscious if anything.
Right! I agree with you. We have different ideas, opinions, ideologies, beliefs, which is what makes us interesting.
We can’t change others’ opinions just like clicking fingers… nor should we pretend. Hey I even believe only God can touch a person’s heart to change the person’s belief/mind/etc…
I would think that this would only be the case if you:
Believed in a Christian God.
Believed everything in the bible was his literal word.
In which case, you wouldn’t mesh very well with modern society. However, those aren’t the only gods one can believe in, and neither do all Christians I know believe that everything in the bible is the literal word of god.
While I agree that it’s rather annoying when people treat their beliefs as absolute truth, I believe to some extent it’s neccessary.
I think when you come down to it, there’s no real way to tell what truth is. You can try to approach it logically, but you still have to base it on at least a few assumptions. So I would say all morals, ethics, ect are going to be based on assumptions.
Which would mean all moral questions are essentially arbitrary, as there’s no way to discern which assumptions are better without an assumption of what ‘better’ is.
Based on my assumptions, though, I think that at a very basic level, we wouldn’t be so cavalier about dream characters if they were equal to us in power. If they could harm and control us as easily as we could control and harm them.
Which would suggest to me that the only thing that’s making people do whatever they want in dreams is because there’s no repercussions.
And to extend this argument to the real world: from what I’ve read in Intro to Psych class, in studies on television violence it’s when there’s violence without repercussions on TV that the watchers become more violent.
I’m not sure if any one has mentioned this, but this topic is way to huge to read everything at work
I was reading about some ones salvia hallucinations where the salvia characters (DCs) told him that they were other people, and they only take on the form of DCs because this is what is familiar to him.
Along these lines I have experienced many DC encounters where this holds poisble. As Jeff has exclaimed many times, shared dreaming may be posible, because while in a dream state your are more receptive to different types of energy. I have also found that there are many DCs that you can’t control and others that you can. There are DCs that have intelligent thoughts and others who don’t. I am under the impression that the unintelligable lackeys are simply part of the dream scene. Your subconcious believes that there should be people there, so it puts them there. However if you are experiencing reception of some otherworldly waves these representations will also be worked into the dream scene, but wouldn’t be completely under your control. Perhaps you would be able to chaneg their forms, etc, but I have found that there are some DCs that have more control of my LDs than I do. They do not directly control things, but they are able to control the world the my subconcious, but their suggestions etc.
However even if DCs are posibly connections to living beings, they aren’t the living beings themselves and most likely cannot be harmed. As has been said over and over again, the only harm than can be done is to yourself by continuing to engage in self destructive behavior even in the dream world. Yes, dream sex is an addiction The thing is, the things you do in the Dream world can extent into the real world through your frame of mind and by creating subconcious expectations of situations.
However, I think the answer to the question do DC’s have rights is ultimately going to be based on either a religous or moral answer.
I would, however, argue that the consequences of acting as if they didn’t have rights when they do deserve them is much less horrible then the consequences of acting as if they do have rights when they don’t deserve them.
You can place this in either punishment terms(if they are people, God will hate me and I will go to hell, or I will have negative karma from their deaths or whatever) or altruistic terms(if they are people, they don’t deserve this to be done to them) and it works equally well.
Thus, if one follows either of these approachs, I believe one should act as if they did have rights, not neccessarily because they do, but to follow the safer/less nasty path. However, if neither of these apply to you, then I guess there’s nothing stopping you, although in that case I sure hope you don’t gain omnipotence in RL…
I have no quarrel with anyone who … “mistreats” their DCs, and I may even try it myself. In the future, I’ll probably be working off of the assumption that dealing with people/entities in a more positive way will result in a happier disposition— sort of like whether people decide to kill the monster that’s chasing them in LDs or make friends with him.
I’m an atheist, and I strongly believe dreams are no more than internal constructs that come from within your own mind and affect nothing but your own mind. I’ve never even heard of a reason to believe otherwise that I could take seriously to be blunt. But if anyone feels that killing DCs is wrong, I think there’s a pretty simple solution: don’t do it.
Also, a point I was wondering. If it’s evil to kill DCs, does that make you a good person for resurrecting DCs? I mean, it’s your dream, you can do whatever you want. Couldn’t you just go around to local graveyards and resurrect entire fields of people, or would that just make you even more evil, some kind of necromancer?
Ooh, interesting. I’m not sure. If this was RL I’d cite that there’s a problem with space to take a growing population already, but as far as I’m aware there’s no such problem in dream world.
I think this would depend on how you ressurect them to a certain extent. I mean, if they’re back to full life that’s one thing, but if they’re zombies which go around eating people’s brains, I’m not entirely sure it’s a good thing.
So I’d probably partially raise one’s spirit or something, (assuming they have them) and ask it if it wanted to be ressurected.
This just raises a further question to me, though: If you ressurect dream characters, is that truly the same dream character, or just a copy created like you’d create any other DC if you so wished and had practiced sufficently. Do DCs live beyond death, and if they do, do you have the power to make them return?
This wouldn’t neccessarily rely on if you belive they’re alive or not: Figments of you imagination could be wiped out, or they could just be sealed away.
We have tried several times to keep things on topic. Thank you. Perhaps your friendly reminder will keep things from getting off topic this time.
To state my position again since it (again) got lost in the OT religious arguments:
I believe that DC are not entities or beings. They are just images in your mind. All animals (humans, frogs, insects, etc.) have one thing in common which is free will. I am alive. I can choose: do I want to go on the internet today? Do I want to go outside and enjoy the beautiful weather we have? DC’s can not. They are completely at the dreamers mercy. Either consciously or subconsciously you control everything the DC does. You can create them out of thin air, alter them, turn one DC into another much like a sculptor molds clay. You can make them jump, dance laugh, cry at will. I beleive they are not alive. Since I believe they are just images then they have no “rights”because in my opinion they do not exist.
So do Dream Characters have rights ???
I guess it all comes down to what you believe. If you believe that your DC are entities and in some way alive then they have rights just like a real person. If you believe (like me) that they are just dreams and none of it is real then the DC does not have “rights”.
I would disagree with this argument. To me, that would imply that if you have the ability to control someones mind, that person does not really exist.
Now, mind control isn’t that easy, but still it’s not completely impossible. I mean, considering that the brain is made up of electric pulses and chemicals and so on, so it shouldn’t be completely impossible to alter to one’s will and actions on the fly.
This kind of technology may be a long way off, or civilization as we know it might not last long enough for it to come about, however, that still doesn’t make me believe that if you had that technology available to you they would cease to be a person.
Yes, however it is not just a mater of mind control. I believe the DC is completely dependent on you for its actions weather you do it consciously or unconsciously.
