Morality in Lucid Dreaming.

Hmmm, interesting topic. Personally, I think I would like to use LD to be the best person I could be. To practise things which I can find difficult and hope that they can translate to RL. But then again lots of people want different things from LD, like adventure, power etc.
I’m not really convinced that violent LDs would really help someone with anger management issues, wouldn’t it just indulge them?

I have simply made the decision to be a good guy in my dreamworld.
I don’t think that its possible DC’s could be more than our imagination, nor do I think that suppressing violent thoughts could be harmful.
I just think if you act those thoughts out it could condition your mind over time, in the same way that violent video-games would desensitize a 7 year old.
Those are my thoughts on the subject anyway.

I would be interested to see if they would die or not.
But however I think it is ok to be harmfull to a DC in a ld because you know they are not real and are not hurting anyone, and to know that you would not do it in real life. I think that most people have people they hate, however they most act responsibly in real life and keep away from them. However in a ld as long as you know it isn’t real. I have just realised it might be a good way to relieve stress.

I would never bomb, chainsaw, or spread Squaids in real life,
nor I would do that in dreams.
I mean, whats the fun of that? Id like to treat DC`s just like in WL.

EDIT Mwah, except if they try to kill me and try to hurt me like that fat boy did last night, I got stuck with an angry mother in my LD. xD

if you wanted to kill a DC for eg. its probably healthy, if thats how your ID feels in the dream than its good to get that out if there’s no danger.

well yea this argument has good points for both sides
it could be ok becaue as lsbf1 said, you know you wont be doing this is RL, and its ok to blow of some steam, but it could be bad as it indulges violence and I read a topic somewhere that after this one guy abused his DCs they stopped showing up and it was really hard to find one. Perhaps they do have a personality. I personally dont feel the need to kill people in my dreams randomly, or cut them into little pieces with chainsaws, but in my opinion, anyone who does shouldnt, as they will have problems finding DCs later cause they will be scared of you and will be hiding

The alternate explanation to that would be his expectation of their reaction caused this to happen. This would make your warning a self-fulfilling warning. :razz:

I would think that it would be also dependent on the types of situations in one’s Lucid Dreams that would help determine whether one’s actions are within moral bounds or are morally excusable. This also depends on what the dreamer believes is moral or not. Everyone’s got their own way of looking at things.
While it may be socially wrong and just downright menacing to go on a rampage in some little village, killing people and eating puppies or some other weird thing, getting thrown into a war may require that you kill for the sake of defending yourself and bringing an end to the conflict.
I’ve seen many wars in my Lucid Dreams, but as I’ve stated in quite a few of my dream accounts, I very much dislike war and violence.
Violence can be borne out of many reasons and circumstances.
Some people do it for the hell of it.
Some do it to relieve frustration. (Perpetual Lucidity has a good point. It could be used as a form of constructive therapy, I think.)
Some find it fun.
Some want to know what its like.
Some do it because they are defending themselves from a threatening entity in their dreams. (I know I often have to defend myself from many things that want to eat me or shoot me just because I fell from the sky!)
Some do it because the type of situation calls for it. (Wars, for example)
Some do it because that situation doesn’t give them any other choice. (Again, Wars, especially if the other side refuses diplomacy.)
Yes, power can draw out a person’s character–but if that person is not seeking that power or is consciously preventing oneself from exercising that power to its fullness, a certain judgment cannot be made, I wouldn’t think.
And besides–it’s in a dream, I’m sure it’s different when one exercises dream powers and when one exercises the power of… say a corrupt CEO in real life… unless Donald Trump somehow goes corporate-aggro-rage AND starts throwing fireballs out his window, well… then it’s a case of both dream powers and corporate rage.
Can this really affect how somebody thinks in their waking life? I think it only does if that person allows it to affect them in such a way.

I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with acting mean, cruel, or evil in a dream. It’s not real, and no actual harm as being done.

BUT, if you obtain real pleasure out of acting this way, it certainly says something about your character. Being mean to a DC feels quite alot like being mean to a person IRL.

Also, I believe that if you make a habit of consistently over controlling, bullying, mistreating, etc. DC’s that it will start to carry over negatively into your life. It’s easy to get into a certain frame of mind in LD’s and have that start to carry over the the waking world. If every time a DC aggravates you you use telekinesis and smash him against a wall; you’ll start to develop unrealistic expectations of how you can deal with people in real life.

Basically, I don’t think you should make a habit of being morally corrupt in dreams.

I think this question is on the same level as whether video games encourage people to be immortal or violent. In video games, the NPCs are generally not viewed as people. They are expendable and in many cases, it is expected that the player is going to kill them. That may be the point of the whole thing. So it is any more moral or immoral to kill an DC?

In my case, I wouldn’t kill a DC. If I did, I’d want to learn more about them first. As it is, I’m have weird ethical discussions with myself/my DCs when I am either lucid or near lucidity. So if I did kill a DC, it’d be turned into a lesson. It wouldn’t be purposeless amusement. In that case, my mind would be guiding itself through some sort of useful exercise, so I don’t think it would be immoral in any way.

Personally, I think that the fact DC are part of your SC probably makes hurting them more immoral that hurting a game character. Especially if you believe that dreams can be interpreted and reveal hidden truths about yourself.

I disagree on the basis that most generic DC’s are essentially simulations run by your mind. To hurt them is no different that cutting down a tree or breaking a wall in your dream. While some characters aer specific parts of your unconscious mind taking a form you can understand, I don’t think all are like that.

Having said that, I could never bring myself to really hurt a DC unless they did something to me first. I guess it’s just who I am.

I personally think that it is immoral to kill DCs just for fun in LDs. After all, DCs in your dream have their own personalities, and possibly have their own thoughts, so killing them would be much like killing someone in RL. I would never hurt a DC unless they happened to attack me, and maybe not even then. (I would probably just teleport out of there)

Never innocents. If I were to harm a DC, it would be a character that I specifically created as an enemy, such as a serial killer or a group of hostile aliens, or something along the lines of that. I wouldn’t go on a mass killing spree, though.

I think that if you’re smart enough not to do the same thing in real life, it’s alright to do anything you want in a lucid dream. As Deusabscondidum said, it would be like harming a video game (I lost >.>) character.
Morality is something defined by our society. But are dreams are not defined by that, WE create that society and so there are no “rules” to obey. Personally I’ve never dreamt of killing anyone (be that in a ND or a LD), but I don’t think such a thing is immoral.

On a side-note, instead of killing a DC, I would like to try killing myself in a LD. It would be quite interesting, though would it be immoral? I don’t think so.

Well, I was once very angry at somebody I knew and that person appeared out of nowhere in a normal dream. (I wasn’t even aware of the fact that lucid dreams existed back then.) Very angry. :wallhit:

And then, without me really interfering with anything, I acted violent on her. Details are not important at all, but it was stuff I found very inhumane. And I continued for a while, taking out my anger to the dream’s fullest. When I woke up, I felt very relieved. :cool: I was not really over my anger, but I could tolerate it better. Remembering the dream everytime I saw the person made me feel sick of what I (or my SC) did, but I didn’t really feel the need to break things at the time. :content:

I’m not sure if the dream meant my SC was corrupted or sickly or disgusting or anything, but my SC was all of those adjectives. And the dream helped me recover. Since then, I don’t believe that dreams should be (even NDs) interpretted to understand your SC. I think seeing them as a therapy is a better option. :smile: If you had no reason to do anything to the person, who maybe you don’t know at all, I’m not sure what to think about those dreams.

I think for this discussion, that is the key distinction. Being in a normal dream, I often act uncharictaristically of my waking self and do things that I either don’t understand or would never consider in waking reality. I’m truly asleep to the situation and am riding along the dream like a wave, passively participating and sometimes not even aware of the reason behind my actions. I would think in this state, anything my dream self does is not only excusable, but beyond my control.

While lucid, however, everything is intentional. And it is driven by my waking consiousness that I brought into my dreamworld without leaving the REM state. Now, personal accountability can be measured.

But the debate is still valid.

In a world with no consequences (at least immediately felt), right and wrong are blurred and each individual is only as accountable as their personal conscious allows. More conservative people may think some things are reprehensible, while others who live a different lifestyle may draw the line at DC murder or torture. And still, just because you make the consious decision to do something you know there will be no consequenses for, that doesn’t filp a switch in your brain that turns you evil. I think that the repeditive violoent behavior for people who are not normally violent would be unhealthy. But for people who have trouble behaving in society without harming others, it may be more of an outlet.

Good topic.

Ok, because the whole topic “ethic” is a complex system, that may be seen in many different ways BECAUSE it is complex, I don´t want to state my opinion on this ( actually, do I have one?) but rather show the relativity of some actions.

In our waking life we are always surrendered by immoral actions.
We read books about murders/big fantasy warships/brutality/less violent crimes/…;
we see films, in which the good and bad guys are battling in more or less direct ways;
we play games, which are more or less violent, partly even if not really violent, they are about quite immoral things (eg. strategygames).

In most of the time, we dont really think about the morality of the actual film/book/game - we simply consume the emotions caused by our active or passive activity. There is a difference between sandbox and accounted decisions like " He did that, so he has to be killed"
What I want to say is: There are worlds between meaning it and doing it.
Like torturing a DC and having fun because he has pain is not like being nija and assasinating some DC´s because its a cool action that you cannot do in RL.
To take it to another level : the difference between doing it because of the effect or doing it because of the action itself.

Nontheless, as I already mentioned “sandbox”, I may not be wrong to collect the most diverse expieriences to have more data for your conscious mind to calculate/judge/analysise/think about.

I think one cannot judge a person because of his actions in his dreams, as cruel they may be; at least the matter is about what the person actually thinks.

Morality itself is a very relative topic, for example:
I really agree to the sentence " Don´t do to others what you don´t want to be done to you ( if you were in the same situation) "
But in fact, without to offend against this statement, one could justify things like torture/mass murder/…/ with uncountable argumentations.

As you see, it seems to be the best to follow the middle course, in life in general, in your dreams, in following the middle course itself, …
Also don´t over-worry about things…

PS.: What about finding happiness in being, doing, living, thinking…

     ... you know.. just           

                       :fly:

the current reflections of my dream experiences show me that it is not mattering if the dcs are “real” or not “real” because when we assume we can learn from them we can then have conversations, experience feelings, learn , and then they are !

because they are parts of ourselves ( or not ) , either way , it is good to treat them as being real, so that we can learn, because dreams show us how we think about the real world, and show us the depth of our relationships and our beliefs, and i have found that if i am dreaing that someone is in harmony with me even if i wouldn’t think that person is, than it is and has always been true

for instance i had a great dream of living in a nice home with my uncle for a long time, and we did nice bonding things and then went for a trip somewhere, and that is a dream that shows that , there is THAT potential to manifest EXACTLY, if i allow it,

and i see dreams as being so useful and full of clues that, of course you can also have fun in them, and that is fine, it would be a great thing to learn from them too

++++ i met a dream woman inside a video game and i had a lot of fears and doubts about us being with each other, and doing what we were, and any time i had a thought immediately a person appeared to my side , personifying that thought with persuasion , and i knew it but also was swayed by those doubtful influences

one then convinced me to focus on somethig else and then i was playing a different game but i found the game to be devoid of meaning and went back to this woman but i still felt something wasn’t right and she said to me

“your doubts and fears are manifesting and are the result of …” and explained it, and i knew it to be true, but did not know whether ultimately she was trustworthy as many times she looked “dark” in some way , but that could have been my own fears causing her to morph dark !

then i fell into a negative lower reality and it was full of people with violence and with guns an di had to put my hand on one mans heart and keep saying , i love you its okay, im sorry, its alright
and he eventually woke up an drealized that i did not do anything wrong to him and he started to act similar to me
then i found a way into a “heaven” where things were beautiful and the people were calm, and i asked questions " where am i ? " one person had a straw in his nose which obviously means something,

one female dc told me “the purpose is to be everywhere on this island at once” which i knew meant to gain and evolve in dream awareness and higher conscousness, and the place seemed so huge it would never be explored in the time i had to be there

and if you think about our dream adventures in the end it is not at all rewarding or satisfying to be experienced conflict and chaos and all the negative things, becuase what if you couldn’t wake up from that plane any more ? It would be less real than here but you would have to work your way out of it

and i’ve had VERY long dreams where i Cannot WAKE UP and am faced with contemplating these situations and others where it is easy to and i know my stay will be rbefi, and i am always feeling on a deep level that to have a dream reality full of chaos is essentially, not beautiful and wonderful :happy:

and the real freedom is in finding the beautiful places, the serene cities, to reflections of a higher reality where people are well.

now if they are you, if they aren’t you, if its “astral”, it its not “astral” the only thing that makes it not “real” is in that the laws are different than here ( i.e. , i have heard dreams have the law of anti-gravity) , and that you can wake up.

I really agree to your exposition.

this got alot to a point.

Ah I love to see different starting points going to statements that are all right :content:

as for life :grin: