LD and ND: a terminology analysis

[tosxyChor]

Sorry for the late reply.

@krakatoa

“A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” My man Shakespeare knows what I’m talking about. Words are labels. We take something from the real world, and assign a label. It may as well be “flurgl”. The understanding of the word does not come from it’s parts, it comes from knowing what entity it is a name for. Yes, words can be used to influence what the understanding becomes, by the dilution of interpretation of the terms. Lucid dreaming is not something that one understand just by hearing the word. You have to read about it a bit at least. At that point, the label can be anything.

First, I already mentioned how this change would be aimed to inexperienced dreamers, instead of more experienced ones, that are familiar with the true meaning behind a word such as LD;
Secondly, I am meant to disagree with this: words are a powerful thing indeed, and even more so on a online forum, where their percieved meaning isn’t modified or shaped by any other experience, such as voice tone, inflection or face expressions; when you ask for advice here, words is all you’ll get, and as such we’d rather be careful about the choice we make about how to carry our message across.

Would you even imagine a club calling themselves S.T.U.P.I.D., whatever the acronym may mean? Everyone would be laughing at them, and for good reason: words are one way to make a first impression, and as such they are likely to profoundly influence the following experiences regarding such subject; for example, i wouldn’t be taking anything this club does seriously at all, and I would still be biased, should I ever enter it.

Would you be worried more if in an ingredient list something by the name of E300 appeared, or if rather it was listed under its more common naming, that is “vitamin C” ?

And if said rose was called “thorny”, and its smell “awful”, the first time I see one, I would surely avoid it, caring more about not to get punctured, and trying not to smell it. The smell is still there, but my experience torwards the rose was deeply changed. Regardless of how the extrernal world is, the way we think deeply affects the way we percieve it, and words, unlike objects, are always accompanying us, shaping our thoughts with their everpresence.

This is even more true for dreams, where we don’t have an external “rose” that keeps its smell intact, whatever we may call it; instead, thoughts and words are all we have to think about dreams while awake, and in dreams, what our mind thinks is what our mind experiences. So, even if I met said “thorny” in dreams, I would surely think about how the smell is called “awful”, and that rose would smell awful, because of the association I made of the word “awful” with a particular smell, that is not the rose’s.

Plus, should I ever smell a real “thorny” after that, I would go “but it smells sweet! How come it is called awful?” and decide awful is a wrong name for such a smell, since it modified my experience torwards it in a way it shouldn’t have. The same reasoning applies for Lucid Dream.

By this reasoning, calling them by a nonsense would be the best thing, since it carries no misdirecting associations with it; however, that may just make us sound crazy. Conscious Dream is the best alternative I have found so far.

@krakatoa

IF we want to analyse the terms thrououghly, there is one word that has not beenadressed, which is of fundamental importance in the analysis. the word “dream”. It by far more important that “lucid” or “conscious” or “flurgl”, yet the word is ambiguous. Should we take the word to mean “sleep hallucination” or “life goal” or “fantasy”? I’m sure that your initioal reacion would be, but we KNOW WHAT WE MEAN. And that is my point. We know what we are refering to, no matter what we call it, because the name is assigned to what we mean. The word is an EXPRESSION. It wouldn’t make a big difference to me, if I had to use the Russian word for it, or the Japanese, or god forbid, the Swedish equivalent. I know what I mean, even if the word I’m using really means “fish-bulb”. So if I tell myself I will “fish-bulb” tonight, my intention is the same as if I say I will “lucid dream” tonight, and my understanding is the same as well, because I decided what it means to me.

Well, in that I agree with you; dreams are a ambigous phenomenon, and their true meaning is still being discussed in some topics; however, this is not the place to continue that discussion, because one thing is the meaning of words, and another are the words themselves, and we are discussing about the latter here. As for the word “dreams”, whatever that means for the individuals, I guess it’s a fine word, with a neutral enough meaning, or even better, with the association with “life goal”, it gets a very positive connotation so I guess it’s fine how it is.