I was reading a post and had an interesting thought.
Morals don’t exist in the subconscious.
Now what people’s morals are depend on the society they are raised in. For most people who are of a decent age(lets just say 18+ for the sake of argument, this could vary but I wasn’t sure what age to pick) in RL display these morals with nearly every thing they do.
Now noone really thinks about these decisions they make to uphold their individual system of morals(granted some times you might if its not cut and dry). But do these get ingrained into a persons subconciousness?
I would say no. I base this on one sole fact(pretty slim research but this just occured to me and wanted to get it into tangeble form).
When you are dreaming in an unlucid state morals don’t exist. Now dreams reflect subconscious to varying levels but never in my unlucid dreams do I question anything I do. I never think “wait, I shouldn’t do that because thats just wrong” or “thats immoral” or anything else along these lines when it comes to morals. Now I might think “maybe I shouldn’t jump into a lake of lava” but that has nothing to do with morals. I think that as soon as you question if something is moral or not you will most likely become lucid because this wakes up the cognitive section of your mind.
I’ve done some pretty horrible things in my dreams(unmentionable) that never even crossed my mind as being wrong in my dream, however upon waking up I am very nearly disgusted with myself until I remind myself that it was just a dream and I wouldn’t do that in RL.
Now my question is how come morals don’t get ingrained into your subconscious. When you live your life doing something or thinking something over and over again it gets ingrained into your subconscious(i.e. recognizing peoples body language, you really don’t think about it but you subconsciously pick up on it)
I am not sure if I started rambling or if this is even a valid argument but I am interested to find out what other people think.
They say when a baby is born, it has a million years of instinct to draw upon.
I take on a universal energy stance. When we are born, we are pure. An Ego based society tends to pollute this energy. That results in ego and negative ‘selfish’ behavior.
I think we learn our morals from the same location animals recieve their instinct from…inside. The Ten Commandments are pretty assumed in most cases if you fit in the definition of a ‘good person’, even without being religious.
I’ve done a few things too in LDs that I wouldn’t do IRL but they aren’t really that bad things, not yet anyway. It’s mostly things like walking up to a girl and kissing her and stuff. But a few days ago I did use telekinesis on 2 friends in a dream and I did feel bad about it later (while still in the LD)
And in NDs I haven’t really done any bad things either, I seem to have a protection against things I really would feel bad about doing.
I am not sure that there are no morals in dreams. I always feel awful where I accidentally kill somebody in a dream, even if it is a mouse… Recently I had a dream where a policeman ordered me to shoot at some demonstrating people to prove that I am not one of them and to stay alive myself. I did shoot, and it can prove I was not very moral that moment… But I knew it was wrong. And I was not lucid.
Though often I behave like a lout in dreams… But I am a lout in RL, too, to tell the truth.
I’ve done such immoral dreams too. Some of them are so immoral that you cannot tell them to anybody. They will think you’re a monster !
But it doesn’t mean that morals don’t exist in ND. Remember the classical dream where you’re suddenly realize that you’re naked in a street and are ashamed.
There are two sorts of forbidden things IRL :
those you could do if you weren’t knowing you’ll go in jail.
and those that you never would do, because you find them disgusting.
Both are ruled by morals. But in the first case, it’s the morals of other people (social prohibitions and religious interdicts) and in the second, it’s your taboos.
In ND, there will be two additionnal cases :
things that weren’t taboo when you were a child, and that are taboo now. You can have immoral ND’s which are related with these memories.
things that choose a strange and primitive symbol to be expressed : for instance, having sex can be a way of expressing “creating links” and killing can mean “destroying links”.
I’ll come back to the immoral things IRL and the way they will be expressed or not in a dream. In the first case, there will be no censor in your normal dreams. It’s like LD’s where dreamers kill or rape poor defenceless DC’s, cause they know they won’t go in a dream jail ! In the second case, the censor will cause a metamorphosis in dreamed symbols. You will dream about a knife instead of a sex, etc. That’s well known, it’s what Freud describes in his theory. This censor is ingrained in the subconscious : it’s called the “superego”.
So, in my opinion, it’s not because some dreams are immoral that morals doesn’t exist in dreams. This because dreams you find immoral when you wake up can express normal things which don’t have anything to do with morals; and dreams you won’t find immoral can express immoral things, but their content is hidden. Morevover, if you look closer to your dream diary, as I’ve done when I first read your post, you’ll find some moral reactions. Eventually, as I said, morals is ingrained in your subconscious through superego, which makes subtle modifications in the content of your dreams.
Humm… Long post, but I couldn’t explain it shorter.
It might be that just like psychics and some laws of nature dont apply on other planes of existence.They are different here and there,same thing can be happening with morals…actually i would be suprised if it wouldnt.
Rules are different,i tend to say they are wiser…and proplably we just “match” them when we sleep.
perhaps real life is all just a dream.
when we die, we wake up, rub our eyes and say
“Damn, THAT was a weird dream!”
we’re all one in the same, we all have these “immoral” dreams that we feel ashamed of.
Aldous Huxley calls it the reducing valve. When a baby is born, the valve is wide open, all perception comes in unfiltered by the “ego”. However, as we grow and learn these “morals” from our society, our valves are slowly shut tighter and tighter, until we no longer see things in their true light.
Psychedelic drugs have enabled me to see these things for the way they are. Huxley says these substances open the floodgates of the reducing valve, putting us back into that childlike state of bliss.
Dogs and cats are high like this all the time, like babies. Constantly alert to the present moment, only acting in forced ways when inflicted with inner feelings of emotion, such as being cornered or scolded. They just act naturally, like they were born to do it.
“I had a dog, his name was Jim. Oh, oh, oh… run away Jim.”
In the second case, the censor will cause a metamorphosis in dreamed symbols. You will dream about a knife instead of a sex, etc. That’s well known, it’s what Freud describes in his theory. This censor is ingrained in the subconscious : it’s called the “superego”.