Let's say a person or character in your dream makes you laugh, did you laugh at your own joke just then? Since you created the dream? The obvious answer should be yes, but I know dreams are controlled by your subconscious mind which consists of past experiences, beliefs and ideas you or someone else put in your mind, and things you can't control or are not aware of. So I think maybe the answer might be no. I'm not sure of the answer and would like to hear your guys thoughts on this.
Some might say no. They might argue that since the subconscious is not a part of you, you did not laugh at your own joke. That a lot people do not even know what their subconscious mind consists of or even if it exists, so it shouldn't be considered a part of you. That the subconscious mind can easily be manipulated and altered almost entirely by external events, something outside of you. That it could not possibly be considered a part of you since it came from outside yourself. They might argue that your true self is your conscious mind.
Others might argue that you actually did laugh at your own joke. The subconscious mind is as much a part of you as the conscious. The fact that people do not know what their subconscious thoughts consists of or even realize that they have any are irrelevant. Cause the subconscious mind and it's thoughts control most of the person's everyday behavior and actions. A lot of your subconscious thoughts are deeply embedded in your mind, often during early childhood. So how can something that has that much control over you NOT be a part of you?
So, what do you guys think? Did you laugh at your own joke? This question has perplexed me for some time now.
If you think about it, the source is your own brain (just like when you think of funny jokes that you don't speak out loud). However, during dreamstates, you are essentially using most of your faculties to reconstruct visualizations and experiences that are similar to the real world (but not bound by its laws). So if you laugh at a joke in your sleep you are still the source of that joke even if there is a fragmented illusion of another entity speaking it aloud).
So I personally would say that if you can watch someone's brain with an MRI that the same centers that light up when you think of something funny are largely going to be the ones that light up when you are asleep (along with a few centers that are especially active during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) cycle, of course).
I hear what you're saying. I still believe the answer could be no cause I don't believe every thought in your subconscious is yours. It could have come from someone else, a commercial you saw, an outside source that you were completely unaware of. How many of people's thoughts are actually theirs, how many people actually think for themselves and not just store and regurgitate thoughts from outside sources? So even if it is your brain that stores this thought, it is quite possible that it is not YOUR thought.
Like you said, I think the obvious answer should be yes because you created the dream with your own mind. Unless you were sharing a dream with someone else with one of those dream machines used in the movie Inception, I think it would be hard to say that you are not laughing at your own joke when dreaming. In a dream, 'you' may find yourself in an environment where there seem to be other people and/or fictional characters with you but who are 'you' really interacting with? I think the way you approach this question determines the answer for yourself.
It seems that in dreams, you can have a sense of individuality. A belief that you are a separate entity from everything else in your dream but I don't think there is any doubt that you are reconstructing these other entities yourself. If the reconstruction is based on experiences you had with someone when you were awake and their thoughts have reconstructed themselves in your dream then maybe it is not so ridiculous to say that you are not laughing at your own joke. But then again, who is to say that your own thoughts aren't having an influence on the actions that those other entities are taking? I guess that would involve a whole conversation on lucid dreaming...
Hahah.... I don't remember laughing at a joke in a dream. My dreams when I remember them are usually either very intense, or very abstract and bizarre.
Really? When anybody I know are in one of my dreams I usually wake up remembering having a laugh at some point in that dream.
Yeah. Really. I suck at humor most of the time. Sometimes I am accidentally good at it. Perhaps that carries over into my dreaming.
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