How can you be sure that you aren’t dreaming rn?

[angelicat]

The Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi woke up after dreaming that he was a butterfly and was unsure whether he is a man dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man. So my question is, how can we be sure that we aren't dreaming right now and this is all real life?

I would say that we know that we are awake and in the real world because we experience new stuff and emotions we couldn't experience in a dream. Because as far as i know you cannot dream of stuff you've never experienced before. But that also could be wrong so im not quite sure.

 

[Forever Sleep]

Maybe we can't know for sure but- put it this way- what difference does it make? I still have shit loads of work to do for my job. So, I'll be working today- as usual. If I don't complete my work on time, I actually don't entirely know what would happen but, it wouldn't be good. They may get angry, they may not employ me again, they could potentially sue I guess. So, whether this is a dream or not, life is full of cause and effect. If we don't drink, we dehydrate, if we don't eat, we starve. Dreams to my notion of them are a whole lot less restrictive! Even if you want to call this reality a dream, even if it is one- it still operates on the same rules. The only difference is maybe one day we will wake up where we really are.

But no- I don't think this is a dream. I can fly in my dreams! I do dream about places I don't think I've been before though- I think. It's hard to be sure isn't it? Maybe it's a mix of lots of places I've seen but, they're almost like liminal spaces in my dreams. So- they have a familiarity to them in a generic sense- a shopping centre, a high street, a school, a river but- they won't be quite like the originals and they're often a bit unnerving. I've even had pretty crazy dreams in more of a desert setting with a huge ferris wheel. That was weird...

The more bizarre thing is- I'll dream about where I used to live or a person- but- they won't look like either! It's like when you're a child and you either lose pieces of a game or, don't have a full set of collectible characters so, you use other things to stand in for them.

Have you ever tried to lucid dream? (Control dreams.) That sounded interesting to me but, I've not really been in the situation where I can miss out on sleep to do it.